homework#3+

James Paul Gee's opinion about literacy:

In this passage, the author intend to define what is "literacy". But first of all, he introduces a term "discourse" which means "a socially accepted association among ways of using language, of thinking, and of acting that can be used to identify oneself as a member of a socially meaningful group or social network"(p 258) . Then, he emphasizes 5 important features of discourse, which alludes to the fact that discourse is ideological, resists to internal criticism and scrutiny, relates to other standpoints even the opposite ones, requires value and sense and could be affected by social power and historical features. 

Second, the author makes a distinction between acquisition and learning. He demonstrates that acquisition is a subconscious process with trials and errors which always happens in natural settings when people learn first language; while learning is a conscious process of studying gained by teaching and officially training and proportional to some degree of meta-knowledge about the matter.(p 259)

Finally, he discusses about the primary discourse,which developed in the very beginning at home in oral, and the secondary discourse, which gained during socialization, totally beyond the primary discourse and much more focus on the uses of language. Therefore, he asserts that literacy is mastered by acquisition, accelerated by learning and controlled by secondary discourse. Hence, he writes about some suggestions to future language training and directions of researches.