In this article I intend to focus on the discussion pertaining to communicative competence regarding reading competence and specific reading skills. In particular, this paper investigates whether and to what extent the progress on language use is differentiated in relation to factors as sex, place of residence, social position and use of a language other than Greek at home. The experiment presented here took place in the scholar seasons 2004/05 and 2005/06 and examined572 pupils of the 3 rd

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... s of Greek High school. These were divided into equal numbers of participants residing in i) a Greek city of more than 1000000 residents (Thessaloniki) ii) a Greek city of about 100000 residents (Ioannina) and iii) Greek villages of 1 to 5000 residents. Data was obtained by means of a test especially designed for the purposes of this work, namely to evaluate student reading skills. The results have shown that the progress in language use is related to student place of residence and social position but is not affected by factors like sex and use of a language other than Greek at home.