评论
打印
Teachers in many English classes across America are having students read fewer full-length books.
全美许多英语班的老师都在减少学生阅读长篇书籍的数量。
Recently, the Associated Press explored the issue in education.
最近，美联社探讨了教育领域的这一问题。
It reports that students instead are given only short parts of books.
它报告说，学生们只需完成书籍的很短一部分。
Educators said this is because they believe current students have shorter attention spans than those of the past.
教育工作者说，这是因为他们认为现在的学生比过去的学生注意力持续时间更短。
The teachers might feel pressure to prepare students for state and nationwide examinations know as standardized tests.
要求学生准备参加被称为标准化考试的州级和全国性考试时，老师们可能会感觉有压力。
They also might believe that short pieces of writing will help students in the modern, digital world.
他们还可能认为，短篇文章或许对学生们如今的数字世界有帮助。
The National Council of Teachers of English is a professional organization for teachers based in Champaign, Illinois.
全国英语教师理事会是一个专业的教师组织，总部设在伊利诺伊州香槟市。
In 2022, the group released a statement about reading.
2022年，该组织发布了一份关于阅读的声明。
“The time has come to decenter book reading and essay-writing as the pinnacles of English language arts education,” the group said.
该组织表示：“把读书和写作作为英语语言艺术教育顶峰的时代已经到来。”
Seth French helped write the statement.
赛斯·弗兰奇帮助撰写了这份声明。
He said the idea was not to remove books but to teach media literacy and have students read things in which they are interested.
他说，这个想法不是为了排除书籍，而是为了教授媒体素养，让学生阅读他们感兴趣的东西。
French taught an English class before becoming a dean at Bentonville High School in the state of Arkansas.
弗兰奇在成为阿肯色州本顿维尔高中的院长之前，曾教过一堂英语课。
He had students read plays, poetry and articles but only one book as a class.
他让学生们阅读戏剧、诗歌和文章，但每节课只读一本书。
He said, “A lot of our students are not interested in some of these texts that they didn’t have a choice in.”
他说：“很多学生对其中一些他们没得选、必须阅读的课文不感兴趣。”
Not everyone thinks English reading should involve only short, digital pieces of writing.
并不是所有人都认为英语阅读应该只涉及短篇的数字写作。
Maryanne Wolf studies the human brain at UCLA in Southern California.
玛丽安·沃尔夫在南加州的加州大学洛杉矶分校研究人脑。
Wolf said deep reading is important to strengthen connections in the brain tied to critical thinking skills, background knowledge and empathy.
沃尔夫说，深度阅读对于加强大脑与批判性思维技能、背景知识和同理心的联系非常重要。
She said educators must give students a chance to learn through what she described as “immersion into the lives and thoughts of others.”
她说，教育工作者必须给学生机会，通过她所说的“沉浸在他人的生活和思想中”来学习。
There is not a lot of information on how many books American students are required to read in school.
关于美国学生在学校需要读多少本书的信息并不多。
But in general, students are reading less.
但总体而言，学生们的阅读量正在减少。
Federal data from last year shows 14 percent of young people said they read for fun every day.
去年的联邦数据显示，14%的年轻人说他们每天读书只是为了好玩。
In 2012, that percentage was 27 percent.
2012年，这一比例为27%。
Some teachers say reduced reading has its roots in the COVID-19 crisis.
一些教师表示，阅读减少的根源在于新冠疫情。
Kristy Acevedo teaches English at a vocational high school in New Bedford, Massachusetts.
克里斯蒂·阿塞维多在马萨诸塞州新贝德福德的一所职业高中教英语。
“There was a trend, it happened when COVID hit, to stop reading full-length novels because students were in trauma; we were in a pandemic.
“在新冠来袭时，出现了一种趋势，人们不再阅读长篇小说，因为学生们受到了创伤；我们正在经历疫情。
The problem is we haven’t quite come back from that,” she said.
问题是，现在我们还没有从这种情绪中恢复过来。”她说。
Other teachers blame standardized testing and the influence of education technology.
其他教师则将其归咎于标准化考试和教育技术的影响。
Some students struggle to read.
一些学生有阅读困难症。
Only one third of fourth and eighth graders reached reading proficiency in the 2022 National Assessment of Educational Progress.
在2022年全国教育进步评估中，只有三分之一的四年级和八年级学生达到了阅读水平。
Leah van Belle is the director of the non-profit literacy coalition 313Reads in Detroit, Michigan.
丽亚·范贝尔是密歇根州底特律非营利性识字联盟313Reads的负责人。
Van Belle said, when her son read the book Peter Pan in elementary school, it was too difficult for most children.
范贝尔说，她的儿子在小学读《彼得·潘》时，这对大多数孩子来说太难了。
She said her son’s school does not have a library.
她说，她儿子的学校没有图书馆。
Still, she said it makes sense for English classes to use shorter reading material.
尽管如此，她说，英语课使用较短的阅读材料是有意义的。
“As an adult, if I want to learn about a topic and research it, be it personal or professional, I’m using interactive digital text to do that,” she said.
“作为成年人，如果我想学习和研究某个主题，无论是个人的还是专业的，我都会利用互动性的数字文本，”她说。
Even in schools with many resources, time is always in short supply.
即使在资源丰富的学校，时间也总是供不应求。
Terri White teaches at South Windsor High School in Connecticut.
特里·怀特在康涅狄格州南温莎高中任教。
White no longer assigns the book To Kill a Mockingbird to her class.
怀特不再将《杀死一只知更鸟》这本书作为学生们的阅读任务。
She assigns about one third of the book and provides a synopsis, or a very short version, of the rest.
她只安排了这本书大约三分之一的内容，并提供了其余部分的概要或非常简短的版本。
White says the reason is that the class has to move quickly so she can teach all the required material.
怀特说，因为课堂进展很快，这样她才能教授所有必要的材料。
White also assigns less homework because students have sports and other activities.
怀特还布置了较少的家庭作业，因为学生们需要运动和进行其他活动。
She said she wanted her class to be “more about helping student become stronger and more critical readers, writers and thinkers, while taking their social-emotional well-being into account.”
她说，她希望她的课程更多地是帮助学生成为”更强大、更具批判性的读者、作家和思想家，同时兼顾他们的社会情感健康。”
The synopses method alone, however, can harm student critical thinking skills says Alden Jones, a literature professor at Emerson College in Boston, Massachusetts.
然而，马萨诸塞州波士顿爱默生学院的文学教授奥尔登·琼斯说，提纲这种方法本身就会损害学生的批判性思维能力。
Jones assigns fewer books than before but gives more small tests to make sure students are reading.
琼斯布置的书比以前少了，但为了确保学生阅读，他安排了更多的小测试。
“We don’t value the thinking time that we used to have. It’s all time we could be on our phone accomplishing tasks,” she said.
“我们不再珍视过去拥有的思考时间。我们都是在手机上完成任务。”她说。
Will Higgins is an English teacher at Dartmouth High School in Massachusetts.
威尔·希金斯是马萨诸塞州达特茅斯高中的一名英语教师。
Higgins said he still believes in teaching the classics.
希金斯说，他仍然相信传授经典名著。
But he said students do not have enough time, so teachers have cut back on the number of books they teach.
但他说，学生没有足够的时间，所以老师们已经减少了教的书的数量。
“We haven’t given up on Jane Eyre and Pride and Prejudice. We haven’t given up on Hamlet or The Great Gatsby,” he said.
“但《简·爱》和《傲慢与偏见》还没有被删掉，《哈姆雷特》或《了不起的盖茨比》也没有被放弃。”他说。
But Higgins admitted giving up on assigning a long book like A Tale of Two Cities by Charles Dickens.
不过希金斯承认，他放弃了把查尔斯·狄更斯的《双城记》这样的长书布置为阅读任务。
I’m Mario Ritter, Jr. And I'm Caty Weaver.
我是马里奥·里特，小。我是凯蒂·韦弗。
