最新研究说中国人退化的书写能力

CALLIGRAPHY has been a reveredart form in China for centuries. Children are taught to write with brushes;endless copying of characters is a rite of passage in their schooling. Writingis a feat of memory. Mastery requires learning thousands of unique characters.Despite these ordeals, literacy rates have increased from around 20% in 1949 toover 95% now. But computers, smartphones and tablets are posing a new obstacleto progress. Penmanship is on the decline. Reading skills may follow.

数个世纪以来，书法在中国是一种受人敬畏的艺术形式。孩子们学用毛笔写字；不断地重复是孩子们在学校必须经历的。书写依靠非凡的记忆力。要学习数千个字才算掌握了书写。即使考验重重，中国的识字率已由1949年的约20%上升到现在的95%以上。但电脑、智能手机和平板电脑正给这种进步造成新障碍，因为提笔书写正呈下降趋势。而阅读技能可能也紧随其后。

Pundits the world over blame a reliance oncomputers for shoddy handwriting and spelling. In China the problem is particularlyacute. The number of primary schoolchildren with severe reading difficulties isrising, according to a 2017 study in the Proceedings of the NationalAcademy of Sciences. The authors linked poor reading scores to increased use ofkeyboards.

全世界的专家将糟糕的书写和拼写能力归咎于对电脑的依赖，而问题在中国尤为严峻。据《国家科学院学报》2017年发布的一份研究，有严重阅读困难的小学生数量正在增多，而作者们将可怜的阅读得分与越来越多地使用键盘联系在了一起。

One reason is that learning to write is soarduous. Because Chinese uses ideograms, or characters, rather than analphabet, to represent each syllable, it takes six years of primary educationto master the 3,000 or so characters required to read a newspaper.

原因之一是，学习书写是艰巨的任务。因为中国使用文字而非字母来代表每个音节，这需要通过6年的小学教育掌握大约3000个字才能阅读一份报纸。

The problem is already evident. Agovernment body helped to launch a popular television spelling show that pitsmiddle-school students against each other to write difficult words; in oneepisode in July more than 50% of the adult audience incorrectly drew atwo-character word meaning “gossip”, feiwen.

问题已经很明显了。政府机构已经通过推出受人欢迎的书写电视节目来协助解决问题，节目邀请中学生展开难字书写竞赛；在7月份的一期节目中，过半成年观众将“绯闻” （英语单词gossip）两字写错了。