Lettura e comprensione del testo: una ricerca nei licei

The underlying idea of the realization of this work is to collect the main theoretical reflections on the process of reading and understanding, the development of this competence, to provide teachers with a compass that guides their didactic route and open a shared work dialogue between the world of research and the world of school. Reading is one of the most demanding and complex activities which the human body undergoes, as it involves the activation of extremely elaborate psycho-motor, perceptual and cognitive processes, involving memory, attention, reasoning (Lastrucci, 1995). The ability to read and understand texts of different types is a basic and strategic skill, central and indispensable for reaching the most advanced training goals in the “knowledge society” (Cardarello & Bertolini, 2020). “What makes it difficult to understand texts and how can we effectively detect and evaluate understanding?” (Kintsch & Kintsch 2005, p. 71). Why are Italian students not good readers? What are the reading skills in which frailties are most highlighted? Does the ability to read and understand better or worse depend on the type of text? These are some of the questions that guided the formulation of the hypotheses and objectives of the research. This work focuses its attention on the ability to understand the texts of high school students, more specifically to students of the fourth year classes. More specifically, it wanted to investigate the variable understanding with respect to the nature of text (narrative, expository), to textual processing processes, focusing mainly on the processes of locating information and making inferences, and studying the correlation between the different schooling, comprehension skills, socio-economic-cultural background and reading habits. In the first part of the work, the main models for understanding the text are outlined, in relation to the different learning paradigms, to understand the evolution that the reading and comprehension process has had, in particular to these references. Then, starting from the concept and meaning of literacy, the definitions of reading literacy and the reading processes investigated in the main national and international surveys are proposed, which present reading as the ability to understand and adequately treat written sources of information. Subsequently, the main strategies for understanding the text and the empirical research conducted are presented, illustrating the methodological choices adopted, the procedural definition and data analysis. The work ends in a critical and constructive vision on what has been conducted up to now, indicating possible operational paths for the continuation of the research. [edited by Author]