ABSTRACT
Full participation in modern Western society requires a range of multifaceted skills and competencies. Among them, literacy skills are generally regarded to be crucial for successful participation in education and in society at large. Lately, literacy development has received much attention from policy makers because a number of studies have shown that, despite the large amount of attention that is paid to promoting reading and writing skills in compulsory education, there are still a considerable number of citizens in modern Western societies who fail to develop a suffi cient level of literacy.
