literacy examples

for a paper i'm re-writing, trying to provide more concrete examples of academic literacy and the way it presumes understanding of how to 'act' literate.  that theoretical discussion goes first, more new media examples will go after this section.  hopefully it sounds good.

Seeing literacy as tied to action as well as reading and writing is important. My mom tells a story of eating breakfast with an Uncle. He sat down at the restaurant, picked up the menu, appeared to peruse it. He then ordered the same meal as someone else at the table, which did not seem odd. It wasn’t until a few days later that she learned he was illiterate. Instead of drawing attention to his inability to read the menu to select a meal, he simply followed the traditional actions, then ordered the same meal as someone else. My mom had no idea he was illiterate.


This example doesn’t help with freshmen college students, who should be more literate. I have a friend who completed an online course recently. The course consisted of reading text books, notes provided by the professor, completing online quizzes, and then two major exams. The professor asked a lengthy (expecting a 5 page response) quiz question, then re-asked the same question on the exam. Every student who re-used their quiz answer received a zero. At no time during the semester were academic integrity issues discussed, the professor assumed students understood self-plagiarism, so felt it was fair to reuse a test question. In this case, students became victim of the problem with how academic integrity is approached in college classes today. Instead of devoting online space to discussing academic integrity, the professor assumes students are aware, and then punishes students by giving them zero’s when they exhibit the wrong behavior. There is no way for students to simply order what someone else is, and pretend to read a menu to pass the literacy test in academia. Instead, they must always present the correct identity when displaying their literacy surrounding academic integrity at the college level.