| Title of Article + Proper MLA Citation for Works Cited page | What is Literacy? Author: James Paul Gee, pgs. 18-23 |
| Summarize the article — include your reaction, thoughts, anything to help you remember its claims. 100 to 150 words | This article is about the different kinds of discourses in literacy and how no one is alike. He uses the term “discourse” to represent literacy and he even goes further to say how the term discourse has many different definitions, however the way he is using it is in relation to language and social networks. He talks about how discourses are as he would say “ideological” and how they are almost like cliques. If you dont speak or think the way everyone else in the discourse does, you are not in it. He also discusses primary and secondary uses of language. Primary is almost what we were born knowing and grew up in and secondary is an extension to what we already know. I really enjoyed this article because I think it put literacy into a better perspective for me. It showed all the little things that go into language and writing and I really liked the primary and secondary uses of language because I thought the explanation of that was very accurate. |
| Define new terms and concepts by quoting or paraphrasing the original author. | Literacy discourse: a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or “social network”
Acquisition: a process of acquiring something subconsciously by exposure to models and a process of trial and error… |
| How does this reading connect to other articles from class and/or your own research?
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I think this article connects to the last one I read about language and writing and sponsorship. I think it kind of shows that there can be a stigma surrounding writing and language and that it has to be a certain way or it’s wrong, however that is not true. There are so many different styles or writing, and it especially differs when you have people from different backgrounds. |
| Based on the reading, craft one question to act as a springboard for class discussion. | I think my question would be, would primary or secondary use of language be considered more important than the other. I know primary is the foundation of everything, however, without secondary there would be no learning or build on to what you already know. |