Abstract:

The article focuses on the problem of the reading literacy in a foreign language, analysing the specific case of Italian, within the context of Slovak schooling ambience at high schools. The paper identifies some of the major problem students have in reading written texts. These are based either on inherent cognitive lacks, poor general culture or on various failing reading strategies. The extensive reading and the elevated textual competence are some of the goals nowadays language didactics aims to achieve. This implicates the improvement of the lexical approach, then critical thinking strategies, which would allow the readers to evaluate better the information contained in the input text as well as its textual structure. The language intended as a cultural construct needs to be studied in its intercultural aspect, stressed by selection of authentic input texts of various textual genres. These should be centered by the topic in correspondence with the learners´ motivation. Some practice advise is given in the conclusion of the paper.

Keywords:

Reading literacy, foreign language, input text, critical thinking, extensive reading.