As I’ve stated elsewhere in this website, literacy skills may be the most necessary, unnatural abilities that we ever acquire as human beings (we are not born with them; they are acquired through living and interacting).

Being able to learn from others (as much about them as from the rest of the world) and being able to teach others (about oneself, and what oneself has to offer) makes us interconnected and interdependent, in a two-way-street, give-and-take flow that is not only healthy, but growth providing, and positive in all of its symbiotic flexibility.

Curiosity and discovery are enhanced by being and becoming literate.

Being literate is like permanently possessing a “master key” that can unlock every educational and informational door or lock. It makes for true independence (self-reliance) in a very interdependent world, providing the capacity to make profound informed choices in life.

Here are two templates that outline the major aspects of the literacy acquisition process. The first is from Dr. Marilyn Jager Adams’ textbook, Beginning to Read. The second is an adaptation or augmentation of that first template (by me) to try to incorporate societal and environmental aspects that may have been taken for granted in the first one.