Literacy

Literacy is the ability to read and write. In modern context, the word means reading and writing in a level adequate for written communication and generally a level that enables one to successfully function at certain levels of a society.

Literacy readiness

It is well-established that children become able to "blend sounds" at different ages. Thus phonetic systems often cannot be applied by very young children.

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Experts differ in their approach to this issue, some advocating a delayed, but more rapid acquisition of reading by means of phonetics, while others advocate early acquisition of a basic vocabulary through a "see and say" method.

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A secondary advantage of phonetics is that it improves readers' spelling and writing abilities. See and say methods are said to increase the word acquisition rate and reading speed of many students. The problem with phonetics is that it does not address the issue of comprehension.

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While young children often require several hundred hours of instruction, spread over much of a year, motivated adults using a good instructional method can often acquire basic literacy with forty or fewer hours of instruction. This is most likely related to the wealth of contextual knowledge adults bring with them allowing them to make connections that young children are not yet able to do.

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Steiner schools, that follow the teachings of Rudolf Steiner, do not introduce children to literacy until the age of 7, arguing that children are too young to learn to read before this age.

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"According to UNESCO statistics, almost a billion illiterate people remain as we approach(ed) the year 2000." http://www.literacyonline.org/explorer/overview.html

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