Literacy Case Study
Literature serves as a repository of human experience. The possibility of such is evident in the personal and political character evident in the creation of a literary work. Such a character is present in the process of creating a literary work. The literary work may be depicted as an artist’s compilation of thoughts and ideas formulated into a coherent whole. The process of formulating such is spearheaded by the artist’s acquisition of language through the socialization process.
Socialization occurs at the formal and informal level. The formal level is generally characterized by the acquisition of the syntactical and semantical rules of a language. Such a process occurs during a child’s education. The acquisition of language, as well as the development of the interest for a particular language may occur during the early part of a child’s socialization process with the family.
The family serves as the main element for a child’s acquisition of interest for particular styles or one may even state for particular literary genres. Hence, a child who has been introduced at an early age to fairly tales may have a taste for the fantastic and the supernatural. At the same time, a child introduced to personal narratives may develop an interest for personal narrations.
In lieu of this, what follows are the result of literacy case study conducted with a peer/classmate. The study opts to present an analysis of a peer’s literacy level though the analysis of his/her reading and writing skills. Such an analysis involves the assessment of the individual’s personal views to the reading and writing process and the relation of these views to the individual’s assessment of his literacy level.
Method
The methodology employed for this case study involves a one on one interview with a particular peer/classmate. The methodology used enables the interviewer to assess the literacy level of the interviewee in terms of conversational language. Such an assessment enables the interviewer to consider the interviewee’s communication skills, which mirrors the interviewee’s self-perceived competency of his literacy level.
Evaluation
This case study was conducted with a classmate [Ali]. Several questions were posed which considered Ali’s socialization experience in terms of language acquisition. The study shows that an individual’s literacy level increasingly develops throughout the life p because of the continuous stimulation of various stimuli that necessitates the individual’s continuous use of his reading and writing skills. In Ali’s case, this is evident, as he perceives literature as the focal point, which enabled him to develop an interest for the other subjects during his junior year. In relation to this, his later years of development [specifically that which is situated within the University] mirrors his literacy development. Ali’s development has shifted towards a highly personal consideration of the role of these aforementioned skills in the development of his own voice and hence his own identity.
Summary and Recommendations
Based upon the interview, I perceive Ali’s utilization of the personal value that literature serves for the individual. Personal here ought to be understood as private. Literature for Ali thereby serves as an ensemble of various accounts that serve to reject the discursive unity that constructs subjectivity as simultaneously individualized and totalized since literature as Ali perceives it or utilizes it in his life takes the form or style of several generic discourses. The acts correlated with literature [reading and writing] thereby stand for Ali as acts that enable the discovery of the self through the daily recording of events that allows the creation of his singular account of the transactions and movements of his life.
As I reckon, Ali’s interest lies in the creation of self-narratives in the form of daily records of his daily transactions. Such an act may be seen as an exercise of selfhood wherein Ali portrays his perception of his intimate self while recognizing that it is his mere perception of his self. Ali thereby allows the subversion of the act of turning “real lives into writing” as he allows the existence of conflicts and confusions in the formation of his identity [as depicted in his writings].
Ali himself notes that literature enables him to perceive the mistakes the he continuously commits in the act of delving within and understanding a literary work. Literature, in this sense, presents Ali with the form in which he may be able to continuously exercise the act of self-formation and hence self-creation.
The possibility of such is evident if one considers that Ali takes the act of understanding a literary work as an internal act, which necessitates the reader’s complete understanding of the content of literary work. Such an understanding, although enabled and nurtured within a group through the introduction of various diverse views is only possible when one isolates one’s self in order to reassess one’s thoughts in connection to the simultaneous views presented within a group. To understand a literary work thereby serves as a process of reconsidering the self in order to attain a form of consensus within one’s self that enables the self’s creation and hence specification of its view.
Literature, for Ali, thereby serves as a medium for self discovery and self creation wherein the acts of both reading and writing serve as the facilitators for the initial creation and finally in the end Ali’s own medium for the specification and exposition of his self as represented through his own creative work.
