Choose any four of the five questions below and write a short response to each question. Your responses should be 2-4 paragraphs each. The minimum suggested paragraph content/arrangement is listed in each question, below.
| QUESTION ONE | 1a.) Why does Collins argue that a pluralistic definition of literacies is both more accurate and more defensible intellectually than the singular literacy (Paragraph One)? What examples does he provide to make the case that there are multiple literacies (Paragraph Two)? |
| QUESTION TWO | 1b.) How, according to Street, does an ideological model of literacy differ from an autonomous model of literacy (Paragraph One)? Why is an ideological model better in his view (Paragraph Two)? |
| QUESTION THREE | 2a.) For those scholars of literacy who think that the introduction of writing create(d) a great watershed in the history of culture and consciousness, what claims do they make about how literacy fundamentally altered the culture(s) and/or human cognition in which it arose (Paragraph One)? More specificially, 3b.) what claims have these scholars made about the efficacy or efficiency of this alphabet (Paragraph Two)? |
| QUESTION FOUR | 3.) What is an “alphabet” (Paragraph One)? 3a.) How does an alphabet differ from other representations of human language like syllabaries, logographic writing systems, or hieroglyphs (Paragraph Two)? |
| QUESTION FIVE | 4.) How (Paragraph One) and why (Paragraph Two) did writing emerge, according to Schmandt-Besserat? |
