[AAACE-NLA] New Interest in FCE: Part 2; other threads

[AndresMuro@aol.com]

Andrea, Tom, George, et al.

When someone goes to Washington, DC for the first time and decides to take 
the subway, the person has what I would call a unique literacy experience. 
Unless the person has prior experience using a fare card, subway map, etc. The 
person will ask for help, regardless of his or her education. I know that there 
are a few of us that will navigate the literate subway world w/o problems. 
However, for most of us, we will need some help understanding the instructions to 
purchase a fare card, etc. I call this a literacy behavior. A person may have 
low literacy skills according to the NALS, or TABE, etc. However, such a person 
might have the literacy behavior that allows them to purchase the fare card. 

My question is: Is acquiring this particular literacy behavior a literacy 
outcome that we hope for our students to acquire? If so, how do we measure this? 
I can only measure this by knowing that some one is able to do it. 

I know that acquiring this literacy behavior may not be very important, 
since, most can ultimately acquire it in a short period with the help of others. 
However, there are multiple literacy behaviors that exist in different 
communities that people may participate in. I consider navigating the health care 
system, or having the ability to seek protection from domestic violence as very 
important ones. Also, I consider understanding policy, or participating somehow 
in a civic process as literacy behaviors. However, I ain't sure of how to 
measure this.

Andres  
-------------- next part --------------
An HTML attachment was scrubbed...
URL: http://lists.literacytent.org/pipermail/aaace-nla/attachments/20031029/eaf2e23f/attachment.htm