Summary

Literacy was basically meant as the ability of reading at first, however, with a lot of complex patterns and meanings such as discourses, learning and acquiring, it was vaguely encapsulated the common sense notion of literacy as ability of reading and writing.

How do we gain literacy? It is difficult to acquire a literally high level of literacy, though it was said in the reading that literary is mastered through acquisition, not learning little by little. Of course, the ultimate literacy is that acquiring a language naturally with learning – gaining not only knowledge but also the ability to read and write as perfect as possible.

When discussing the difference between learning and acquiring, Gee asserts that “We are better at what we acquire, but we consciously know more about what we have learned.” (p.259) which is true since everyone tends to be better at what we naturally acquired such as sports skills and languages.

Works Cited

Gee, James. “What is Literacy?” Language and Linguistics in Context. Eds. Harriet Luria, Deborah Seymour, and Trudy Smoke. London: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, 2006. 257-264. Print.