The various skills inherent in reading, including digital reading, are essential for the personal and social development of individuals, their active and informed participation in society, as well as the full realization of human rights within the framework of active citizenship. Reading also increases and improves vocabulary. In addition, these skills are essential for integration and development in the labour market.

As part of the first phase of our Erasmus project, we embarked on an in-depth exploration of our students' reading comprehension. Through a survey, we worked with a wide range of texts to identify the difficulties our students have in this crucial area of learning. Thus, we use continuous texts: a linear development of ideas that are chained one after the other, forming a coherent and extensive discourse. In this type of text, reading is done sequentially, following the order in which the words are presented; discontinuous texts where the information is presented in a fragmented way, for which we use a list of all the types of plastics that exist and then classify them according to their characteristics; multimodal texts where we combine two or more semiotic systems, such as written language, images, sounds and videos. 

The students who participated in the survey said that they were happy to answer this survey, which was both text and visual.

Objectives

Detect reading comprehension difficulties and needs.

To identify existing errors in reading comprehension and their direct impact on the cognitive development of adults.

To improve the reading comprehension of adult participants by teaching them to use specific cognitive strategies.

To develop recommendations and guidelines to support and guide teachers on how to motivate participants.

Develop a series of strategies and activities to promote reading comprehension.

To demonstrate that the use of didactic strategies by teachers can improve the reading comprehension process.

Methodology

The survey was administered to a diverse group of students from the four partner countries: Greece, Poland, Turkey and Spain, covering different educational levels. The texts selected for evaluation included environmental articles, videos, images, definitions and informational texts.

The project’s target group consists of adult learners aged 18 to 65 who are literate but do not understand what they read or write.

We could understand from the answers that some participants did not read all the text completely. Those who read the text completely could understand better and received high scores.

They show difficulties in following written instructions, reading a newspaper article, consulting a dictionary or understanding a brochure. They have digital skills, but not the ability to access and understand information. This translates into insufficient skills for daily life, personal, professional or educational development and full social and civic participation.

Analysis of results

After data collection, we proceeded to tabulate the results, organizing them into five levels, according to the scores obtained:

- Level 1 (0-100 points): Participants at this level have difficulty understanding basic information in simple texts.

- Level 2 (200-299 points): Participants at this level can comprehend basic information in simple texts and perform simple reading tasks, such as looking for specific information or following directions.

- Level 3 (300-499 points): Participants at this level can comprehend complex information in moderately complex texts and can perform more complex reading tasks, such as understanding the meaning of unfamiliar words or phrases, inferring implicit information, or summarizing a text.

- Level 4 (500-699 points): Participants at this level can comprehend complex information in complex texts and perform highly complex reading tasks, such as analyzing and evaluating text identifying the author's purpose, or comparing and contrasting different perspectives.

- Level 5 (700 points): Participants at this level have an exceptional command of reading comprehension and can perform any reading task with ease. 

This analysis allowed us to get a clear picture of the reading comprehension difficulties faced by our students.

Difficulties identified

Among the most common difficulties identified are: - Vocabulary problems: students are often confronted with unfamiliar or unfamiliar words, which hinders overall comprehension of the text. 

- Lack of reading strategies: The absence of effective reading techniques, such as identifying main ideas, inferring and rereading, limits students' ability to extract relevant information from the text.

- Difficulties in textual comprehension: Some students present problems in interpreting the meaning of the text, identifying relationships between ideas, and understanding the author's central message.

- Low motivation: Lack of interest in reading can negatively affect concentration and willingness to comprehend written material.

Environmental factors. If reading is done in a noisy and distracting environment, comprehension becomes difficult.

Conclusions

The results obtained in this first phase of the Erasmus project provide us with valuable information about the reading comprehension difficulties faced by our students. This information will allow us to design targeted intervention strategies aimed at strengthening our students' reading skills and promoting more effective learning.

In this activity, which was implemented at the same time in these four countries, common points in reading difficulties and comprehension problems were also determine

In short, based on this knowledge, we embark on a path of continuous improvement, intending to strengthen our students' reading skills and open the doors to a world of learning without limitations.