Page 12 - Handbook for reluctant, struggling and poor readers

higher levels of satisfaction for their leisure time (71% vs. 64% of non-readers) and their economic situation
(56% vs. 42%). Between 2011 and 2012, 37.8% of the foreign citizens living in Italy report they read at
least one book. In 2014, Italian households spent 3,339 million euros for books and 5,278 for newspapers,
printed matter and stationery: 11 and 18 euros per month, respectively, 0.4% and 0.6% of their total
expenditure for final consumption. Between 2010 and 2014, household expenditure for books, newspapers
and magazines decreased by 18%, that for stationery by 31%. That reduction is much higher than the one
recorded by the expenditure for goods and services as a whole (6%).

CZECH REPUBLIC

According to the Czech Ministry of Education, reading literacy should be developed not only by teachers
of Czech language and literature but it should be done within most of the subjects. All teachers need to
use different sorts of texts for the purpose of teaching their subjects and students should be able to work
with those texts – find relevant sources of information, read it, understand, find important information,
compare, interpret the information, discuss the issue etc. Today, there are also loads of different sources
and types of texts available – e.g. books, magazines, newspapers, school books, e-books, the internet
etc. Students should be able to sort out the information coming from all the sides, work with the resources
– compare and choose the most relevant information. The experts actually agree on the basic and simple
approach which should be followed to make literature more attractive to pupils. We should stop ordering
them to read books hundred years old far away from their interest and everyday life. It would be much
easier to begin with books or stories they really like and, in the first place, make some space for analyzing
and discussing the texts. It is not necessary to work with books only; especially at the beginning with
struggling or poor readers, we could use films, internet articles or even PC games as sources for analyses
and discussions in the class. As we can read opinions of some teachers – it is possible to go this way and
there are visible fruits of this work. The most important thing the teacher needs to start is the will to change
something and to work hard especially at the beginning.
What we should also do is not to force pupils read more and more; instead, we should teach them how to
like and enjoy reading; after that, they will be able to find the way themselves. Schools should serve as a
kind of meeting point of literature with an ability to offer different sorts of interesting texts, providing a
platform for discussion including experience and opinion exchange.

• Czech students regularly score lower than the average in PISA tests.
• Czech educational framework gives schools and teachers a chance to build up their own school
educational programmes and approaches towards individual subjects; reading literacy is essential to gain
the required key competencies and fulfil the expected outputs.
• Most teachers still follow the old chronological model of teaching literature – they start from the
very beginning, spend a long time with the ancient literature, slowly move through every single century.

2. O1.A1 Survey on reading competences focusing on student population aged 15 to 18 in 4
Partners countries: Italy, Slovakia, Czech Republic and Croatia

At the beginning of the two year Project course project partners carried out a qualitative Survey based of
data collected by GoogleDocs tools. The Reading Habits Questionnaire was implemented and completed
by 8131 high school students in 4 partner countries (Italy, Czech Republic, Slovakia and Croatia).
The Questionnaire examined the reading habits in high school population age 15 to 18, focusing primarily
on identifying RSP Readers. The questions respondents were answering provided valuable informations
on:
• Status on developed reading habits at the target population
• Time the students dedicate to reading
• Type of literature as personal choice
• Reasons why they do not read more
• Incoming read points (e: books, journals, printed editions ...)
• Relationship to texts in the field of mandatory curriculum titles and canonical literature
• Motivation to read
• Evaluation of themselves as a (non) readers etc.

The aim of the Survey was:
• Better understandment of the phenomenon of poor reading and poor readers in order to
better combat the problem