Illiterates are individuals who cannot read or write. A primary illiterate has never seen a word. To them, a written word is nothing more than meaningless scribbles. Words do not exist as words, but as pieces of a picture, of events and situations they are seeing and experiencing. In fact, for oral communicators, words, as such, have no exact dictionary type meaning.
Illiterates are oral communicators.
The story is their dominant communication style. A functional illiterate is one who has begun to read and write within a school setting, but who did not progress beyond eight grades and did not continue to read and write regularly after dropping out of school. Within two years of dropping out of school, these individuals often can read simple writings but no longer receive, recall, or reproduce concepts, ideas, precepts, and principles through literate means. Values, for them, are not received through literate means. Even though this type of individual is classified in every country of the world as a literate, he or she learns primarily by means of narrative presentations.