Literacy: the way you use language with writing, reading, or speaking. 

"The term literacy event gives us a way to think about how reading and writing enter our lives and shape our interactions with others” (Trimbur, 2017, p.29).

Examples

a. Childhood: Think about an early literacy memory, such as an early experience in the classroom, your home life, or community. Think about the relation between your learning/acquiring this literate understanding and your own identity today. Connect this memory with a key idea from a course reading.

b. Teens/College: Think about a literacy memory from high school or college. Make connections or draw distinctions between your childhood memory and this later literacy event. Connect this memory to another key idea from a course reading.

c. Future: Think about how science ­fiction tells stories about characters in the future. Imagine your own future, and the literacy tools and practices that will be most meaningful in your life then. You can imagine new tools that don’t exist yet, and how they change the kinds of literacy practices you engage in your everyday life, school, or profession.

You can also be literate in any action that uses one or all of writing, reading, or speaking. i.e., speech-writing, writing poetry, foreign language, music, photography, soccer (has its own language and communication style), fashion design (has its own jargon), etc.

Literacy offers opportunities for personal growth, for an improved quality of life, for an enhanced self-image and the ability to function in the world. Being literate gives individuals access to knowledge and to an increasingly information-rich world, and this in turn provides choices that can lead to self-fulfillment (Riley & Reedy, 2000, p. xii).