James Paul Gee talks about many learning principles that he uses and some of those principles connect to my literacy practices. One of those principles is giving deeper meaning to texts. He says to give deeper meaning to texts so that people that won’t be able to enact that particular social practice can better understand how to. And this connects to my literacy practices since when writing reports, essays or anything I would need to go deeper and explain what I’m writing so that the reader can understand what I’m saying. For example, when I was in the 12th grade for AP Environmental Science I had to write a detailed report and in order to do that I had to explain in a deeper manner so that everything I said would be understood since AP Environmental is not the easiest subject.

And in doing so people who have never heard about the subject or know nothing about it can understand. James Paul Gee’s principles can be used to better understand how you communicate and engage with discourse communities. For example for a religious discourse community the principle above used by James Paul is used to deeper explain that religious belief so that anyone can understand.  And many people believe the deeper you write about something the more you get to understand and that is shown in religious text, in most religions fully understanding a text can even mean “enlightenment”. There are many other learning principles that James used and all of them can connect to your literacy practices and your discourse community.

Over time, communication has developed and become more advanced. It’s important that when you’re reading and writing something you’re also understanding it and the different ways it can be communicated. Without communication, learning would be much harder since there would be no one to teach it and interpret what is meant to be taught. In James Paul Gee’s book “What Video Games Have To Teach Us About Learning And Literacy” the author talks about various learning principles that are built into video games and how they are beneficial. A literacy principle mentioned in the book is the semiotic learning principle. The semiotic principle is to learn and come to appreciate interrelations within and across multiple sign systems as a complex system is core to the learning experience. Sign systems are considered images, words, actions, symbols, artifacts, etc. 

This literary practice is a great way of teaching as it provides a combination of two communicates. Allowing more room for interpretation. Today there are many different examples of multimodal texts. For example, picture books for children, magazines, newspapers, advertisements, and textbooks (typically science textbooks). Picture books are a combination of both words and pictures that help deliver the message and overall meaning to children. Using the learning principle we can interpret that the cover suggests David is doing something he shouldn’t be doing.  

Textbooks are also a combination of words and pictures to help teach students through the comprehensiveness of both the pictures and writing. In science textbooks, there are typically diagrams that are meant to be understood along the reading. Understanding both the diagram and text is important to understand the topic or lesson. Regardless of the age difference in the audience between the two examples. The learning principle is still a great way to teach and learn from others.