text - an artifact that communicates, that has meaning. A text can be any written material: a poem, story, novel, memoir, essay newspaper article, advertisement, for example. A text can be pictorial, like a painting, illustration, photograph, map, or billboard. And a text can be aural, like a speech, interview, or piece of music. Many texts - movies, concerts, shopping malls - include multiple kinds (or modes) of texts.

literacy - competancy or knowledge in a particular area. Literacy includes the ability to access, analyze, evaluate and produce a variety of texts (see definition of text above).

Take some time to think about all the different kinds of texts you encounter in a given day. They may have been written, aural, visual, or a combination of all three. Make a list of as many of the texts as you can think of that you have encountered over the last 24 hours. Then write an essay (1-2 pages) in which you discuss the different kinds of literacy that you used to interpret, understand, and respond to these texts.