The project aims to define and analyse Critical Literacy Competence (CLC) in High School and University students, following the hypothesis that these groups have difficulties with critical reading and oral understanding of media discourse. CLC refers to the ability to infer ‘what is behind’ any discourse: its ideology, point of view, object, irony, certain ways of reasoning, etc.
On the basis of previous research into psycholinguistic, rhetoric, pragmatic- discoursive, and socio-cultural aspects, our aim is to describe the components of CLC, to design instruments for its evaluation and for the production of teaching material which will allow it to be developed and learned. Our final aim is to improve the ability of students to interpret different kinds of discourse in a democratic, electronic, scientific, complex, multilingual and multicultural society.