Our social view of social literacy changes every decade based on the parameters of how our society changes. Also social literacy is an idea that groups all people into one pot when we are talking about literacy. The problem with that is not all people want or strive to be on the same literacy track as the next person. However individual literacy as a pursuit I think is a person’s decision to peruse or not peruse literacy based on their own life, background, goals and motivation. The indivuial pursuit greatly out weights the social view of literacy in my opinion.

While reading Williams this quote caught my attention. “Literacy was implicitly defined as the reading of great books that make one a great person rather than as rhetorically effective communication.” I question, how does reading “great books” create a “great person?” And who would this “great person look like?” Because Scribner fits right in and says “definitions of literacy shape our perceptions of individuals who fall on either side of the standard…” Now me looking at the two quotes as a whole I see this as, Okay I am a Mexican American and I don’t read the great books like Himingway, Dickens and etc. but I rather read the great books that define me as Latina such as Funtes, Allende. Is it because I live in America and born here am I illiterate because I choose not to read those books and I am therefore not a great person according to the social view of literacy.

How did I learn to read/write in different registers is a question I can never fully answer. I am not sure how it came about but I think the different demands in different areas on my life called for something specific I needed to learn based on observation and trial-and-error. For some reason I remember pretending to write using a paper and pencil, but just writing squiggles on the paper. What I wrote was not legible to the trained eye but I knew what it said because I was the creator. I cannot remember my elementary school training in writing but trying to study another language and learning to write in the target language made me think about how I never formally learned the rules of writing but wrote based on the sentences I heard and spoke. Whereas with learning my target language I need to learn the rules of writing. I learned those rules from the teacher and the “sponsered” books I was focred to read.  The purpose of writing at that point was academic but never for pleasure therefore I only learned one type of writing register. But I do see the connection of literacy as a means to write because we are people who imitate what we see and hear. Literacy is more that just push words out of ones mouth but drawing them out on paper-yes the old fashion way.

My name is Francesca Nesfield. I am a graduate studying Teaching International Languages. I would like to become a English teacher for ESL learners both in the high school and college settings. I also would like to teach abroad someday.

Szwed spoke of things that are so common like reading signs, but I never considered that reading just because it is so second nature to me, but in that case I read all the time!  On a serious note I find myself reading more for school and less for pleasure. I mainly read textbooks, journal articles and my assignments. I find it hard to joggle reading for pleasure and academia because I feel guilty for not reading for school. My writing is also academic focused too. I know I write far more than I give myself credit for, but for some reason I feel that my reading and writing should be of substance for others to read versus my Facebook status updates and photo captions. Just like many of my classmates the main purpose of my writing is for school whether it is self reminders, note taking or completing assignments.

I find that Szwed essentially was saying we have no idea what literacy means because it means something different to everyone based on our background and not only that but literacy encompasses so much you can not define it without leaving other essential elements out. I feel that underneath the text he was saying schools are to main stream our reading and writing skill on one accord when in fact that just cannot happen. I think our American society, government, whoever and whatever, has an image of what literacy looks like but cannot help us get there because it is like a searching for an imaginary world you swear is real but does not exist.

One small sentence that I thought was funny is “one can only ‘violate’ the rules when one has mastered them” (p.246). When I read this I thought about verbal and written language acquisition for kids 2-4 years old. When they learn language they typically use it incorrectly (violating the rules), but correct enough for an adult to understand. Then later in life those same kids revert back to violating the rules but in a more intelligent way. Why does this happen? I guess modern text speak forces us to revert back to our old rule violation but with acceptance from other.- I have to come back to this I just lost my thought. Dam it!