Literacy in the United States

Academic literacy among college students in the United States does not stand at an adequate level. Literacy can be simply described as the ability to read and write, yet and according to the article, “Complicating College Readiness: The Hidden Literacies of Academia” by professors Concetta Williams and Sonya Armstrong, it lacks the “multiple and extremely complex ways literacy is demonstrated or enacted.” Furthermore, according to Ogbu’s definition, it is “the ability to read and write and compute in the form taught and expected in formal education” (p.73).  Yet, it is this piece of information that first-year college students, specifically, lack during their transition into college/post-secondary education. There is the general assumption that because students now find themselves in a highly academic environment, they are able two perform accordingly. According to research found in Pascarella and Terenzini, (2005), the first two years of college is a crucial time in which a student’s academic identity is formed, yet it is at this time in which a series of transitions also takes place. Adjusting from context to context so quickly, they have little time to make sense of their performance, there is little notice on how the skills they are learning apply to their specific/discipline courses. Therefore, students in college are not gaining the adequate instruction to achieve academic literacy and recognize/ or have the ability to move from a specific context to another.