Do you agree or disagree? The ability to read and write in the present is more important than in the past. |
When I went to a bookstore, I could realize again that I live in a flooding of information. People often say that there are hundreds of books and reading materials newly published every day in the world. In this context, many people tend to cling to the traditional literacy skills to read and write as they did in the past. In the opposition to the idea, I strongly believe that literacy skills have to be appreciated differently from the ones in the past, and we need better skills to read and write to cope with our contemporary society. The rationale behind this is because the society is becoming more various and diverse and people are competing with certain information. Additionally, many English tests require higher literacy skills. More than anything else, an astronomical amount of information is poured every day, which expresses the rapidly and diversely changing world. The information is turned into various texts such as books, magazines and even visual forms on TV and the public can face with them every day. In this situation, however, it is very difficult to cover every text and determine if they are truthful or meaningful. Consequently, the selective reading and writing skills should be indispensible to have better reading and writing skills as well as to obtain more practical information. In contrast, when I was young, the routes which people were extremely monotonous and the information from the mass media were monitored and controlled by the government so special reading and writing skills were not required. As the chronological changes illustrates well, it is obviously different to understand the concept and practice of literacy skills. Additionally, nowadays, many people have retained high literacy skills these days. For example, people stay at school for their master or doctoral programs that provide them with decent literacy skills. In this context, they wish to win in the competition with others by utilizing their higher reading and writing skills. My cousin failed several times when he took the bar exam where he had to compose legal essays when others made pass on the tests. When we compare the past and the current about the elites having higher literacy skills, there may be a prominent difference in the number. Thus, it can be said that the ability to read and write are more emphasized in the current era. Finally, many current English tests encourage test takers to have more fluent reading and writing skills. They are covering a much wider range of topics and issues in the tests than in the past. The test takers should have more developed reading and writing skills to collect as much background knowledge as possible for the test and tackle all the questions given in the tests. For example, the test takers preparing for the TOEFL test are experiencing a variety of subjects and topics from human science and pure science. When it comes to preparation for the TOEFL exam, the particular literacy skills up to university level are required, which is more upgraded from those in the PBT and CBT. In this respect, the higher literacy skills give greater benefits to students preparing for various English tests than in the past. In sum, I strongly affirm that the capabilities to read and write in the current era be more appreciated than in the past. Although there are criticisms claiming that the fundamental rules of the literacy skills have not changed at all. However, the world is changing very fast and the trend of concepts and practices of reading and writing skills is also changing. Without accepting them, one should be trapped into the past thinking. |