Thread: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?

11 days ago

Ania Lian LECTURER MANAGER

What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Dear Students
Critical to Assignment 1 and 2 is the kid of definition of literacy that you will adopt. I suggest
that in order to get it right and so then to get the Assignment 1 right, we use this thread to
define literacy. Copy and paste the thread into your portfolio to illustate how well you
participated in this thread and how much you have contributed to the discussion. So, WHAT
IS LITERACY and WHY DO YOU CHOOSE THIS DEFINITION.
Please DO NOT use dictinaries. This is an academic unit, and so we must argue in relation to
evidence or theory; not WEBSTER expert, or wikipedia ;)
lets have fun
ania

7 days ago

BELINDA MALIK
RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Literacy is both. It is a skill as it is something that is learned and refined over time. This
skill is required to be able to communicate effectively with the community, to express our
opinion and develop. Literacy is also a tool. We use this tool every day without a thought.
We call on our literacy skills when having conversations with others, sending emails, letter or
texts to others and through reading.
When i first started school i was learning about reading and writing and how to express
myself cohesively. This was a skill that i was learning and as my schooling went on it
continued to adapt that skill, adding to it with things i learned, to ensure it remained a

usable skill. I still continue to refine this skill through my continuing studies. I believe that
what i do with that skill become the tools that i use to co-exist and to communicate.

6 days ago

ZOE-SIMONE NUGENT
RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
I agree with Belinda on this one. It is both.
I think of a tool as something you utilise to make something easier to complete. So literacy
would be a tool that I have and do use, to function in the everyday world and to make my
ability to function in this world easier.
As a skill, it is a basic human right that people are give the opportunity to empower
themselves (I guess again it is a tool here, tool of empowering ones self?) by learning to read
and write and communitcate so they they can in turn use that tool of Literacy to learn new
skills to better their lives whether that be through greater happiness, better communication
or financially etc etc.

6 days ago

ZOE-SIMONE NUGENT
RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
I guess it's also important at what level Literacy is a tool? Does that make sense?
For me Literacy is important at every level of society from top to bottom. Everyone should
be provided the opportunity to learn how to read and write and communicate and express
ideas. Then we can can function in society as well as question leaders and what they think is
good for us as well as state our own ideas. A skill used as a tool for the betterment (is that a
word) of community as a whole.

1 day ago

AMBER LEE CABBAN

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Hi Belinda and Zoe,
I also agree that Literacy is both a skill and a tool.
As a skill, we learn how to use literacy in our everyday lives. We tweak this skill and improve
it over time with practice and use within different experiences. As with all skills, some people
are more literacy orientated than others and the skill of using literacy may feel more natural
to some.
Listeracy is also used as a tool in our everyday lives. We use this tool to communicate, write,
read, listen, understand, comprehend and participate in our society. The better our literacy
skills are, the easier it is to use literacy appropriately and professionally as a tool.

4 days ago

Ania Lian LECTURER MANAGER

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Thank you Belinda and your post.
If we see literacy as a tool, then we could ask ourselves: what job is it to do?
Is the "job" to read out words? Surely not. Is it to read texts in newspapers and texts on
Facebook? Is this the job of literacy?
:) thank you for helping me further focus this question
ania

1 day ago

AMBER LEE CABBAN

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Hi Ania,
I believe Literacy as a tool can be used in multiple instances. In it's smallest form, literacy
can be used to help people read simple words or diagrams to make sense of their worlds.
Such as, reading a stop sign or give way sign and differentiating the two. Then literacy helps
us to read newspapers and magazines to understand our world. The better our skill of
literacy, the more analytical our reading skills will be, and we can therefore take more
meaning out of what we read.

1 day ago

AMBER LEE CABBAN

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Hi Ania,
I believe Literacy as a tool can be used in multiple instances. In it's smallest form, literacy
can be used to help people read simple words or diagrams to make sense of their worlds.
Such as, reading a stop sign or give way sign and differentiating the two. Then literacy helps
us to read newspapers and magazines to understand our world. The better our skill of
literacy, the more analytical our reading skills will be, and we can therefore take more
meaning out of what we read.

6 days ago

EMMA SKYE MCCLELLAN

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?

Literacy is both a skill and a tool. Literacy is not a skill we are born with, we must learn it throughout our lifetimes.
Why? Because literacy is a highly invaluable and powerful skill to process. It is a tool that we use on a daily basis
to engage effectively in our society. It is linked to pretty much everything we do and can take many forms; without
it we would find it extremely hard to not only read and write but also to talk and even understand. I imagine it
would be like living in a foreign country where I dont understand or speak their native language and nobody their
speaks or understands mine.

2 days ago

SOPHIA KATRINA ANDERSON

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Hello Emma,
Your comments regarding visitors in a foreign country and how difficult it is to
communicate when they are unable to speak the same language.
Although, it doesn't need to be a foreign language such as French or Italian to
make us feel overwhelmed, the language of Information Technology or
mechanics can leave a lot of us feeling out of our depth what helps in these
situations if a person has the skill to convey the information in format that the
novice will understand.
Thinking further, I would put skill as the ability to convey information and being
able to select the appropriate tool to assist. For example if a person was in a
foreigncountry and unable to speak the language and they wanted to know
where the train station was they may choose to draw a picture of train with a
question mark.

2 days ago

EMMA SKYE MCCLELLAN

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Hi Sophia, thanks for your response. You raised some excellent points which to be honest
didn't even cross my mind.

Obviously I didn't use a very good example to convey this point but what I was trying to say
was that if I did not have any literacy skills, I would probably feel a bit lost and find it really
hard to engage in the society in which I live and I very much believe that it would feel like a
kind of language barrier between myself and others. I may know what I want to say but
would not have the required skills to be able to communicate this to others, and if someone
did happen to know what I wanted to try and communicate, would I possess the skills
needed to understand them?
Using your example of a train station: Without any form of literacy skills I may not be able to
associate symbols with words, a map would mean nothing and words both spoken and
written would mean nothing and to some degree even body language could be a bit
ambiguous. So a seemingly simple task of locating a train station would prove to be an
extremely difficult task for someone who doesnt have any literary skills.

1 day ago

AMBER LEE CABBAN

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Hi Emma and Sophia,
Ironically when I was reading your 3-point conversation I noticed a few awesome points on
the topic of skills and tools of literacy.
When Emma said "I didn't use a very good example to convey this point" I think that you
were not using the complete power of the skill of literacy that you have developed. Because
you "didn't use a good example", two different ideas were byproduct of what you actually
meant. Further, when you replied, you refined your literacy skills and increased the
description of what you meant to ensure the correct version or perspective was portrayed.
Awesome!

6 days ago

ALICHIA ANN CRANWELL

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?

What is Literacy? A skill or a tool?
Literacy and communication can be very close in meaning.
When someone is strong in Literacy, they could also be regarded as a strong communicator.
Literacy is the comprehension and articulator of information, using various modes of
literacy, most of the time taking place unconciously. Literacy is happening around us all of
the time, sometimes we are aware( During lectures, classrooms, etc). other times not so
much( watching TV, facebook etc).
I believe literacy is both a skill and a tool. Literacy is a skill that needs to be developed, as
humans are not hardwired to read and write (Winch, 2014). However, literacy via speech is.
Therefore, as humans, we have evolved this literacy skill (speech) to develop further modes
of literacy such as; reading, writing, drawings, etc. to strengthen our communication as a
society towards each other. Literacy is a tool that we often draw on to develop further areas
of literacy to be able to grow various modes of literacy. for example: my brother is profoundly
deaf, he relys completely on sign language to communicate. If I did not know how to spell, I
would not be able to sign to him, therefore we would not be able to communicate, as he can
not lip read. My foundation of literacy ( speech) would not communicate my information to
him, as it would for a hearing person.

6 days ago

ALISON DEBRA KUNGEL

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Literacy is definitely both a skill and a tool.
Literacy is a skill because it needs to be taught and learnt, it is not an ability that happens
naturally for us. Our brains need to be taught letters and the formation of those into words
and then sentences, unlike eating or breathing which happen instinctly. Children improve
on their skills in literacy into adult hood and beyond. If we were placed into a foreign
country our literacy skills would be useless and we would need to learn new ones all over.
Literacy is a tool we use everyday to communicate with each other, We use it as a tool to
entertain ourselves, sell/buy items, form contracts, a learning tool the list is endless.
So literacy is a skill we learn to enable us to use as a tool for communication in its many
forms.

5 days ago

JULINE GRACE MICHELL

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Literacy is both a skill and a tool. As a skill it is something that needs to be learned since it is
not naturally acquired. Some people become literate easily with minimum effort while others
have to work hard to gain the skill. At the beginning the skill needs to be practiced repeatedly
to gain mastery but eventually can become an automatic reaction. That's when you find
yourself reading a sign at the side of the road without conscious thought. Once it is learned
literacy becomes a valuable tool in communication, expression and understanding the
thoughts of others. The skill with which you use the tool determines how much you can gain
from literacy.

4 days ago

SHIO SAKAMOTO
RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
I think literacy is all about communication. From my past experience working
with children, I have learnt that teaching them literacy is about teaching them to
understand other people and express their own ideas.
For me literacy is more like a skill than a tool. The skill is to use verbal
communication and non-verbal communication (drawing, body language, written
language, sign language, multimodal communication) as tools. Being able to
communicate needs skill to handle these tools. As you obtain and improve your
skills you can refine the way you use your tools.

4 days ago

ELLEN SIV
RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
When we think of the term 'literacy' quite often it is thought of as 'reading and writing.'
However, I believe literacy can also include other aspects too such as numeracy and images
that we may come across such as signs. Literacy therefore contains many different aspects to
it and because of this some people may excel in one area more than another, eg, good with
spelling but not remebering numbers or figures. Shio has raised an interesting point by
stating that literacy is all about communication both verbally and non-verbally. This has
made me wonder perhaps whether the term 'illiterate' is a good one because people that can't
read or write may still have other areas of literacy such as verbal communication.
I agree with many of you on this particular thread that literacy is both a skill and a tool. We
use literacy as a tool to communicate in a variety of ways but we have to learn literacy as a
skill too. Reading, writing, numeracy and the ability to subconciously understand and make
sense of these things are important. Verbal communication is a tool which we learn right
from an early age but a skill also in the way we put it across to others, ie, speaking clearly and
picking up on social cues so that we can adapt our language to the appropriate audience. For
example, giving a speech, explaining something to a colleague, talking to a young child or
discussing something with friends are different situations where we may use a variety of
different words or sentence structures to communicate.

3 days ago

LEANNE MICHELLE USHER

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Hello Ellen,
As I typed my definition of literacy, I too considered the term "illiterate".
I now consider "illiteracy" to mean a lack of skills in a particular area. Therefore somebody
who can not read or write is therfore not fully literate - or illiterate.
According to Ardila et al. (2010) a lack of written language means that a person's ability to
fully engage with the wider world is limited becuase they are limited to what their senses tell
them. Therefore, with response to the original question - "Is literacy a Skill or a Tool" - it
would seem that an inability to function in any literacy area, results in a lack of literacy skills,
which would mean that the tools for interacting completely with the wider world are
ineffective.

Ardila, A., Bertolucci, P. H., Braga, L. W., Castro-Caldas, A., Judd, T., Kosmidis, M. H.,
Matute, E., Nitrini, R., Ostrosky-Solis, F., & Rosselli, M. (2010). Illiteracy: The
Neuropsychology of Cognition Without Reading. Archives of Clinical Neuropsychology,
25(8), 689-712. doi: 10.1093/arclin/acq079

1 day ago

AMBER LEE CABBAN

RE: What is literacy? A skill or a tool?
Hi Shio,
When you say literacy is about communication, do you mean all forms of communication?
Verbal, non-verbal, gestures? I also believe it is all of these things. From understanding our
road signs, to understanding how to write the days of the week, to communicating to our
teachers, families and peers with verbal, non-verbal and gestures.
It is also great to see that you believe literacy is more of a skill than a tool. As so far, majority
have said it is both. I believe it is both, but I also believe you have a valid point. It is just how
we analyse our lives to understand how literacy is a part of our lives.

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