National Council Of Teachers Of English Literate Analysis

First things first, who gave the National Council of Teachers of English also known as NCTE, the authority to redefine the word literate as it pertains to the global community. I believe that the NCTE as an institution does not have the proper background to define the word literate. The NCTE is an American organization that was founded in 1911 for the purpose of “improving the teaching and learning of English and the language arts at all levels of education” (“National Council of Teachers of English”). Since that time the NCTE has been interested in improving the English curriculum that is taught from preschool to high school and college. They have also provided English teachers a platform where they can improve their own careers by interacting

To me, it seems like the NCTE is stating that just reading and writing does not make an individual literate anymore, now the individual must be able to operate technology at a certain level. In the 21st Century technology has become an important part of the majority people’s lives. That does not necessarily mean everyone in this current time has access to that type of technology. With this first rule, the NCTE is excluding a chunk of the global population. Being literate in the 21st Century by NCTE standards means that an individual must be exposed to different types of media like textbooks whether paper or online, web-based resources, teacher-produced materials and images (Bezemer and Kress 166-167). Around the world, some people just don't have this type of access to technology. The internet is one mode or channel that people need to access to be able to use the NCTE’s “Multimodal Literacies”, “tools of technology”. The NCTE is assuming that the internet, which provides the access to all resources they point out that a literate individual need, has reached every point in the world. That is an incorrect assumption. Even with the rapid diffusion of the Internet, an excessive number of users are concentrated in more developed countries like America (Chen and Wellman 19). Americans make 29% of

I know there is so much potential in this paper. There are so many ways I could have gone and stem off to. Unfortunately, I didn’t put as much time as I would have liked into this essay because of other classes. I had some initial problems. In the beginning, I did not understand what I was supposed to write. The question what is multimodality really confused me. I did not understand the prompt was asking me. After I reread the required readings, I was able to understand what I needed to write about for the paper. I also had trouble determining when I should use quotation marks around the word literate. I had to figure out if putting those quotation marks around the word enhance my point or make the reader confessed. One of my peer reviewers, Khanh Ngo recommended that I support one of my initial claims. In her opinion, I had made a claim about the NCTE, but I had not added some research to back my statement. Therefore, I took her advice and added some evidence to my claim that the NCTE has not improved literacy in the United States. My other peer reviewer, Danielle, pointed out some wrong word choice and sentences she felt that were awkward in their arrangement. I fixed those mistakes and reworded some sentences. In all, with the help of my peer reviewers, I feel like my paper improved from its original