Post 9

As defined by Heath, literacy events are tools used when examining a particular community of modern soceitys' relationship between written and spoken language, along with the actual forms and functions of oral and literature traditions.  A literacy event can include individuals and activities that surround print.  In Trackton, Heath points out literacy events that focused mainly on the interaction between adults and children.  She explains that adults and children did not interact very much, and the schools lacked written material produced primarily for children.  Children, would however go to school knowing many types of information available in their environment.  Although parents were not aware they were tutoring their children in reading and writing, they were helping them by making them aware to literacy models during their everyday life.  Children came to school with a knowledge of things such as brand names and models of cars.  Lastly she says that these children differed greatly from mainstream children.  Among Trackton children, solitary reading without "oral explanation" was seen as unacceptable.
Sherman Alexie's narrative talks about how he learned to read with a superman comic book.  He did not have the vocabulary to understand what a "paragraph" was.  This frustrated him when he was trying to read because the words in his fathers books seemed foreign to him.  He is similar to the kids in Trackton because he used the pictures of the comic book to eventually understand what the words were trying to tell him.  He could not read the words to begin with, but used the symbols to unravel what the story was about.