Answer:Literacy is most commonly defined as the ability to read and write.
But it’s not as simple as it sounds. Reading and writing abilities vary across different cultures and contexts, and these too are constantly shifting.
Nowadays, ‘reading’ encompasses complex visual and digital media as well as printed material. An elderly person who can read the newspaper might struggle to get information from Google.
Similarly, different cultures will have different perceptions of literacy. The writing traditions of the English language make reading comprehension an essential part of literacy, but this might not be as important in cultures or groups that rarely read printed material.
Add to this the many people who move between cultures and languages and you have a world where ‘literacy’ is almost entirely relative.
These complex factors make it difficult to create a stable definition of literacy. But if asked ‘what is literacy’, one could use UNESCO’s more complete definition:
Literacy is the ability to identify, understand, interpret, create, communicate and compute, using printed and written materials associated with varying contexts.
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