Gee's Literacy

Gee breaks down the definition literacy into parts and then sums up all back together. He stresses discourse which is a socially accepted use of language in a particular setting. He talks about how the discourse changes depending on where you are, who you are with, and what you are doing. He then talks about acquiring and learning. He says acquiring is practicing and developing subconsciously through repetition and modeling. He says learning is analyzing breaking down into simpler context until understood. He talks about how both have their uses but school can be one sided as it tends to favor the learning portion. He talks about the traditional definition of literacy as reading and interpreting. He then concludes by saying dominant literacy is a mastery of a language in relation to the dominant discourse, and secondary literacy is using dominant literacy as a base to learn,acquire by breaking down secondary discourses.

This did not change my understanding much, It did provide a few new definitions but overall kept the same idea. In my own literacy story, developing the new level of literacy took both acquisition and learning. I used my primary language to bring the difficult terms to terms i could understand and practice.