Definition Essay: How Do You Define Literacy?

Literacy has to do with many things in our daily lives and there is no way to avoid it. If you are not a literate person you are more than likely to have a great deal of trouble in jobs, school, and society. Literacy has to do with many things and there is a controversy on what literacy is, the benefits of reading, and the benefits of writing. How do you define literacy, do you define literacy as the ability to communicate efficiently, the ability to read, the ability to write, or all of the above? When you hear about literacy the first thing you should know is what literacy is. Literacy is “the quality or state of being literate, especially the ability to read and write” (Dictionary). Literacy means different things for different ranges of ages and can easily be broken up into stages. Stage one is early childhood literacy which normally would range from around birth until about the third grade. In this stage, “one of the most common threads throughout definitions of early childhood literacy is preparation. Key is building a foundation that prepares children for further stages of developing literacy” (What is Literacy). The second stage can be

In our society now, with all of this technology that we have and the Facebooking and Internet searching that is done, people are losing their since of proper vocabulary. As said in the article, “5 Benefits of Writing: Why You Should Write Every Day”, it states, “In an era when texting and tweeting are the main vehicles for communication, many people find that their mental word banks are dwindling in favour of creative ways to condense thoughts into as few words and characters as possible” (Winter-Hebert). If people would write daily in a journal or anything it would help with keeping up with the maintenance in a since that you brain and vocabulary needs; like students have to in English class daily