Orality and Literacy Poll

Should institutions of higher learning be focused on orality and literacy?

Reported.

If you have one, you don’t really need the other.

Edited out the link, I see.

Yes that is my fault I just read it wasn’t allowed.

I’m really not sure what the question is. What do you mean “focused on?” I suppose students should be aware of the concepts (although I have never heard the term “orality” before this thread, and I have 19 years of formal education).

Students should be able to listen, speak, write and read. I imagine your question is getting at something else, however.

Certainly college students often practice their orality.

And if you don’t have the one, you definitely need the other.

If “Orality is thought and verbal expression in societies where the technologies of literacy (especially writing and print) are unfamiliar to most of the population,” then no, it is not needed in the U.S.

Specific exceptions can be made, like sign-language for the deaf, but literacy is the key transmitter of knowledge in the modern industrialized democracies. We might get our news headlines from the radio, but we get our understanding of current issues from reading.

I know it’s a bit old, but this comment should not go by without recognition. Kudos, kid.