work life
As I work in the retail industry, oral communication is the most important when working on the shop floor. We come into contact with many people with many backgrounds, which is where I am able to use my linguistic skills, although often we have customers who speak little English, and a language I do not speak, thus we have to result to non-verbal communication by using our hands, and showing images from our computer system to work out what they may want. Computer literacy is also used eight and a half hours a day, seven days a week. We have to use and understand how to use our computer software to tally the total cost of purchases, and we also use the same software for tallying quantities of stock during stock-take.
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University
Being a student at Charles Darwin University, as an external student. Everyday I have to use digital literacy as my main form of communication, and to navigate around the website. Visual literacy is also a popular form used as a learning tool for us, and we have to learn to understand what images are depicting. A few times a week, I also have to use my skills in multicultural literacy because I am also enrolled in the Diploma of Language for Indonesian. Here we use our aural skills most, and visual literacy is also important when learning a foreign language as it allows us to break down language barrier, and doesn't allow for mistranslation. The use of the calander is also important as a visual texts, so that I am able to plan ahead and do my assignments accordingly.
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Being social
Being social is something that is very big in my life, as it is for many other people. Today, in the modern day, we use Facebook as a major form of communication, along with text messages. Non-verbal communication has become a larger factor in teenage and young adult life. Although, without the ability to read and write, we wouldn't be able to communicate in this way. Another big way of socially communicating is the use of the Emoji - a visual image, usually of a face, depicting some kind of emotion which comes in handy when I don't want to use writing, or I am communicating with my pen-pals.
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Travel
When I travel, whether it be within South Australia, interstate, or internationally, literacy becomes very vital. The use of maps and GPS navigation to get me from point A to B. When overseas, one of the most common forms of communication is multicultural literacy. Being able to communicate in the country's national language, or as previously mentioned, non-verbal communication is helpful too with the use of hand signals, and perhaps showing a picture of where we may need to go, or what we may want to buy. When walking through the streets of Italy, it became some street signs didn't make sense as they were different to what I was use to seeing back in Australia. That is a prime example, that spoken and written literacy isn't the only way literacy changes from country to country, but visual forms too can change, and can cause confusion among foreigners.
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