As a favour for a Taiwanese friend of mine at uni, I have to keep a diary of everything I read and write for a week. My friend needs this for an assignment for her “Teaching & Learning Literacy” module. I take a subject of the same name, but we have different lecturers and our readings & assignments are different. I think it’s because she’s taking the Masters in TESOL while I’m doing the Graduate Diploma.
\nI have already done it for 3 days and it’s actually quite amazing the number of things I read and write on a daily basis.
\nThe more obvious things that I have recorded are my course readings, newspapers, e-mail, online newspapers, blogs and storybooks. The less obvious stuff which I didn’t think of recording until alerted by my friend, are things like food labels (when deciding what food to buy for lunch), the TV guide, SMS, ICQ messages, musical scores (when I play the piano), posters, advertisements etc.
\nMy written repertoire isn’t quite as abundant as my reading. So far, I have written e-mails, ICQ messages, my blog, posted comments on my friends’ blogs and written in my own diary.
\nIt is worthwhile to note just how rich our world is for those of us who are literate. Illiterate people lose out on much that the world has to offer. I think many of us who are literate take the ability to read and write for granted. My lecturer for this subject cited an example of this illiterate woman. This woman told my lecturer that she can’t shop for groceries at no-frills supermarkets because all the canned food there do not have pictures that show what’s inside them. Thus, she has to spend more on groceries because of her inability to read the can labels on the no-frills canned food products.
\nIt is interesting to note the ways how people get around their handicap huh? I use the word ‘handicap’ because I strongly feel that we are indeed a lot richer, and in many cases, more powerful when equipped with the ability to read and write.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
As a favour for a Taiwanese friend of mine at uni, I have to keep a diary of everything I read and write for a week. My friend needs this for an assignment for her “Teaching & Learning Literacy” module. … Continue reading