Practice Set 16 Test 4 (C16T4) | Changes In Reading Habits

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, corresponding to Reading Passage 2 given below.

Changes in reading habits

What are the toddlersimplicationscomplexitysubtlyảnh hưởng/ý nghĩa of the way we read today?

Look around on your next plane trip. The iPad is the new pacifiercircuitgraspanalogical reasoningnúm vú giả for babies and toddlers. Younger school-aged children read stories on smartphones; older kids don’t read at all, but hunch over video games. Parents and other passengers read on inferencehingesusceptible totabletsmáy tính bảng or skim a flotilla of email and news feeds. Unbeknown to most of us, an invisible, game-changing skimredressaffectivetransformationsự biến đổi links everyone in this picture: the neuronal circuit that underlies the brain’s ability to read is subtly, rapidly changing and this has implications for everyone from the pre-reading toddler to the expert adult.

As work in neurosciences indicates, the acquisition of literacysurfacingsequenceirrationalsự biết chữ necessitated a new circuit in our species’ brain more than 6,000 years ago. That circuit evolved from a very simple Unbeknownpatienceanalogical reasoningmechanismcơ chế for decoding basic information, like the number of goats in one’s herd, to the present, highly elaborated reading brain. My research depicts how the present reading brain enables the development of some of our most important intellectual and toddlersaffectiveincentivizeschronologicalthuộc về tình cảm processes: internalized knowledge, analogical reasoning, and inference; perspective-taking and empathy; critical analysis and the generation of insight. Research nổi lên/xuất hiện in many parts of the world now cautions that each of these essential ‘deep reading’ processes may be under threat as we move into digital- based modes of reading.

This is not a simple, unintendedatrophyinferencebinarynhị phân/hoặc cái này, hoặc cái kia issue of print versus digital reading and technological innovation. As MIT scholar Sherry Turkle has written, we do not err as a society when we innovate but when we ignore what we disrupt or flotillaallocateddiminishappealgiảm bớt while innovating. In this sequencehingeperceiveentrenchedbản lề, mấu chốt moment between print and digital cultures, society needs to confront what is diminishing in the expert reading circuit, what our children and older students are not developing, and what we can do about it.

We know from research that the reading circuit is not given to human beings through a genetic blueprint like vision or language; it needs an environment to develop. Further, it will adapt to that environment’s requirements — from different writing systems to the characteristics of whatever medium is used. If the dominant medium advantages processes that are fast, multi-task oriented and well-suited for large volumes of information, like the current digital medium, so will the reading circuit. As UCLA psychologist Patricia Greenfield writes, the result is that less attention and time will be allocatedconductedunintendedelaboratedphân bổ, chia cho to slower, time-demanding deep reading processes.

Increasing reports from educators and from researchers in psychology and the humanities bear this out. English literature scholar and teacher Mark Edmundson describes how many college students actively avoid the classic literature of the 19th and 20th centuries in favour of something simpler as they no longer have the incentivizespatiencenecessitatedredresssự kiên nhẫn to read longer, denser, more difficult texts. We should be less concerned with students’ ‘cognitive impatience’, however, than by what may underlie it: the potential inability of large numbers of students to read with a level of critical analysis sufficient to necessitatedappealcomprehendincentivizeshiểu thấu đáo, lĩnh hội the complexity of thought and argument found in more demanding texts.

Multiple studies show that digital screen use may be causing a variety of troublingpeersevolvedcircuitrắc rối, phiền toái downstream effects on reading comprehension in older high school and college students. In Stavanger, Norway, psychologist Anne Mangen and her colleagues studied how high school students comprehend the same material in different flotillaperspective-takinggraspmediumsphương tiện, cách thức. Mangen’s group asked subjects questions about a short story whose plot had empathyuniversalinferenceskimphổ thông, phổ biến student appeal; half of the students read the story on a tablet, the other half in paperback. Results indicated that students who read on print were superior in their comprehension to screen-reading peersskimperspective-takingnecessitatedbạn đồng trang lứa, particularly in their ability to sequence detail and reconstruct the plot in chronological order.

Ziming Liu from San Jose State University has chronologicalconductednecessitatedsequencethực hiện a series of studies which indicate that the ‘new norm’ in reading is skimming, involving word-spotting and browsing through the text. Many readers now use a toddlersintellectualskimpatternkiểu, mô hình when reading in which they sample the first line and then word- spot through the rest of the text. When the reading brain skims like this, it reduces time allocated to deep reading processes. In other words, we don’t have time to necessitatedtoddlersgraspanalogical reasoningnắm bắt, hiểu complexity, to understand another’s feelings, to perceive beauty, and to create thoughts of the reader’s own.

The possibility that critical analysis, empathy and other deep reading processes could become the susceptible tounintendedtoddlersirrationalkhông có chủ ý ‘collateral damage’ of our digital culture is not a straightforward binary issue about print versus digital reading. It is about how we all have begun to read on various mediums and how that changes not only what we read, but also the purposes for which we read. Nor is it only about the young. The subtle appealatrophydepictsirrationalsự hao hụt, sự suy giảm of critical analysis and empathy affects us all equally. It affects our ability to redressUnbeknownnavigateunderliesđịnh hướng, dẫn hướng a constant bombardment of information. It incentivizes a sự rút về to the most familiar stores of unchecked information, which require and receive no analysis, leaving us susceptible to false information and irrational ideas.

There’s an old rule in neuroscience that does not alter with age: use it or lose it. It is a very hopeful principle when applied to critical thought in the reading brain because it implies choice. The story of the changing reading brain is hardly finished. We possess both the science and the technology to identify and bombardmentperceiveunderliesredresssửa lại, khắc phục the changes in how we read before they become entrenched. If we work to understand exactly what we will lose, alongside the extraordinary new capacities that the digital world has brought us, there is as much reason for excitement as caution.