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The traditional definition of literacy is considered to be the ability to read and write, or the ability to use language to read, write, listen, and speak. In modern contexts, the word refers to reading and writing at a level adequate for communication, or at a level that lets one understand and communicate ideas in a literate society, so as to take part in that society. The United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) has drafted the following definition: "Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts. Literacy involves a continuum of learning to enable an individual to achieve his or her goals, to develop his or her knowledge and potential, and to participate fully in the wider society."
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Many policy analysts[attribution needed] consider literacy rates a crucial measure of a region\'s human capital. This claim is made on the grounds that literate people can be trained less expensively than illiterate people, generally have a higher socio-economic statusPHONICS. It\'s Profitable, [www.thephonicspage.org The Phonics Page], <http://www.thephonicspage.org/On%20Phonics/profitable.html>. Retrieved on 11 December 2007 and enjoy better health and employment prospects. Policy makers also argue that literacy increases job opportunities and access to higher education. In Kerala, India, for example, female and child mortality rates declined dramatically in the 1960s, when girls who were educated in the education reforms after 1948 began to raise families. Recent researchers however, Graff, 2003argue that correlations such as the one listed above may have more to do with the overall effects of schooling rather than literacy alone. In addition to the potential for literacy to increase wealth, wealth may promote literacy, through cultural norms and easier access to schools and tutoring services.[citation needed]
Illiteracy is the condition of not being able to read or write, and in modern times is seen as a social problem to be solved through education.
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The examples and perspective in this article or section may not represent a worldwide view of the subject. Please improve this article or discuss the issue on the talk page. |
World literacy rates by country
Graph of declining illiteracy rates world-wide from 1970 to 2015
20% of the world population was illiterate in 1998 by the United Nations definition - the inability to read and write a simple sentence in any language.Glossary, The Economist, <http://www.economist.com/screensaver/glossary.cfm>. Retrieved on 14 November 2007 Using a definition of: "age 15 and over can read and write", the U.S. CIA World Factbook estimated in 2007 that the overall world literacy rate was 82%."The World Factbook, Central Intelligence Agency, November 1, 2007, <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/xx.html>. Retrieved on 14 November 2007 East Asian and Latin American countries generally have illiteracy rates in the 10 to 15% region while developed countries have illiteracy rates of a few percent.
Within ethnically homogeneous regions, literacy rates can vary widely from country to country or region to region. This often coincides with the region\'s wealth or urbanization, though many factors play a role.
According to the 2001 India census, India\'s national literacy is only 65.2 percent.Literacy Facts University of Hamburg Literacy, Indian Census Literacy drive is spreading slowly to other states.The Quiet Revolution IMF India\'s youth (age 15 to 24) literacy rate was 76.4% between 2000 and 2004.Population, Health and Human Well-being At current rates India will take no less than 20 years for a literacy of 95%.India special, New Scientist. Literacy in India is not homogeneous. The southern state of Kerala recorded a 90.92% literacy rate in 2001, Kerela literacy while the northern state of Bihar was considerably lower at 47.53%.Literacy, Census Statistics India\'s overall adult literacy rate (61.3% in 2002), is slightly higher than other nations in South Asia, except Sri Lanka\'s 92%, Economic Survey 2004-05, Economic Division, Ministry of Finance, Government of India, quoting UNDP Human Development Report 2004. with Nepal next at 44%, Pakistan at 50-54%Pakistan statistics, UNICEF, <http://www.unicef.org/infobycountry/pakistan_pakistan_statistics.html>. Retrieved on 5 February 2008Pakistan\'s literacy rate nearly 54%, Pakistan Times, <http://pakistantimes.net/2004/07/15/national4.htm>. Retrieved on 5 February 2008 and Bangladesh the lowest at 43.1%Bangladesh, CIA World Factbook, <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/bg.html>. Retrieved on 5 February 2008
Many Indians have argued that illiteracy, especially in the rural areas, gives undue advantage to contemporary politicians, who will take advantage of the situation to become corrupt and neglect issues of socio-economic developmentIlliteracy in India (disadvantages; propositions), writerstoyou.com, <http://www.writerstoyou.com/books/readonline.asp?locid=4322&title=Vasudha+Pande+-+Illiteracy+in+India+(disadvantages%3B+propositions)>. Retrieved on 5 February 2008
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There are various definitions of literacy. Governments may label individuals who can read a couple of thousand simple words they learned by sight in the first four grades in school as literate; but the most comprehensive study of U.S. adult literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government argues that such adults are functionally illiterate--they cannot read well enough to hold a good job. A study by the Jenkins Group has shown that millions of Americans never read another book after leaving school.Robyn Jackson, Some startling statistics, University of Dayton, Erma Bombeck Writers\' Workshop, <http://www.humorwriters.org/startlingstats.html>. Retrieved on 5 February 2008
A five-year, $14 million study of U.S. adult literacy involving lengthy interviews of U.S. adults, the most comprehensive study of literacy ever commissioned by the U.S. government,Adult Literacy in America, National Center for Educational Statistics, 2002, <http://nces.ed.gov/pubs93/93275.pdf>. Retrieved on 11 December 2007 was released in September 1993. It involved lengthy interviews of over 26,700 adults statistically balanced for age, gender, ethnicity, education level, and location (urban, suburban, or rural) in twelve states across the U.S. and was designed to represent the U.S. population as a whole. This government study showed that 21% to 23% of adult Americans were not "able to locate information in text", could not "make low-level inferences using printed materials", and were unable to "integrate easily identifiable pieces of information."
The study detailed the percentages of U.S. adults who worked full-time, part-time, were unemployed, or who had given up looking for a job and were no longer in the work force. The study also reported the average hourly wages for those who were employed. These data were grouped by literacy level--how well the interviewees responded to material written in English--and indicated that 40 to 44 million of the 191 million U.S. adults (21 to 23 percent of them) in the least literate group earned a yearly average of $2105 and about 50 million adults (25 to 28 percent of them) in the next-least literate of the five literacy groups earned a yearly average of $5225 at a time when the U.S. Census Bureau considered the poverty level threshold for an individual to be $7363 per year.Poverty Thresholds: 1993, U.S. Census Bureau, <http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/threshld/thresh93.html>. Retrieved on 11 December 2007
A follow-up study by the same group of researchers using a smaller database (19,714 interviewees) was released in 2006 that showed no statistically significant improvement in U.S. adult literacy.A First Look at the Literacy of Ameraca\'s Adults in the 21st century, National Center for Educational Statistics, 2006, <http://nces.ed.gov/NAAL/PDF/2006470.PDF>. Retrieved on 11 December 2007 These studies assert that 46 to 51 percent of U.S. adults read so poorly that they earn significantly below the threshold poverty level for an individual.
The World Fact Book prepared by the CIAUnited States, CIA World Factbook, <https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/print/us.html>. Retrieved on 11 December 2007 claims that the U.S. literacy rate is 99 percent, but defines literacy as being able to read and write when a person is 15 years old or older. A person who can only read a few hundred--or even a couple of thousand--simple words learned in the first four grades in school, is only marginally literate.[citation needed]
Jonathan Kozol, in his book Illiterate America, states that there may not be any intentional deception in the literacy figures. He goes on to explainJonathan Kozol, Illiterate America (New York: New American Library, 1985), pp. 37-39 that the census bureau reported literacy rates of 99 percent based on personal interviews of a relatively small portion of the population and on written responses to census bureau mailings. If the interviewees or written responders had completed fifth grade they were considered literate. In the 1970 census, for example, five percent of those surveyed had less than a fifth-grade education. The census bureau considered eighty percent of those with less than a fifth-grade education as being literate and thus calculated a 99 percent literacy rate. In the 1980 and 1990 censuses, most of the census bureau calculations of literacy were based upon grade completion. They used written questionnaires and a small number of home visits and telephone interviews. If a respondent stated that they had completed less than five grades, they were asked if they could read and write, and their unsubstantiated answer was recorded as a fact. Kozol asserts that this method of determining literacy is certain to underestimate illiteracy for the following reasons ≤:
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Although the history of literacy goes back several thousand years to the invention of writing, what constitutes literacy has changed throughout history. At one time, a literate person was one who could sign his or her name. At other times, literacy was measured only by the ability to read and write Latin (regardless of a person\'s ability to read or write his or her vernacular). Even earlier, literacy was a trade secret of professional scribes, and many historic monarchies maintained cadres of this profession, sometimes—as was the case for Imperial Aramaic—even importing them from lands where a completely alien language was spoken and written.
In the middle ages, literacy was measured by the ability to recite passages of scripture. In some societies, this skill was made available only to the clergy, and the ability to read and write might even have been seen as dangerous in the hands of less discerning groups. In medieval Europe, Jews consequently had an edge over the predominantly Christian population because many Jewish males received a basic (religious) education that enabled them to read, write and understand Hebrew, a skill that they also applied in secular life. This skill may be contrasted with the ability to "read" scripture, but—because it is not in the vernacular—not actually knowing what the text says.
In 12th and 13th century England, the ability to read a particular passage from the Bible entitled a common law defendant to the so-called benefit of clergy, which entitled a person to be tried before an ecclesiastical court, where sentences were more lenient, instead of a secular one, where hanging was a likely sentence. This opened the door to lay, but nonetheless literate, defendants also claiming the benefit of clergy, and—because the Biblical passage used for the literacy test was inevitably Psalm 51—an illiterate person who had memorized the appropriate verse could also claim the benefit of clergy.
By the mid-18th century, the ability to read and comprehend scripture (particularly when scripture was in the vernacular) led to Wales having one of the highest literacy rates. This was the result of a Griffith Jones\'s system of circulating schools, that aimed to enable everyone to read the Bible (in Welsh). Similarly, at least half the population of 18th century New England was literate, perhaps as a consequence of the Puritan belief in the importance of Bible reading. By the time of the American Revolution, literacy in New England is suggested to have been around 90 percent.
The ability to read did not necessarily imply the ability to write. The 1686 church law (kyrkolagen) of the Kingdom of Sweden (which at the time included all of modern Sweden, Finland, and Estonia) enforced literacy on the people and by the end of the 18th century, the ability to read was close to 100 percent. But as late as the 19th century, many Swedes, especially women, could not write.
Although the present-day concepts of literacy have much to do with the 15th century invention of the movable type printing press, it was not until the industrial revolution of the mid-19th century that paper and books became financially affordable to all classes of industrialized society. Until then, only a small percentage of the population were literate as only wealthy individuals and institutions could afford the prohibitively expensive materials. As late as 1841, 33% of all Englishmen and 44% of Englishwomen signed marriage certificates with their mark as they were unable to write (government-financed public education became available in England in 1870). Even today, the dearth of cheap paper and books is a barrier to universal literacy in some less-industrialized nations.
From another perspective, the historian Harvey Graff has argued that the introduction of mass schooling was in part an effort to control the type of literacy that the working class had access to. According to Graff, literacy learning was increasing outside of formal settings (such as schools) and this uncontrolled, potentially critical reading could lead to increased radicalization of the populace. In his view, mass schooling was meant to temper and control literacy, not spread it.
Literacy has also been used as a way to sort populations and control who has access to power. Because literacy permits learning and communication that oral and sign language alone cannot, illiteracy has been enforced in some places as a way of preventing unrest or revolution. During the Civil War era in the United States, white citizens in many areas banned teaching slaves to read or write presumably understanding the power of literacy. In the years following the Civil War, the ability to read and write was used to determine whether one had the right to vote. This effectively served to prevent former slaves from joining the electorate and maintained the status quo. In 1964, educator Paulo Freire was arrested, expelled, and exiled from his native Brazil because of his work in teaching Brazilian peasants to read.
Between 1500 and 1800, the approaches to reading changed as well. Briggs and Burke (2002) give examples of five types of reading changes Briggs and Burke, 2002, A Social History of the Media.: The emergence of \'critical reading\', as reading was once taken literally; \'dangerous reading\', where reading was seen as dangerous in the hands of less educated groups such as women or commoners; \'creative reading\', the application of content via the reader\'s individual paradigm; \'extensive reading\', especially seen in the research of a particular topic; and \'private reading\', where formatting of texts changed to embrace the notion of browsing and is an aspect of the rise of individualism.
Literacy comprises a number of subskills, including phonological awareness, decoding, fluency, comprehension, and vocabulary. Mastering each of these subskills is necessary for students to become proficient readers.
Beginning readers must understand the concept of the alphabetic principle in order to master basic reading skills. A writing system is said to be alphabetic if it uses symbols to represent individual language sounds. Wren, Sebastian (1999), Phonics Rules, Southwest Educational Development Laboratory (SEDL), <http://www.sedl.org/pubs/catalog/items/read07.html>. Retrieved on 7 July 2007 In contrast, logographic writing systems (such as Chinese) use a symbol to represent an entire word, and syllabic writing systems (such as Japanese kana) use a symbol to represent a single syllable.
Alphabetic writing systems vary in complexity. For example, Spanish is an alphabetic writing system that has a nearly perfect one-to-one correspondence of symbols to individual sounds. In Spanish, most of the time words are spelled the way they sound, that is, word spellings are almost always regular. English, on the other hand, is far more complex in that it does not have a one-to-one correspondence between symbols and sounds. English has individual sounds that can be represented by more than one symbol or symbol combination. For example, the long |a| sound can be represented by a-consonant-e as in ate, -ay as in hay, -ea as in steak, -ey as in they, -ai as in pain, and -ei as in vein. In addition, there are many words with irregular spelling and many homophones (words that sound the same but have different meanings and often different spellings as well). Pollack Pickeraz (1963) asserted that there are 45 phonemes in the English language, and that the 26 letters of the English alphabet can represent the 45 phonemes in about 350 ways.
It should be noted that the irregularity of English spelling is largely an artifact of how the language developed. English is a Germanic language; however, it has substantial influences from Latin, Greek, and French, among others. Over its history, English adopted vocabulary from many languages, and the imported words usually follow the spelling patterns of their language of origin. Advanced phonics instruction includes studying words according to their origin, and how to determine the correct spelling of a word using its language of origin.
Clearly, the complexity of English orthography makes it more difficult for children to learn decoding and encoding rules, and more difficult for teachers to teach them. However, effective word recognition relies on the basic understanding that letters represent the sounds of spoken language, that is, word recognition relies on the reader\'s understanding of the alphabetic principle.
Phonics is an instructional technique that teaches readers to attend to the letters or groups of letters that make up words. So, to read the word throat using phonics, each grapheme (a letter or letters that represent one sound) is examined separately: th says /θ/, r says /ɹ/, oa says /oʊ/, and t says /t/. There are various methods for teaching phonics. A common way to teach this is to have the novice reader pronounce each individual sound and "blend" them to pronounce the whole word. This is called synthetic phonics.
There are many programs that use this approach. A widely-known program is SRA/McGraw-Hill\'s DISTAR program (now called Reading Mastery). The Orton-Gillingham method, Lindamood-Bell Phoneme Sequencing Program, and the Wilson reading system are other phonics programs. British educator Nellie Dale is credited with creating one of the earliest programs designed to teach basic reading skills, in the late 19th century.Dale, Nellie. (1898) On the Teaching English Reading. J M Dent & Co, London; Dale, Nellie. (1902) Further Notes on the Teaching of English Reading. George Philip & Son Ltd, London.
In addition to teaching phonological awareness and sound-symbol correspondence, comprehensive phonics programs also include instruction in irregular words, the 6 syllable types, morphology (root words, prefixes, suffixes, etc) and word origin.Open Court Reading and the Wilson Reading System are two such programs. See List of phonics programs for others.
Because English spelling has so many irregularities and exceptions, advocates of whole language recommend that novice readers should learn a little about the individual letters in words, especially the consonants and the "short vowels." Teachers provide this knowledge opportunistically, in the context of stories that feature many instances of a particular letter. This is known as "embedded phonics." Children use their letter-sound knowledge in combination with context to read new and difficult words.Tompkins, G. 2006. Literacy for the 21st Century. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Pearson.
Programs that use a whole language approach include Reading Recovery and Guided reading.Fountas, I. & Pinnell, G.S. 1996, Guiding Readers and Writers Grades 3 – 6: Teaching Comprehension, Genre and Content Literacy.
The answer to this question is often debated. Scientific research in reading has tended to support the value of teaching phonics, although reading experts from all perspectives believe that time spent reading--a key element of whole language--is very important. Advocates of whole language have dismissed this scientific research for many different reasons. One common complaint is that scientific education researchers rely on randomized studies (similar in design to those done in medicine) and do not value descriptive research that has demonstrated the value of whole language approaches. In the United States, the National Reading Panel was convened in an attempt to determine which approach was better. It found that phonics was more effective than embedded phonics or no phonics, but it only used experimental and quasi-experimental research (it did not include qualitative research), so the whole language community remained skeptical of its conclusions.McCardle, P., & Chaabra, V. (2004). The voice of evidence in reading research. The debate continues.Pressley, M. (2006). Reading instruction that works. New York: The Guilford Press.
Many children of average and above average intelligence experience difficulty when learning to read. According to Dr. Grover Whitehurst, Assistant Secretary, U.S. Department of Education, learning to read is difficult for several reasons. First, reading requires the mastery of a code that maps human speech sounds to written symbols, and this code is not readily apparent or easy to understand. Second, reading is not a natural process; it was invented by humans fairly recently in our development. The human brain is wired for spoken language, but it is not wired to process the code of written language. Third, confusion can be introduced at the time of instruction by teachers who do not understand what the code is or how it needs to be taught. Dr. Grover Whitehurst, Evidence Based Education Science and the Challenge of Learning to Read, <http://www.childrenofthecode.org/interviews/whitehurst.htm>. Retrieved on 11 December 2007
One reason that mastery of the code that maps human speech sounds to written symbols is so difficult is that English spelling contains so many irregularities and exceptions to the rules. However, when English spelling rules take into account syllable structure, phonetics, and accents, there are literally dozens of rules that are 75% or more reliable. Abbott, M. (2000). Identifying reliable generalizations for spelling words: The importance of multilevel analysis. The Elementary School Journal 101(2), 233-245. Some phonics spelling advocates claim that English is more than 80% phonetic. Moats, L. M. (2001). Speech to print: Language essentials for teachers. Baltimore, MD: Paul H. Brookes Company.
This is not to imply, however, that English is easy to read. It takes longer for students to become completely fluent readers of English than of many other languages, including French, Greek, and Spanish. Ziegler, J. C., & Goswami, U. (2005). Reading acquisition, developmental dyslexia, and skilled reading across languages. Psychological Bulletin, 131(1), 3-29. In general, the English language, being the product of many other languages and having only been codified orthographically in the 16th century, has fewer consistent relationships between sounds and letters than many other languages. The consequence of this orthographic history is that reading can be challenging.Diane McGuinness, Why Our Children Can’t Read (New York: Touchstone, 1997) pp. 156-169 Researchers have found, nonetheless, that learning the relationships between sounds and letters and using them to build words is still the most efficient way to teach reading to children.National Institute of Child Health and Human Development. (2000). The National Reading Panel: Reports of the Subgroups.
Many educators in the USA believe that children need to learn to analyze text (comprehend it) even before they can read it on their own, and comprehension instruction generally begins in pre-Kindergarten or Kindergarten. But other US educators consider this reading approach to be completely backward for very young children, arguing that the children must learn how to decode the words in a story through phonics before they can analyze the story itself.
During the last century comprehension lessons usually comprised students answering teachers\' questions, writing responses to questions on their own, or both. The whole group version of this practice also often included "round robin reading," wherein teachers called on individual students to read a portion of the text (and sometimes following a set order). In the last quarter of the 20th century, evidence accumulated that the read-test methods assessed comprehension more than they taught it. The associated practice of "round robin" reading has also been questioned and eliminated by many educators.
Instead of using the prior read-test method, research studies have concluded that there are much more effective ways to teach comprehension. Much work has been done in the area of teaching novice readers a bank of "reading strategies," or tools to interpret and analyze text.Pressley, M. (2006). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced teaching. New York: Guilford Press. There is not a definitive set of strategies, but common ones include summarizing what you have read, monitoring your reading to make sure it is still making sense, and analyzing the structure of the text (e.g., the use of headings in science text). Some programs teach students how to self monitor whether they are understanding and provide students with tools for fixing comprehension problems.
Instruction in comprehension strategy use often involves the gradual release of responsibility, wherein teachers initially explain and model strategies. Over time, they give students more and more responsibility for using the strategies until they can use them independently. This technique is generally associated with the idea of self-regulation and reflects social cognitive theory, originally conceptualized by Albert Bandura.Pressley, M. (2006). Reading instruction that works: The case for balanced instruction. New York: The Guilford Press.
Traditional definitions of literacy consider the ability to "read, write, spell, listen, and speak."Moats, L.C. Speech to Print: Language Essentials for Teachers, p. 3. Paul H. Brookes Co., 2000 Since the 1980s, some have argued that literacy is ideological, which means that literacy always exists in a context, in tandem with the values associated with that context.Street, B. (1984) Literacy in theory and practice. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Prior work viewed literacy as existing autonomously. Goody, J. (1986). The logic of writing and the organization of society. New York: Cambridge University.
Some have argued that the definition of literacy should be expanded. For example, in the United States, the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association have added "visually representing" to the traditional list of competencies. Similarly, in Scotland, literacy has been defined as: "The ability to read and write and use numeracy, to handle information, to express ideas and opinions, to make decisions and solve problems, as family members, workers, citizens and lifelong learners."Curriculum Framework for Adult Literacy in Scotland (pdf)
A basic literacy standard in many societies is the ability to read the newspaper. Increasingly, communication in commerce or society in general requires the ability to use computers and other digital technologies. Literacy in the Information Age: Final Report of the International Adult Literacy Survey, OECD 2000. PDF Since the 1990s, when the Internet came into wide use in the United States, some have asserted that the definition of literacy should include the ability to use tools such as web browsers, word processing programs, and text messages. Similar expanded skill sets have been called multimedia literacy, computer literacy, information literacy, and technacy.Kress, G. (2003). Literacy in the new media age. London: Routledge.
"Arts literacy" programs exist in some places in the United States,Kennedy Center Partners in Education, Washington, D.C.; ABC school in South Carolina; A Plus schools in a half dozen states; Value Plus in Tennessee Australia, Canada, and Finland.[citations needed]
Other genres under study by academia include critical literacy, media literacy, and health literacyZarcadoolas, C., Pleasant, A., & Greer, D. (2006). Advancing health literacy: A framework for understanding and action. Jossey-Bass: San Francisco, CA.
It is argued[attribution needed] that literacy necessarily includes the cultural, political, and historical contexts of the community in which communication takes place.Knobel, M. (1999). Everyday literacies: Students, discourse, and social practice. New York: Lang; Gee, J. P. (1996). Social linguistics and literacies: Ideologies in Discourses. Philadelphia: Falmer.
Articles about teaching literacy:
Articles about diverse types of literacy:
International statistics:
Look up Literacy in
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| Literacy | |
|---|---|
| Teaching literacy | Reading education • Phonics • Whole language • Dick and Jane • National Council of Teachers of English • NCLB |
| Types of literacy | Media Literacy • Information literacy • Visual literacy • Multimedia literacy • Health literacy • Numeracy • Computer literacy • Technacy • Transliteracy • Critical literacy • Adult literacy • Adolescent literacy • Functional illiteracy • Orality • Oral literature |
| International | International Reading Association • List of countries by literacy rate • Literacy in India • List of China administrative divisions by illiteracy rate • International Literacy Day |
| Major contributors to literacy | Frank Laubach • Paulo Freire • Griffith Jones • Marie Clay |
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