A good understanding of a written or oral discourse requires a good understanding of literacy as well. Good literacy requires habituation not only to master reading and writing skills, but also comprehensive understanding of all aspects ranging from text, contexts, and contexts that are rapidly developing in society. Understanding must be oriented to the development of linguistic aspects that always relate to social or situation-linked elements including speakers, place, time, and culture, so that it tends to lead to a view that is functional and emphasizes aspects of meaning. Thus, language can bind humans who speak the language concerned into a strong member of society full of social dynamics. As stated by Prof. Dr. Drs. Sulis Triyono, M.Pd . in his inaugural speech as Professor of Applied Linguistics at the Faculty of Language and Arts, Universitas Negeri Yogyakarta. The speech entitled "Building Literacy through German Language" was read in front of an open Senate meeting at the UNY Auditorium, Saturday (7/11). Sulis Triyono is the 163th professor of UNY.

German is often difficult for those who learn it to understand. "This is due to the existence of various detailed rules which are not owned by non-speakers of the language," said Sulis. German learners come from various types of languages such as from Indonesia, where Indonesian is a language of agglutination. German is a language of flexion that puts forward clear rules such as tempus, case, genus, and numerus. Tempus is a language system that regulates changes in tense due to differences in time so that the marking is morphological, paradigmatic, and derivational. The case is the relationship between a noun and other elements in a sentence which are related to each other. This relationship causes a change in the form of the noun which changes. This change is called the declination. Genus is taken from Latin which means gender (grammatical gender) because all German nouns have gender, namely: masculine, feminine, and neutral. Numerus is a numeric marker because it is used to indicate singular and plural forms.

Comprehension of text, context, and context in a discourse comprehensively must be owned by language learner. This is very important to be able to understand a discourse well. It is very important to practice an understanding of an oral and written discourse. Someone who has never practiced reading and writing will gradually have less sensitivity to the text, context, and context of a discourse. Thus, it hinders his understanding of the situation and context that surrounds him. It became a bad habits, when people prefer shortcuts to obtain information without being filtered and scrutinized carefully, let alone share it directly with friends within the community via social media, which may lead to misunderstandings.

Learners of German as a foreign language must be able to master the culture so that obstacles to learning a foreign language due to differences in language and culture can be eliminated. Literacy has an important role in facilitating one's understanding in all aspects because literacy is literacy that can be used to properly understand the context of micro and macro. Literacy is not just the ability to read and write, but literacy skills in a person can increase knowledge and skills. It can also stimulate more critical thinking in solving problems, well prepared for quick ideas in responding to bad content, and communicate effectively. (Dedy, Tj.Lak)