College Freshman Living in the 21st Century Research

Researchers such as Deborah Brandt and Shirley Brice Heath have looked a literacy sponsors and literacy events. Brandt defines a literacy sponsor as any agent who enables, supports, teaches, models, as well as recruits, regulates, suppresses, or withholds literacy. Heath defines a literacy event as any occasion in which a piece of writing is integral to the nature of participants’ interactions and their interpretive processes.
Brandt interviewed people born between 1900 and 1980. Heath, on the other hand, interviewed and observed working-class African Americans who work in a textile mill in Trackton, North Carolina. However, neither of these people has looked at freshman college students living in the twenty-first century.
In an interview, I gathered information from a freshman at the University of Central Florida. Sean Skow is from Saint Cloud, Minnesota. He is nineteen years old. His major is currently undeclared, but he is leaning towards the social sciences, except not education.
As Sean grew up, his parents read him a lot of picture books. They read him a lot of different books, but he did not really have a favorite. From this, his parents gained the satisfaction of knowing they were helping their son become literate. Sean, on the other hand, gained the start of his journey to become literate.
While he grew up, his mother was a first grade teacher. Before he started kindergarten, he knew all of the first set of one hundred site words for first grade. Since his mother was a teacher, he had the advantage of having a head start. This event helped jump start his journey to become literate.
School was another way he became literate. In school, he practiced reading. He would get frustrated when the class would go through the alphabet and make the sounds of each letter. His teacher would say, “When you say the letter ‘m,’ you have to buzz your lips.” Because he did not feel this buzzing, he disliked the letter “m” for a while. Today, though, he has come to like the letter.
His earliest memory of learning to write involves his mother. He would try to imitate her cursive. Though it was just scribble, it would eventually lead to him learn to write him. When he first learned to write his name, he would write his “e” backwards. Eventually, he got it right.
Technology did not really play a role in Sean’s becoming literate. He only played typing games to learn how to type, but besides that he mostly just read books and wrote to practice.
In comparing Sean to the Trackton children, I found lots of differences. Sean’s mother was a first grade teacher, while the children of Trackton had parents working in the textile mill. He had the advantage of having someone to help him unlike the children in Trackton. Their parents were not really involved in children’s being literate. Also Sean’s parents read him lots of pictures books, while the Trackton children read or hear a lot of Bible literature.
During the interview, Sean made a really good point about why he learned to read. He said, “It was never really a matter of wanting to learn. It was more a matter of it being expected.” This answer prompted a discuss about if he would have learned had that not been expected. His answer was surprising. He said that he was not sure, which really causes me to wonder about that.
From the interview, many new topic questions have been formulated. Does having a parent as a teacher give a child an advantage in becoming literate over a child who does not? If society did not expect children to become literate, would they? If not, why? If yes, why? What role does technology play in a child becoming literate? All of these topics can be answered by interview people who fall into each of the topics. Besides interviews, research needs to be done to compare results with new findings.