Abstract:

Though reading comprehension is one of the key skills of any literate person in current society, the international testing shows not very satisfying results in many countries, including Slovakia. This was a primary incentive for a team of researchers at Constantine the Philosopher University in Nitra (Slovakia) to investigate a number of predictors contributing to the success of reading literacy development (project KEGA Developing predictors for foreign language reading comprehension through intervention) and based on the identified predictors to design an Intervention Program for the development of reading literacy in mother tongue and foreign languages (project VEGA Intervention Program to develop literacy in a foreign language and APVV Promoting literacy in mother tongue and in foreign languages) which was tested first in Slovakia and, within the project Erasmus+ (Intervention in the development of FL reading comprehension skill) in neighbouring countries – Poland and the Czech Republic.

Based on the positive experiences and results from Intervention Program implementation and testing in EU Slavonic speaking countries the research team has decided to expand the dissemination of acquired knowledge and verification of the Intervention Program to countries outside the EU with languages other than Slavic. This is currently happening in Armenia and Albania within the international project Visegrad+ ID 22510243 Developing Reading Literacy Through Integrated Information Recognition and Processing.

The paper presents the results from Albania. Following the completion of the university-based training workshop for teachers, the selection, confirmation, and preparatory arrangements related to the first round of testing of the Intervention Programme materials followed. During this stage, five volunteer teachers were selected from a total of 54 trained participants, based on their interest, availability during the intervention period, and feasibility of implementing the program under the required research conditions. These teachers represented five different schools, in which intact eighth-grade classes (experimental and control groups) were identified and confirmed. All participating groups corresponded to the A2 level of English proficiency, ensuring alignment with the Intervention Programme design and assessment tools. The implementation of the research was carried out in several clearly defined stages, including baseline assessment through pre-testing, the delivery of the Intervention Programme across a series of structured lessons, continuous monitoring through teacher logs, and final outcome assessment using post-tests. The process also involved systematic data coding, cleaning, and validation to ensure methodological reliability and comparability of results. The findings, together with the experiences from the implementation phase, were subsequently presented and discussed during a round table held in January 2026.

Keywords:

Intervention program, foreign language, reading comprehension, verification.