Dana Gioia creates a passage encouraging, influencing, and informing the reader of the recent literacy rate decline. He begins by verbalizing the problem, then moving to how it connects to business, then finally the decline affecting politics. Gioia uses evidence such as facts and quotes to support this idea and drive the thoughts into the reader’s head. These strategies, build his argument and assists with persuading the reader on how this decline will have a negative effect on society.
In the passage the author Dana Gioia argues and states that the literacy rate here in the United States is dropping very fast. The author claims that “the interest young Americans showed in the arts and especially literature actually diminished. Gioia is stating that many young Americans throughout the United States are not reading and that is making the literacy rate to decrease. Making our literature status go down. Gioia gives us examples of this by stating some facts and looking back at a survey.
In between the middle of his essay, another tool that he utilizes extensively is repetition. In paragraph 16 through 25, shows the clearest form of repetition in which he uses in his essay. In each of these paragraphs either the first word or the first sentences contains the word “illiterate.” His repetition of the word “illiteracy” is used to create almost like it is a chronic disability. That these people are no longer in control of their life or actions and are helpless to change their path.
Literacy enriches our lives in an outstanding manner. From a young age, we are eager to sit by our parent’s side and listen to bedtime stories. As our love for reading and writing grows, our wealth and thirst for knowledge does as well. The ability to entertain and enlighten our world through literacy is exponential.
In the story, “A Place Where the Sea Remembers” by Sandra Benitez, every character faces major difficulties of some sort. From Marta being raped to Don Justo’s daughter dying, there are twists and turns around every corner. A topic the author brushes upon is education and where it lies in society. By getting an education, anyone can acquire more wealth and can be useful in day to day life. “A boy’s education is very important” (Benitez 73).
These articles, magazines or newspapers do not help the reader become wealthier, politically known, or a better person. The author believes that reading irrelevantly
Her strength and humility allowed her to overcome the difficulties associated between registering her daughter for school and being illiterate. After asking another for help multiple times at registration she finally, exasperatedly, explains “I can’t read it. I don’t know how to read or write, and I’m askin you to help me” (Jones 351). Following this, she looks at her daughter and then looks away. This embarrassed look is new to the daughter who is unaccustomed to her mother’s shame.
Then, Brandt explains that because ordinary citizens were obligated to be within economies as literacy emergences, their skills to write and read have strongly developed. In addition, she claims that literacy
Over time Americans have become less literate due to the experiences they have endured as well as the technology acquired through time. Technology has affected the American culture by aiding research, health care and even education. It may therefore come as no surprise that some people may find various technological advancements as negative since they require less human effort and thinking. Some may even argue that inventions such as the cell phone or even the internet have all aided in child obesity, lower grades, and lack of knowledge when it comes to learning the “old fashioned way”. When it comes down to literacy, it depends on which of the various definitions of literacy is used.
Neil Postman and Wendell Berry state that twentieth-century Americans are losing literacy and the ability to read and write, which weakens our ability to think for ourselves. Reading, writing, and thinking are connected through everyday life and as English speakers, it is our responsibility to preserve and correctly exercise the truth and validity of the English language. With the dependency on technology, relaxed educational standards, and even potential government control, we become stripped of our independence of thinking. With no free will to think, we are vulnerable to dominance and corruption, inability to argue complexly, oversimplification, and conformity. Neil Postman sets the scene of his essay, The Typographic Mind, by opening with an explanation of the famous Abraham Lincoln and Stephen Douglas debate.
Language is the basic verbal expression of culture. Language is so abstract, yet people manage to say a lot with mere words. The structure of language helps determine how one is likely to view the world and it determines how people think. An illiterate does not have the ability to construct abstract thoughts until it has had some academic experience. The way in which they go about learning wholly depends on their culture.
Communication is one of the most important aspects of human life. Without communication, we would be a primitive society of wild animals, unable to cooperate and achieve great feats, such as building the Pyramids, landing on the Moon, or organizing a democracy. All people rely on communication to express ideas that motivate positive societal and political change. Yet not everybody communicates in the same way. There are several thousand languages that people speak; there are several hundred thousand people around the world that suffer from disabilities such and blindness or deafness that require special means of communications such as braille or sign language.
I’ve always believed that my love for literacy was helped and inspired from my grandfather. From a young age I’ve always loved and looked up to him deeply. My grandpa Joe never had the opportunity to go to college or even high school. His ambitious personality for learning is definitely a part of me and he has always encouraged me through school. My grandpa Joe is the third oldest child of fifteen children.
Encyclopedia Britannica analyses the concepts of Canadian Literature thus: … the cultural history of Canada has been conditioned by the country’s dual origin resulting in a certain tension between French and English components, and by a sensitivity in regard to the position Canada occupies in the company of France, Great Britain, and the United States. The psychological problem is more acute in French, Canada, however, and a strong urge to hold to the past long remained a prominent feature of the French- Canadian outlook, in the second half of the twentieth century however, a burst of vitality has brought a sudden orientation toward the feature. All these considerations are reflected in the thought and literature of French Canada… Historically
Concerning part of the background, few people know that we have a so-called “functional” illiteracy problem. Of the relatively few who do know, almost no one knows the massive extent of that problem, or the nature of the problem, itself. It would be reasonable to conclude that “functional” illiteracy must mean that there are literate people who can read fluently but who are, because of some defect, incapable of understanding what they are reading. Such a condition does, of course, exist but more commonly with computer software than with human beings.
