What is the United Nations Decade for Literacy, and when did it begin? The UN Decade for Literacy was officially launched in the early part of the year 2003 and will continue until 2012.  The purpose of the Decade is to bring world attention -  and remedies -  to the plight of the world's one in five illiterate adults. 

This unit provides information on efforts to increase literacy rates of the world's people and also explores the question, What are the degrees of "literacy" in a given language?   While literacy can be viewed as  familiarity with the standard dialect of a language,  at a more advanced level, it can also be viewed as  appreciation of the varieties of dialects in a given language, the unique accents, grammatical forms and expressions of each. The unit reading is a springboard that leads to comprehension questions, vocabulary exercises, practice with structures using "wish" and "hope", listening comprehension and writing practice on the skill of expressing wishes and hopes for the future.  At the same time, all exercises provide information about ways the United Nations promotes literacy throughout the world.


click for a speech on the importance of multilingualism—by former UN teacher, Gilberte Montanari:  
                            click for speech in English       click for speech in French