Page 87 - Teaching English at Primary Level: From Theory into the Classroom

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Developing Literacy

Chapter Objectives
• Identifying different types of literacy
• Recognizing the relationship between L1 and FL literacy
• Comparing different approaches to literacy and knowing when to use
them
• Understanding the importance of working with different genres

What Is Literacy and Why Is It Important?
Thereareseveraldifferentinterpretationsanddefinitionsofliteracy.Itismost
commonly associated with the development of reading and writing skills.
However, literacy has recently come to be understood as a more complex
phenomenon, incorporating all four language skills and contributing to the
development of communicative competence. Several definitions of literacy
stem from this perspective. The definition formulated by UNESCO (2004, p.
12) looks beyond the ability to read and write a simple sentence by defining
literacy as ‘the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate,
compute and use printed and written materials associated with varying con-
text.’ On the other hand, Kern (2000, p. 3) sees literacy as ‘the ability to inter-
pret and critically evaluate a wide variety of written and spoken texts,’ thus
emphasising that literacy does not deal onlywith written texts, butalsowith
audio and video input. Ediger (2014) adds visualliteracy to the array of literacy
definitions, accentuating skills involved in interpreting and producing visual
content. This means that, for example, when you read a picture book, pupils
understand how pictures contribute to the overall meaning of the story. Leu
et al. (2007, p. 38) perhaps offer the most comprehensive definition, stating
that literacy is ‘the ability to find, identify, evaluate, use and communicate
using a variety of resources, including text, visual, audio and video.’ The abil-
ity to use and interpret multiple modes (i.e. linguistic, visual, aural, gestural
and spatial), multiple languages and multiple cultural contexts is called mul-
tiliteracy. This can also include new media and digital literacies. And since a
child’s different languages are often developed synchronously, the term bilit-
eracy has been coined, referring to the ability not only to read and write in
two languages, but also to be able to use these two languages for different
purposes (Fu & Matoush, 2015).
Literacy is the foundation of lifelong learning and according to UNESCO
(2014) a fundamental human right. Its development starts long before formal

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