Q2B. Write short note on:
1. Literacy
Answers
Answer:
In international usage, literacy is defined as the ability to read and write at least a simple message in any language; illiteracy, conversely, refers to the lack or absence of this ability.
In other words, if a person possesses the dual skill of reading and writing, he is called literate.
Similarly, a literate society is the one, in which all or most of its adult members can read and write with some amount of understanding, in any language.
The proportion of literate persons in a population is termed as literacy level.
The invention of written language involved a gradual development from the use of pictures, known as pictography, to the use of an alphabet.
This development is said to have occurred in ancient Sumer around 3600 BC (Murphy, 1970:775).
People who lived prior to this development, however, cannot be called illiterate.