Critical Literacy : Reading Unit 3

For reading 3.1, it is an article about a disable girl that wanted to go to school but was later on rejected because of the disabilities. When I was to give the 10 elements for this article, I did have some difficulties. It is not because of the article, but time. Although we were given about one hour, I think that in critical literacy, when we want to comment on one’s article, we need to have time to think about how to structure the 10 elements. Despite all, I still manage to submit the article. I can say that the reading part for 3.1 was quite easy from our previous reading. Here, the article is stated clearly and it is easy to understand.

For reading 3.3 my classmates presented on “Critical literacy: a linguistic perspective”. This topic tells about the development of the linguistic tools readers need to enable them to recognize certain global or key elements of the text. Basically, from my own understanding this topic is discussing about using different of more standardize words to describe things. To be more clear, high lexis words. Other than that, I did have some question regarding what was actually trying to be present by my classmates. Although the whole reading topic was difficult to understand at first, they manage to explain it very clearly using examples of word and asking question so that all of the classmates understand what they was tying to present. I did ask a question about how effectively the words will influence the people who are reading it. Later, our Madam explains that it depends on the whole text itself. By that, readers will feel convince and more interested if the text that they are reading are using standardize and powerful word. They will think that the article is written by a professional or a person with experience.

For reading 3.4 discusses about “Speech and speakers: the formation of individuals in discourse and genre”. This is the most interesting reading as it tells about ideal readers and stereotype. In this whole reading it tells about how writer persuade their readers to be ideal readers. From my understanding, an ideal reader is the person who believes in what the writer writes. To be clearer, example: a person reading the horoscope as his/her daily routine. Usually, this ideal reader believes that their life revolves on the writer article. They believe it because their life is exactly the same as what the writer has written. Once they think that it is true, they would like to continue to read the article. Personally, I can say that I’m an ideal reader. I do sometimes believe what had the writer wrote. Sometimes I could say that it is a consequence. Even some researchers in Malaysia like Dato’ Fadzillah Khamsah has done some research about this issue. But it depends on the individual itself whether to believe it or not.