Skilled? Literate? Fluent?

I have written about 21st Century Skills, Literacies and Fluency before. I listed a definition and differences between being literate and fluent.

Fluency is defined by Free Dictionary as:

Ability to express oneself readily and effortlessly

The term is usually used in a language context, but I like how it was used at the 21st Century Fluency Project:

The 21st Century Fluencies are not about technical prowess, they are critical thinking skills, and they are essential to living in this multimedia world. We call them fluencies for a reason. To be literate means to have knowledge or competence. To be fluent is something a little more, it is to demonstrate mastery and to do so unconsciously and smoothly.

Wes Fryer blogged about a presentation by Ian Jukes of the same title and described the difference between literacy and fluency:

- when you are literate, you still have to think about what you are going to do next
- fluencies are unconscious skills, you just know what to do next

I am continuing to be intrigued by the relationship between illiteracy, literacy and fluency.

• How do we define each stage? What are its characteristics and milestones?
• How does each stage look like at the end of 2010?
• How does one progress from one stage to another?
• What happens to the ones who do not move forward and stay illiterate?

As I am asking myself these questions I am reminded of the stages one goes through as you learn a foreign language. From being illiterate as you are not able to read nor write in the new language to becoming literate and (hopefully) fluent in speaking and interacting with other speakers of that same language. As I am exploring the analogy, I am asking myself:

• What does it mean to be fluent in a language?
• What is the difference between being able to read and write a language and being able to speak it? Are you fluent if you can speak but not read or write?
• Are you considered fluent if you know “a lot of vocabulary words”, but are not able to put them in the grammatically correct order?
• Are you fluent, if you can participate in a rehearsed conversation: “How are you?”, “Fine and you?”, “Good, how is your family?”, etc.
• Do you speak fluently, if you need to translate in your mind before you are able to form and utter a sentence?

Language Fluency

I was reminded of a story, I had heard at a TPRS workshop for Word Language teachers years ago. The story by Jack Engelhard titled “His French Comes our Greek” (.doc) describes well what fluency means. It is quite humorous too.

Speaking up and down versus sideways

An American, with High School French education, travels to French Canada and is surprised when native speakers do not understand his “conjugated” French. Although he knows the words and even the grammar rules of conjugating (speaking up and down) , he is incapable of making himself understood nor understand (communicating with) the natives (who speak sideways).

The analogy lies in the fact that learning or teaching tools, such as Skype, PowerPoint, Twitter, wikis, blogs or VoiceThread, will not make the user capable of knowing when it is appropriate to use each one of these tools nor will they be used unconsciously. When every step of using a tool or program becomes an effort (formatting, recording, dragging & dropping, editing, saving, inserting, posting, etc.) or when obstacles become insurmountable stumbling blocks then the objective of expressing oneself or communicating has not been achieved. The tools become the vocabulary words one needs to know in order to be able to start forming sentences. If you are at a “loss of words”or stutter, conversation stalls or becomes cumbersome. Standalone words are not considered a language. We just use them in order to create meaning.

Once you have mastered vocabulary and grammatical rules you might be able to read and write in the new language which gives you basic literacy…but are you able to fluently speak the language? Grammar rules tell you where to place a word inside a phrase and how to “format” it in the right tense, conjugate for the right person, but will you be able to speak without having to translate from your native language? Will it feel intuitive, smooth and fluid to express yourself, communicate and connect to others in more ways than just “using the same words”?

Language connects more than words and phrases

Should we not strive to learn 21st Century skills by using tools (vocabulary words) in order to become skilled? From possessing skills should we not push further in order to become (basic, information, media, network, globally) literate (stringing words together according to grammatical rules to form sentences and eventually to create meaning)?

As we immerse ourselves in the culture of others who communicate as we do (speak the same language) would we then not, by osmosis become fluent (speaking without translating or hesitations, smooth and unconscious of grammatical rules)? Being fluent means that the language will “just sound right” to your ears. It will just sound right to contact and skype in an expert to help your students learn about a specific subject. It will just feel right to use Google Docs (or whatever tool)  in order to collaborate intuitively. Fluency will come when you just know what to do next, when you don’t have to think about your next step or how you used to do it before.

I am interested in other analogies for 21st Century Fluency. It was natural for me to make the connection to speaking a language fluently. What connections are you making?

What does it Mean to be Literate?

What does it mean to be literate? I am asking myself this question more frequently lately.

Does being literate mean the same for this class?

School Class in 1912- Image licensed under Creative Commons by HistoricBeaverton

Image by Historic Beverton

than for this class?

Graduating Class 1986

or this class?

Class of 2022 ~ Image licensed under Creative Commons by Melanie Holtsman

image by holtsman

The official definition from the dictionary defines “to be literate” as:

able to read and write

There is change in the air though.

Being able to read and write seems to remain as the same definition. What is changing, at a rapid speed though, is the medium we are reading in and writing with.

No longer is reading a handwritten letter or note, a printed sheet of paper, a poster, a telephone book, a newspaper, a magazine or a book the only medium of communicating information. Since having access to the Internet has become mainstream over 10 years ago, being able to find and read a website has expanded the notion of what it means to be “able to read”. New forms of media are being developed and are allowing us to take information in , to be able to “read” in new shapes and forms. With the beginning of web 2.0, the shift from simply consuming (reading) information/content to having the ability of producing (writing) information and content has now expanded the notion of writing as well.

The options, that are available to us humans, to communicate in another form, other than speaking verbally to someone face to face, has exponentially grown in the last 5 years. Being able to expand the reach of our communication has opened up opportunities that have not existed before in history.

So, what does that mean for the initial question of this blog post:

What does it mean to be literate?

I have written often on this blog,  how I see the concept of “Literacy” changing & expanding. I am reminded of the Norwegian video clip about the Medieval Help Desk, when one monk explains to another how to use, this new way of reading text, called a book. The monk had tremendous difficulty in grasping the concept of the book, compared to the scrolls he was used to until then.

What if that monk would have thrown the towel in and refused to become comfortable with the new form of reading and writing? Would he still be considered literate in an era where information and learning is mostly transmitted in a form of a book? What about his job, as a scribe of the church, to write on the scrolls? Would it soon become irrelevant?

As I have been busy in the last few months with workshops about “Blogging with Students“, I am realizing that we can’t just assume that every teacher is web “literate”. Before we start talking about how blogging can support 21st Century skills for your students, we need to step back and make sure that the teachers are literate (enough) to be able to read and write through this medium called a blog!

We need to start out by establishing a common vocabulary base and understanding how printed material differs from digital content. I ask teachers to start reading, reading, reading other blogs before attempting to blog with their own students. Basics, such as knowing how to search for blogs, recognize blog structures, searching within blogs, and experiencing the “mechanics” of how a blog platform operates are important “pre-reading and pre-writing” skills.

Establishing common vocabulary

In addition to establishing common vocabulary, we also need to start a conversation about the importance to go beyond the traditional teaching of the traditional communication methods of reading and writing  (through books and with paper) that still dominates in most of our schools. Otherwise our teachers and students will be like the monk in the movie clip above…being left “illiterate”.

I would like to recommend the following book by Alan November titled Web Literacy for Educators. It is a wonderful resource in the process of  becoming web literate. It goes beyond the basics and talks about being able to “read” and “write” as a researcher, understanding the grammar and being able to decode the structure of the web towards pushing us to being critical thinkers in a an online digital world.

by Alan November

Below you will find my notes as I was reading Alan’s book, taken with iThoughsHD Mindmapping app.

Click to see larger version

It’s a Book! Really?

I received this link to the following book trailer from the librarian at the school I work at.It was very timely, since we just had a discussion about “real books”,  e-books and the advantages/disadvantages of each.

I am very interested in the topic, have written about it before here and here and am monitoring my own reading habits along the journey.

The following video clip illustrates and highlights nicely

• the gap of digital and “real book” readers
• some of the differences
• new vocabulary associated with digital readers
• on one level reading is reading. Reading a book can take you away for hours as can reading and “surfing” a digital book.

As you are watching the short video clip, what are your reactions? Where do you stand in the journey from paper books to digital books? Are you holding on to the “real thing” with your tactile and olfactory senses? Are you a hybrid and enjoy reading both? Have you completely abandoned the physical book and are reading purely online, on your iPhone, iPad, Kindle or Nook?