The Acquisition of Reading and Writing Skills in Italy and Spain: a Bibliographic Review

A common educational question in Southern Europe contexts is related to the difficulties in acquisition of reading and writing skills. Why are students finding problems in acquiring these skills? What can be done to improve their potential? What do scholars propose? How can elements at the basis of an effective understanding, wsuch as motivation and reader’s and writer’s belief, be measured? Can the hybridization of processes lead to better results than the current ones? The aim of this study is to provide an overview of the most recent studies on these problems. Starting from the studies carried out by Steve Graham (Graham, et al., 2018), the attentions to motivational aspects and the hybridization of the processes, are considered the new frontier of investigation on the subjects in question. The attention to these issues has been analyzed on an international scene, in Spain and Italy. This bibliographic review is divided into three parts: the first presents International studies, the second Spanish studies and the third Italian studies. It is part of a wider research for a didactic intervention aimed at improving reading and writing skills of Italian students, still in the experimental phase, within the limits of a well-defined territorial experience.