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          Experts on reading wonder: is the Internet friend or foe?

                阅读专家不解：互联网究竟是朋友还是敌人？

  Books are not Nadia Konyk’s thing. Her mother, hoping to entice her, brings them home from the library, but Nadia rarely shows interest. Instead, like so many other teenagers, Nadia, 15, is addicted to the Internet. She regularly spends at least six hours a day in front of the computer in this suburb southwest of Cleveland.

  纳迪娅·科尼克不喜欢读书。她的妈妈为引发她的兴趣，从图书馆借了一些书回家，但纳迪娅基本不感兴趣。相反，和众多青年一样，15岁的纳迪娅迷上了互联网。她通常每天都要在位于克利夫兰西南郊家中的电脑前花去至少6个小时。

  Nadia checks her e-mail and peruses myyearbook. com, a social networking site, reading messages or posting updates on her mood. She searches for music videos on YouTube and logs onto Gaia Online, a role-playing site where members fashion alternate identities as cutesy cartoon characters. But she spends most of her time on quizilla.com or fanfiction.net, reading and commenting on stories written by other users and based on books, television shows or movies.

  Her mother, Deborah Konyk, would prefer that Nidia, who gets A’s and B’s at school, read books for a change. But at this point, Konyk said, “I’m just pleased that she reads something anymore.”

  纳迪娅查收电子邮件并浏览社交网站myyearbook. Com，在网站上阅读留言或是发帖表达自己最近的心情。她在YouTube网站上搜索音乐视频并登录角色扮演网站---盖亚在线Gaia Online,，会员可以在这个网站上自行定制“做可爱状的”卡通人物作为个人形象。但是她大部分时间都泡在quizilla.com网站或 fanfiction.net网站上，阅读或评论别人改编自书籍、电视节目或电影的故事。

  她的母亲德博拉·科尼克更愿意让学习成绩优良的纳迪娅换个口味，多读点书。但科尼克这会儿却说：“我高兴的是，她还是在读东西。”

  Children like Nadia lie at the heart of a passionate debate about just what it means to read in the digital age. The discussion is playing out among education policymakers and reading experts around the world, and within groups like the National Council of Teachers of English and the International Reading Association.

  As teenagers’ scores on standardized reading tests have declined or stagnated, some argue that the hours spent prowling the Internet are the enemy of reading---diminishing literacy, wrecking attention spans and destroying a precious common culture that exists only through the reading of books.

   人们正围绕纳迪娅这样的孩子展开一场激烈的争论，探讨阅读在数字时代究竟意味着什么。全球的教育决策者和阅读专家之间以及全国英语教师委员会和国际阅读协会等组织内部已经为此争论得不可开交。

由于青少年在标准化阅读测试中的得分降低或停滞不前，一些人便说耗费时间浏览互联网是阅读的大敌---因为这种做法弱化了读写能力，使注意力难以持续，并破坏了一种只有通过阅读书籍才能存在的宝贵的大众文化。

  But others say the Internet has created a new kind of reading, one that schools and society shouldn’t discount. The Web inspires a teenager like Nadia, who might otherwise spend most of her leisure time watching TV, to read and write.

  At least since the invention of TV, critics have warned that electronic media would destroy reading. What is different now, some literacy experts say, is that spending time on the Web, whether it is looking up something on Google or even britneyspears.org., entails some engagement with text.

   但其它人说，互联网创造了一种新的阅读方式，一种学校和社会都不应该低估的方式。网络激发像纳迪娅这样的青少年阅读和写作，不然他们就会利用大部分空闲时间看电视。

至少是从发明电视以来，批评人士就警告说，电子媒体会毁了阅读。一些读写专家说，现在不同的是，不管是用谷歌搜索，抑或甚至是浏览britneyspears.org.网站（美国歌手布兰尼·斯皮尔斯的歌迷网站），上网都多多少少需要和文字打交道。

  Few who believe in the potential of the Web deny the value of books. But they argue that it is unrealistic to expect all children to read “To Kill a Mockingbird” or “Pride and Prejudice” for fun. And those who prefer staring at TV or pushing buttons on a game console, they say, can still benefit from reading on the Internet. In fact, some literacy experts say that online reading skills will help children fare better when they begin looking for digital-age jobs.

  Some Web evangelists say children should be evaluated for their proficiency on the Internet just as they are tested on their print-reading comprehension. Starting next year, some countries will participate in new international assessments of digital literacy; but the United States, for now, will not.

   那些相信互联网潜力的人几乎都承认书籍的价值。但他们说，指望所有孩子为找快乐去读《杀死一只知更鸟》或《傲慢与偏见》是不切实际的。他们还说，那些更喜欢盯着电视机或打游戏的孩子仍然可以从网上阅读中获益。事实上，一些读写专家认为，网上阅读技巧将有助于孩子将来找数字时代的工作时更从容。

   一些网络的鼓吹者说，应当对孩子操作互联网的熟练程度进行打分，就像对他们的纸上阅读理解能力打分一样。从明年开始，一些国家将参与国际上关于数字时代读写能力的新评估，但是美国暂时不参加。

  Young people “aren’t as troubled as some of us older folks are by reading that doesn’t go in a line, ” said Rand Spiro, a professor of educational psychology at Michigan State University who is studying reading practices on the Internet. “That’s a good thing, because the world doesn’t go in a line, and the world isn’t organized into separate compartments or chapters.”

  Some traditionalists warn that digital reading is the intellectual equivalent of empty calories. Often, they argue, writers on the Internet employ a cryptic argot that vexes teachers and patents.

   密歇根州立大学教育心理学教授兰德斯皮罗说，年轻人“不像我们老一代人中的一些人那样被不以成行呈现的阅读方式所困扰”。他目前正在研究网上阅读习惯。“这是好事，因为世界并不是以成行方式存在的，而且世界并没有被分割成各个独立的单元或章节。”

   一些传统主义者警告说，数字阅读就是脑力活动中的空热量食物。他们说，通常情况下，网络写手会使用一种让老师和家长抓狂的晦涩难懂的网络语言。

  Zigzagging through a cornucopia of words, pictures, video and sound, they say, distracts more than strengthens readers. And many youths spend most of their time on the Internet playing games of sending messages, activities that involve minimal reading at best.

  Web proponents believe that strong readers on the Web may eventually surpass those who rely on books. Reading five Web sites, an op-ed article and a blog post or two, experts say, can be more enriching than reading one book.

  “It takes a long time to read a 400-page book, ” said Spiro. “In a tenth of the time, ” he said, the Internet allows a reader to “cover a lot more of the topic from different points of view.”

   这些传统主义者还说，这种穿插浏览大量文字、图片、影像和声音的阅读方式，与其说集中了读者的注意力，还不说分散了他们的注意力。许多年轻人上网主要是为了玩游戏或发信息，这些活动涉及的阅读行为少得不能再少了。

   对网络持支持态度的人认为，在网上大量阅读的人或许将最终胜过只看书本的人。专家说，浏览五个网站，一篇专栏文章和一两篇博文能比阅读一本书收获更大。

   斯皮罗说：“读一本400页的书需要很长时间。”他说，“花上1/10的时间”，读者就能在互联网上“从不同角度了解有关该话题的多得多的内容”。

  Web readers are persistently weak at judging whether information is trustworthy. In one study, Donald Leu, who researches literacy and technology at the University of Connecticut, asked 48 students to look at a spoof Web site, at http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/, about a mythical species known as the “Pacific Northwest tree octopus.” Nearly 90 percent of them missed the joke and deemed the site a reliable source.

  Some literacy experts say that reading itself should be redefined. Interpreting videos or pictures, they say, may be as important a skill as analyzing a novel or a poem.

  网络读者辨别信息真伪的能力一直很差。在康涅狄格大学研究读写能力和科技的唐纳德·列乌开展了一项研究。他让48名学生登录一个地址为http://zapatopi.net/treeoctopus/的恶作剧网页，该网页捏造了一种名为“西北太平洋树章鱼”的物种。学生中有近90%的人上当了，还认为这个网站是个可靠的信息来源。

  一些读写问题专家说，应当对阅读本身重新下定义。他们说，解读视频或图片或许是用解析一篇小说或一首诗歌一样重要的技能。

  “Kids are using sound and images so they have a world of ideas to put tohether that aren’t necessarily language-oriented, ”said Donna Alvermann, a professor of language and literacy education at the University of Georgia. “Books aren’t out of the picture, but they’re only one way of experiencing information in the world today.”

  The United States is diverging from the policies of an increasing number of countries. Next year, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, which administers reading, math, and science tests to a sample of 15-year-old students in more than 50 countries, will add an electronic reading component. The United States says it will not participate because an additional test would overburden schools.

  佐治亚大学语言和读写教育教授唐娜·阿尔韦曼说：“孩子们正在使用声音和图象来汇总大量的想法，这些想法不一定需要通过语言表述出来。书还没有出局，但它们只是在当今世界获取信息的一种方式。”

  美国的政策正与越来越多的国家的政策分道扬镳。经济合作与发展组织（简称“经合组织”）定期对50多个国家的15岁学生进行阅读、数学和科学方面的抽样测评。美国称其不会参与，因为一门额外的考试将使学校负担过重。