Literacy And Bilingual Analysis

Traditionally, literacy has been narrowed as individuals’ ability to read and write. However, this term encompasses handling language socially and culturally. Different settings, domains, venues, and channel of communication among other elements are necessary to interpret what is read and to write what is intended to communicate. Hernandez-Zamora (2008) claims literacy is a difficult term to be defined due to it refers to different issues simultaneously. For instance, literacy has been used to define the individuals’ ability to read and write, to describe social and cultural practices which emerge from a symbolic technology to represent words and ideas through graphic signs, or the process of becoming literate through formal or informal instruction.

They introduce a wider term, ‘print literacy’. It concerns coding and encoding symbol systems for determined social processes in different sociocultural contexts. People have a specific goal to communicate something every time they write, and to be informed when they read as well. Thus, print literacy involves both the ability to read printed material thoughtfully for pleasure or knowledge and the ability to write creatively for a wide variety of purposes. This evolving world we live nowadays has provoked people have contact with more than one language. Immigration, business traveling, education and employment abroad are some of the causes of bilingualism. It might be surprising that more than half of people in the world are bilingual. Purist definitions determine being bilingual as having equal fluency and proficiency in two languages. Nonetheless, being bilingual has recently been defined as being able to carry on at least casual conversations on everyday topics in second

Bilingualism does not only refer to knowing phonological, lexical and syntactical aspects of language. Instead, it also demands being aware of sociolinguistic aspects of language use such as regional and social dialect. Hence, being bilingual is a matter of being communicatively able in two or more languages, being comfortable using one or the other and being able to code switch properly, according to the interlocutor and context of communication. Causes of bilingualism might also lead biliteracy. Nowadays, many people are raised or immersed in societies which provide a language different from their home language. Elaine (2015) distinguishes bilingual from biliterate individuals by describing bilingual individuals as proficient at communicating in terms of oracy skills (speaking and listening), and biliterate individuals as advanced bilinguals who are proficient at communicating in two languages in terms of literacy skills, that is, reading and writing. Then, a biliterate individual is proficient at speaking, listening, reading and writing two