Literacy

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v t e

Literacy is the ability to read and write. Broadly, literacy may be viewed as "particular ways of thinking about and doing reading and writing"^[1] with the purpose of understanding or expressing thoughts or ideas in written form in some specific context of use.^[2] In other words, humans in literate societies have sets of practices for producing and consuming writing, and they also have beliefs about these practices.^[3] Reading, in this view, is always reading something for some purpose; writing is always writing something for someone for some purpose.^[4] Beliefs about reading and writing and their value for society and for the individual always influence the ways literacy is taught, learned, and practiced.^[5]

Some researchers suggest that the study of "literacy" as a concept can be divided into two periods: the period before 1950, when literacy was understood solely as alphabetical literacy (word and letter recognition); and the period after 1950, when literacy slowly began to be considered as a wider concept and process, including the social and cultural aspects of reading and writing^[6] and functional literacy.^[7][8]