There are many different ways and many different areas where people can become literate. Being literate can translate into being proficient. Once one is proficient at communicating through a certain media, he is said to be literate in that area. There can also be many different technologies that make these literacies possible. Three areas I am literate are reading and writing, video games, and wrestling. To be literate in reading and writing means to be able to process the information given to you quickly and communicate that to a third party effectively and efficiently via both writing and speech. How I become literate in reading and writing was through the process of school. Early on you start with the basics: learning the alphabet, how letters combine to form sounds, stringing those sounds into meaningful words, and stringing the words into meaningful sentences, and so on. How I first became literate in reading was by finding a series that I loved. Finding the series allowed me to enjoy reading and increased my reading speed and comprehension to a level that I would consider myself literate. When I found that book series, The Time Warp Trio, no one could stop my reading. I would stay up all night just so I could figure out what happened to the characters I had grown so close to. From then on, I was a ‘reader’. When I found a book or a series I liked, I would lie in my bed and read until I couldn’t keep my eyes open from sheer sleep exhaustion. Still today, I have series and authors that I will continue to read until one of us dies. If it hadn’t been for The Time Warp Trio, I many not have ever discovered my love for reading. Reading also increased my literacy in writing. Reading so many different viewpoints, different word combinations, new words I had never seen before, and on many different topic scopes have given me the ability to be a literate writer. By being a literate writer, I am referring to my increased ability to relay my ideas in an eloquent and efficient manner. So, in a way, reading and writing go hand-in-hand; without one, I would not be literate in the other.
The technologies involved in reading and writing advanced in a similar way: staring with the pencil and paper and slowing evolving into the use of computers for all your reading and writing needs. This advancement in technologies has made the availability of reading widely available and an increase in the ease and speed of writing. Research articles are now easy to come by and you can find thousands of articles with just the simple stroke of a few keys on the computer. When I was researching articles for my biology term paper, it was amazing how simple and easy it was to find. All I had to do was access Pubmed.com on the internet, search localization of p53, and hundreds of articles appeared on that specific topic. Writing has also become increasingly simple with the aid of technology. This entire paper was made with the use of technology. If I did not have a computer, a keyboard and the literacy to use both, it would have taken me significantly longer to write and relay my ideas.
While reading and writing transitioned to the digital world, video games have always been fixated in the digital world. To be considered literate in video games, one would need to be able to transition between systems and games and still be considered proficient. One who is literate in video games is often called a ‘gamer’. How I became literate in video games was a process that is ever expanding and needs updating or else I run the risk of become illiterate. I started with a Nintendo 64 system and am now able to use efficiently all Xbox consoles, all Playstation consoles, computers, the Wii console, handheld systems, and many others. The only way to be become literate is through hours of practice with each console and varying games. This allows you the ability to transition between anything and still be proficient since most games are based on the same general concepts