Thursday, June 30, 2011

Functional Literacy

Reference: Mkandaŵile Sitwe Benson (2010) Branches and Levels of Literacy Analysis – Extracted from the Paper presented at the Linguistics Association of Southern African Universities (LASU) in Zambia, hosted by the University of Zambia.

Functional Literacy is a branch or level of literacy analysis that prepares an individual to engage in all those activities available in his or her group and community and also for enabling him or her to continue to use reading, writing and calculation for his or her own and the community's development. Functional literacy as noted by different scholars is used for different activities in the society. Gray (1956:21) notes: Functional literacy is used for the training of adults to ‘meet independently the reading and writing demands placed on them’. Currently, the phrase describes those approaches to literacy which stresses the acquisition of appropriate verbal, cognitive, and computational skills to accomplish practical ends in culturally specific settings.

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