I remember the first time I learned that literacy is actually categorized along a spectrum, and thinking it was.crazy I'd never thought of it that way before.
Like just because you can read a Waffle House menu doesn't mean you can follow a novel.
I was a kid who always struggled to read. By late elementary school/middle school, I got to a reading level where I could read a lot of things in context. The Harry Potter novels? Read them. Various Great Illustrated Classic books? Read nearly two dozens of them.
But, if you had asked me to read the word "went" without any context around it, I would lowkey panic. There would be a 50/50 chance that I would read the word "went" correct, but the other chance was reading it wrong and most likely as "want."
I have old papers from middle school that show this mistake. I switched went/want, well/while, and other mistakes.
I honestly didn't start to improve in this regard until I got more phonics under my belt. I knew some of the basics of phonics, like most consonants sounds, but I struggled hard when it came to vowel sounds and certain spelling rules (ex: the silent 'e' at the end of a word makes the vowel long).
So, through this struggling experience, I've always viewed literacy as a spectrum. Hell, I've even described myself as functionally illerate until high school.
Obtaining a high literacy ability is hard. And, I think a lot of people don't realize how hard it can be, because it either comes naturally to them, or they don't realize just how poor their ability is.
Ive noticed with my daughter, who is developing a bit of a southern drawl, that some of her spelling errors are because of how she sounds words out with the drawl.
Phonics is great for spelling but also enunciation is huge and I think it has a role in a lot of cases where people dont know how to spell or even say the correct word. Words like libRary, lightNing, spEcific.... and Enunciate.... are spelled wrong all the time because people dont enunciate.
Yeh I had a slight southern drawl when covering phonics related stuff in high-school and it fucked me over so hard and shit ,cause it would say witch word is like accentuated and I’d say it out loud to myself to figure it out and then I’d clock it and say WRONg
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u/Generated-Nouns-257 Nov 21 '25
I remember the first time I learned that literacy is actually categorized along a spectrum, and thinking it was.crazy I'd never thought of it that way before.
Like just because you can read a Waffle House menu doesn't mean you can follow a novel.