The AKAbook Project: Ecological Training for Text Comprehension|Il progetto AKAbook: un training ecologico per la comprensione del testo

The AKAbook Project has been developed with the objective of providing literature that is both engaging and supporting text comprehension through specific strategies. The present study examined the efficacy of the AKA strategies in enhancing text comprehension. Three classes from an Istituto Comprensivo, which has a significant number of students for whom Italian is an additional language (LMBC), were involved. In October 2024, 50 students (33 female) in the eighth grade participated. At the commencement of the academic year, each participant completed two text comprehension tasks. The first task utilized standardized material designed for the Italian population (Cornoldi et al., 2017), while the second task was facilitated according to AKA procedures. As it was hypothesized, the AKA text appears to be more accessible to students for whom Italian is a second language. The study revealed no statistically significant differences between participants based on gender or the medium through which they completed the tasks, whether in paper or electronic formats.