Gordon Wells and James Gee have both written about the concept of levels of literacy.

The performative literacy is simply the ability to "sound out" words in reading and to turn sentences that are typical of informal face-to-face conversation into writing Functional literacy is the ability to meet the reading and writing demands of an average day of an average person. Reading USA Today, filling out a job application, understanding directions for using a household gadget, and writing a note to leave on the kitchen table for your spouse are some examples of functional literacy. Informational literacy is the ability to read and absorb the kind of knowledge that is associated with the school textbooks and to write examinations and reports based on such knowledge Gee traces essay-text literacy (Wells calls it epistemic literacy) to 17th century England where literacy combined with political, economic, and cultural forces to produce an invention that was to be developed over the next hundred yearsthe essay. In an essay an assertion (a topic sentence) is stated, and examined. Assumptions upon which it is based are ferreted out and stated, inconsistent ideas are resolved, and redundancy is eliminated. New knowledge is often created in this process. The most highly developed physical, natural, and social sciences, government, politics, economics, literature, art, and language have all been developed using essay-text literacy. A further discussion of levels of literacy can be found in my Literacy with an Attitude: Educating working-class children in their own self-interest. Finn, P. J. (2009) Chapter 10 The last straw: Theres literacy and then theres literacy in Literacy with an Attitude: Educating Working-Class Children in Their Own Self Interest. Albany NY: SUNY Press. Gee, J. (1994) Orality and literacy: From The Savage Mind to Ways with Words in J. Maybin (ed.) Language and Literacy in Social Practice. Clevedon, England: The Open University. Wells, G. (1991) Apprenticeship in literacy, in C. E. Walsh (ed.), Language as Praxis: Culture, Language and Pedagogy Norwood, NJ: Ablex Publishing Corporation.