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Time photoOur course invites you to work with data collection and analysis, readings, and discussion around the field of literacy studies

Blog 2

Blog 2

 This last reading got me thinking about how literacy events are related to literacy practices. Hamilton defined literacy events as “any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants interactions and their interpretive processes.” I think this says something about learning in more terms than just literacy. For instance, by extrapolation, we can assume that as literacy events might improve literacy, an athletic event might improve athleticism.    

   When I think about learning anything, I think of the things we do in a  learning process. These things we do are  practices.  These practices help to cultivate skills through a series of events which engage us in such a way that we develop a skill through perfecting actions. Thus, it follows that literacy events are an essential component of literacy practices. This seems obvious, but I never thought of literacy practices in terms of events. This is why Hamilton was particularly interesting for me.

    The most interesting passage from this reading was the section “Extending definitions and Boundaries of a Literacy Event” Hamilton said, determining what practices have legitimate literacy events is “problematic.” We would like to think of the reading of a book for school as reading for a purpose, and therefore a literary event. However, reading signs in public places can be viewed in that same light (according to the definition of literacy events). Clearly an inclusive concept of literacy events is an good one. Clearly there are literacy events in most of our daily lives. This is what I expected to find, since last weeks reading quells the ungrounded concerns for a crisis of literacy.

 The image I chose was a World of Warcraft player. This is a game that has players reading constantly. Language is a significant part of the game. A Literacy event might be when he reads the maps, and names. Other events might be when the player reads about the history of characters. Many World of Warcraft players are in a huge community of practice, and search Wikipedia and other sources extensively for information on how to advance in story-mode and other things.

One Reply to “Blog 2”

  1. Hello Franzo,

    I was also intrigued by the concept of literary events, particularly extended definitions and the boundaries of literacy.cit is truly fascinating to see literacy develop and evolve beyond academics and book culture. I really loved your example of WoW as literacy. I remember countless hours wasted on world of warcraft and never really thought about the literary practices I participated in and contributed to the community.

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