【Charyll的阅读精读】------>>><<<

Charyll

怕放在备考日志里面把备考日志弄地乱乱的。
只是求监督阿~。

精读SA和TPO和老托！！！

提醒自己：TPO阅读至少做3遍。but, 我这个速度是来不及的。

Charyll

前十篇。

<我的全实体星在哪!)
★☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆☆

1	正确率  50%	主旨   ×	单词题 rudimentary基本的→undeveloped (×necessary必要的) produce→butter
2	60%	×	modifying修改→changing efficiency效率n.→effectiveness有效n.（×relationship) rapidity快→swiftness迅速的
3	60%	×	stable→basic elements
4	100%	√	monopolized垄断→dominated受控的 factions→sides flattering谄媚的→complimentary赞美的恭维的
5	50%	×	conclusive→definitive preoccupation全神贯注→involvement参与，投入
6	80%	×	stressed强调→emphasized interchangeable可交换的→equivalent相等的
7	70%	√	hinterland→region persisted→continued eradicate摧毁→eliminate消除
8	40%	×	typify→characterize
9	75%	×	noticed→obeserved tangled→twisted together concealed→convered
10

Charyll

分析文章（结构、句式等，不会的词、句子、语言点摘抄)。
我老是分析成各种错误。疯了。

PASSAGE 1

By the mid-nineteenth century, the term "icebox" had entered the American language, but ice was still only beginning to affect the diet of ordinary citizens in the United States. The ice trade grew with the growth of cities. Ice was used in hotels, taverns, and hospitals, and by some forward-looking city dealers in fresh meat, fresh fish, and butter. After the Civil War (1861-1865), as ice was used to refrigerate freight货物 cars, it also came into household use. Even before 1880, half the ice sold in New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore, and one-third of that sold in Boston and Chicago, went to families for their own use. This had become possible because a new household convenience, the icebox, a precursor先驱 of the modern refrigerator, had been invented.

             The term→Icebox. <affection. use. sold.> →Refrigerator.

Making an efficient icebox was not as easy as we might now suppose. In the early nineteenth century, the knowledge of the physics of heat, which was essential to a science of refrigeration, was rudimentary. The commonsense notion that the best icebox was one that prevented the ice from melting was of coursemistaken<这个句子没看完导致我选错了一个题目>, for it was the melting of the ice that performed the cooling. Nevertheless, early efforts to economize ice included wrapping包裹 the ice in blankets毯子, which kept the ice from doing its job. Not until near the end of the nineteenth century did inventors achieve the delicate balance of insulation隔绝 and circulation needed for an efficient icebox.

                    做一个有效率的电冰箱，经历了想法错误导致失败。后来不得其道。

<这里有一个纠结的题目>
Q8: Accoring to the information in the second paragraph, an ideal icebox would  < C >
A. completely prevent ice from melting
B. stop air from circulating
C. allow ice to melt slowly 文章明明说了这个是of course a mistaken阿。!!!!!!
D. use blankets to conserve ince

But as early as 1803, an ingenious善于创造发明的 Maryland farmer, Thomas Moore, had been on the right track. He owned a farm about twenty miles outside the city of Washington, for which the village of Georgetown was the market center. When he used an icebox of his own design to transport his butter to market, he found that customers would pass up放弃 the rapidly melting stuff in the tubs桶，塑料杯 of his competitors竞争对手 to pay a premium加付款 price for his butter, still fresh and hard in neat, one-pound bricks. One advantage of his icebox, Moore explained, was that farmers would no longer have to travel to market at night in order to keep their produce cool.

                            But, still说电冰箱，后来有人终于用对了。

                   So, 整篇的主题几乎就是在说电冰箱的发展历程。

Charyll

PASSAGE 2

The geology of the Earth's surface is dominated受控的 by the particular properties of water. Present onEarth in solid, liquid, and gaseous气态的 states, water is exceptionally reactive起反应的. It dissolves, transports, and precipitates凝结 many chemical compounds and is constantly modifying修改 the face of the Earth.

                              地球表面受水控制。然后讲了怎么影响。

Evaporated from the oceans, water vapor forms clouds, some of which are transported by wind over the continents. Condensation冷凝 from the clouds provides the essential agent起因 of continentalerosion腐蚀: rain. Precipitated onto the ground, the water trickles淌 down to form brooks小溪, streams, and rivers, constituting构成 what are called the hydrographic与水道测量有关的 network. This immense极大的polarized极化的 network channels the water toward a single receptacle容器: an ocean. Gravity dominates控制 this entire step in the cycle because water tends to minimize its potential energy by running from high altitudes toward the reference point, that is, sea level.

                           各种冷凝，海，雨，海平线。

The rate at which a molecule分子 of water passes though the cycle is not random but is a measure of the relative size of the various reservoirs水库. If we define residence time as the average time for a water molecule to pass through one of the three reservoirs — atmosphere, continent, and ocean — we see that the times are very different. A water molecule stays, on average, eleven days in the atmosphere, one hundred years on a continent and forty thousand years in the ocean. This last figure shows the importance of the ocean as the principal reservoir of thehydrosphere水气 but also the rapidity of water transport on the continents.

                       水分子循环的速度。 是相对的。(???)

A vast chemical separation process takes places during the flow流动 of water over the continents.Soluble可溶的ions离子 such as calcium, sodium, potassium, and some magnesium镁 are dissolved溶化的 and transported. Insoluble不溶的 ions such as aluminum, iron, and silicon stay where they are and form the thin, fertile skin of soil on which vegetation can grow. Sometimes soils are destroyed and transported mechanically盲目地 duringflooding泛滥. The erosion of the continents thus results from two closely linked and interdependent互相依赖的 processes, chemical erosion and mechanical erosion. Their respective各自的 interactions and efficiency depend on different factors.

                        一个化学分离的过程，在水流过大陆时。

Charyll

Scientific American来一篇。
话说这个完完全全就是托福作文的题材阿！！！
太喜欢这篇了。口语也刚刚好可以用。整篇的遣词造句学习再学习！！！

Hearing the Music, Honing the Mind
Music produces profound and lasting changes in the brain. Schools should add classes, not cut them

Nearly 20 years ago a small study advanced the notion that listening to Mozart’s Sonata for Two Pianos in D Major could boost mental functioning. It was not long before trademarked “Mozart effect” products appealed to neurotic parents aiming to put toddlers on the fast track to the Ivy League. Georgia’s governor even proposed giving every newborn there a classical CD or cassette.

The evidence for Mozart therapy turned out to be flimsy, perhaps nonexistent, although the original study never claimed anything more than a temporary and limited effect. In recent years, however, neuroscientists have examined the benefits of a concerted effort to study and practice music, as opposed to playing a Mozart CD or a computer-based “brain fitness” game once in a while. Advanced monitoring techniques have enabled scientists to see what happens inside your head when you listen to your mother and actually practice the violin for an hour every afternoon. And they have found that music lessons can produce profound and lasting changes that enhance the general ability to learn.These results should disabuse public officials of the idea that music classes are a mere frill, ripe for discarding in the budget crises that constantly beset public schools.

Studies have shown that assiduous instrument training from an early age can help the brain to process sounds better, making it easier to stay focused when absorbing other subjects, from literature to tensor calculus. The musically adept are better able to concentrate on a biology lesson despite the racket in the classroom or, a few years later, to finish a call with a client when a colleague in the next cubicle starts screaming at an underling. They can attend to several things at once in the mental scratch pad called working memory, an essential skill in this  era of multitasking.

Discerning subtleties in pitch and timing can also help children or adults in learning a new language. The current craze for high school Mandarin classes furnishes an ideal example.下面讲的例子好好玩，“妈”和“骂”。 The difference between m¯a (a high, level tone) and mà (falling tone) represents the difference between “mother” and “scold.” Musicians, studies show, are better than nonmusicians at picking out easily when your m¯a is màing you to practice. These skills may also help the learning disabled improve speech comprehension.

Sadly, fewer schools are giving students an opportunity to learn an instrument. In Nature Reviews Neuroscience this summer, Nina Kraus of Northwestern University and Bha­rath Chandrasekaran of the University of Texas at Austin, who research how music affects the brain, point to a disturbing trend of a decline of music education as part of the standard curriculum. A report by the advocacy organization Music for All Foundation found that from 1999 to 2004 the number of students taking music programs in California public schools dropped by 50 percent. 确实很sad,然后这个统计数据可以放在托福例子里。

Research of our brains on music leads to the conclusion that music education needs to be preserved—and revamped, as needed, when further insights demonstrate, say, how the concentration mustered to play the clarinet or the oboe can help a problem student focus better in math class又是一个好棒的论证. The main reason for playing an instrument, of course, will always be the sheer joy of blowing a horn or banging out chords. But we should also be working to incorporate into the curriculum our new knowledge of music’s beneficial effect on the developing brain. Sustained involvement with an instrument from an early age is an achievable goal even with tight budgets.Music is not just an “extra.”

Charyll

PASSAGE 3


The Native Americans of northern California were highly skilled at basketry编制工艺, using the reeds芦苇, grasses, barks, and roots they found around them to fashion articles of all sorts and sizes — not only trays, containers, and cooking pots, but hats, boats, fish traps, baby carriers, and ceremonial objects.
                                编织工艺阿。

Of all these experts, none excelled胜于 the Pomo — a group who lived on or near the coast during the 1800's, and whose descendants后代 continue to live in parts of the same region to this day. They made baskets three feet in diameter and others no bigger than a thimble顶针. The Pomo peoplewere masters ofdecoration. Some of their baskets were completely covered with shell外壳 pendants垂饰; others with feathers that made the baskets' surfaces as soft as the breasts of birds. Moreover, the Pomo people made use of more weaving techniques than did their neighbors. Most groups made all their basketwork by twining缠绕 — the twisting of a flexible horizontal material, called a weft织物, around stiffer生硬的 vertical strands股，缕 of material, the warp弯曲. Others depended primarily on coiling盘绕，卷 — a process in which a continuous coil盘绕 of stiff生硬的 material is held in the desired shape with tight wrapping包裹 of flexible strands. Only the Pomo people used both processes with equal ease and frequency. In addition, they made use of four distinct variations on the basic twining process, often employing more than one of them in a single article.
                         OMO的这个技术无比好。然后讲了怎么好。他们制作它的过程。

Although a wide variety of materials was available, the Pomo people used only a few. The warp was always made of willow柳树, and the most commonly used weft was sedge莎草 root, a woody fiber that could easily be separated into strands no thicker than a thread细丝. For color, the Pomo people used the bark茎皮 of redbud紫荆属织物 for their twined work and dyed bullrush root for black in coiled work. Though other materials were sometimes used, these four were the staples in their finest basketry.
                       说这个材料。

If the basketry materials used by the Pomo people were limited, the designs were amazingly varied. Every Pomo basketmaker knew how to produce from fifteen to twenty distinct patterns that could be combined in a number of different ways.
                         这个材料不够用的话，这个产品设计就会完全的不同。
                       然后POMO的编织者知道很多办法去做很多不同的图案。

Charyll

顺便收集下作文素材。

慢城市

摘要
慢城市是一种新的城市模式，与快节奏的生活方式不同，在这里，有更多的空间供人们散步，有更多的绿地供人们休闲娱乐。慢城市不仅仅是将快速的城市步调放慢，更重要的是创造一个环境，让人可以抗拒倚赖时钟与凡事求快的压力。


慢城市-起源

“慢城市”是一种新的城市模式

从蒸汽机发明以来，我们这个世界的发展就一直在加速。我们被自己追赶得“穷途末路”。直到欧洲在工业革命200多年后，开始逐渐反思并开始减速—慢并不是慢本身，而是说可持续的发展、更有效率的工作，以及，更有诗意的生活。
城市化越来越快的今天，城市的密度越来越大，城市被越来越多的工业、高楼大厦包围，噪音取代了本来宁静的生活环境，空气污染破坏了平衡的生态环境，城市的发展使人们的活动空间越来越狭小，人们的生活节奏也越来越快，太多传统的文化被现代化的元素所代替，城市和城市之间正变得越来越缺乏个性，人和人之间正变得越来越冷漠和缺乏亲情。在这样的生活环境里，人们留给自己的休闲时间太少，根本无法尽情享受生活的美好。
为此在意大利只有1.5万人的小城市布拉提出了建立一种新的城市模式，提出在现代化的城市中，寻求一种将现代化技术与传统生活方式的结合，使人们不仅可以享受现代化生活带来的诸多方便，更会把一种规律而且健康的幸福生活带给每一个人，这就是“慢城市”模式的起源。

慢城市-历史

作为“慢餐运动”的延伸扩展，“慢城市运动(slow city move-ment)”也应运而生。1999年，第一届“慢城市”大会在意大利奥维多召开，提出建立一种新的城市模式。在这里，有更多的空间供人们散步，有更多的绿地供人们休闲娱乐。政府拿出资金补贴那些生产和销售地方美食的农庄、特色餐馆和商店。人们以时速20公里的速度驾驶汽车并决不鸣笛。“慢城市”的会员应是人口不超过5万的小城镇。
“慢城市”的倡导者们是怀旧的，却同样不失敏锐地尝试一切提高生活品质的新技术。在另一个“慢城市”，翁布里亚的山顶小城奥维多，电瓶车安静地行驶在中世纪的街道上。互联网在社区和家庭十分普及，带来休闲娱乐，政府官员还借助网络交流治理城市经验。

慢城市-代表

在意大利小镇布拉，这个慢食组织总部所在的城市，似乎是逃避一切俗事的最佳地点。在小镇逛上一逛，人们会发现，当地人会在路边咖啡座坐上大半天，或是与友人闲聊或是看着人来人往。树荫环绕的广场上，飘散着丁香花与薰衣草的香味，石凳上有老人如雕像般呆坐着，每个人都有时间亲切地道声“buon giorno”。
1999年起源到现在，全球24个国家已有135个城市宣称为“慢城”。全欧境内已有波兰、奥地利、西班牙、葡萄牙、挪威、德国、法国、英国、瑞士等十几个国家加入，甚至连日本、韩国也有“慢城市”。

慢城市-环境

慢城市不仅仅是将快速城市的步调放慢，而是创造一个环境，让人可以抗拒倚赖时钟与凡事求快的压力

在慢城，有更多的空间供人们散步，有更多的绿地供人们休闲，有更便利的商业供人们娱乐和享受，有更多的广场供人们交流，此外他们还提倡拆除不美观的广告牌、霓虹灯，城市电线，并限制小汽车的行驶速度和禁止汽车鸣笛，提倡融洽的邻里交流，希望人们有更多的时间关注家人和子女的教育。
通常，这些所谓的“慢城”规定，城内不能停车，只有行人徒步区。再者，城内不能卖速食，包括麦当劳、星巴克等连锁店和超市都应禁止。还有，城内也没有霓虹灯，且周四周日店面都不营业。为避免工作过度，布拉的每家小型食品店都会配合意大利传统，于星期四、星期天休业。甚至“la dolce vita”(享乐的人生)已是此地居民的生活准则—享乐重于获利、个人重于公司、缓慢重于速度。
“慢城”运动还包括：减少噪音与交通流量；增加绿地与徒步区；支援当地的农民，以及贩售当地农产品的商店、市场与餐厅；奖励环保科技；保护当地美学与美食传统；培养热情好客与敦亲睦邻的精神。经过这番改革后，希望成效能超越各部分相加的总和，并且能彻底改变人们对都市生活的想法。

慢城市-标准

1.慢城市的人口总数应该不超过5万人。
2.慢城市必须在所有的公共设施和尽可能多的私人设施上张贴“蜗牛”标识，以直观形式主义倡导“慢生活”理念。
3.慢城市必须限制汽车的使用，汽车在城市街道行驶速度不得超过20km/h。
4.慢城市必须有一个噪声管理系统，广告牌和霓虹灯要尽可能得少。
5.慢城市必须有一套环保的城市污水生态处理系统。
6.慢城市在全球化的背景下，必须保证城市的个性，特别是保护具有地区象征性意义的产品。
7.慢城市必须定期接受“慢城市国际协会”的检查，以保证上述指标被严格执行。

慢城市-影响

“慢城市”的发展是一场全民参与的，试图重构都市生活方方面面的草根运动。人们开始懂得保持地方传统就是保持家园之根，而生命的自由欢乐远胜于金银缁珠。在政府官员的眼中，“慢城市”无疑是一种更好的城市治理之道。如今，“慢城市”运动赢得了越来越多的追随者。德国、英国和其他北欧国家的小城纷纷效仿。就连一些欧洲的大都市也开始倡导“慢城市守则”。伦敦，这个欧洲大陆最匆忙的都市，也正制定政策限制市中心区车流。
独树一帜的“慢城市”很快换来了经济回报。在小城布拉，销售手工巧克力和绿色食品的商店以及定期举办的活动吸引了数以千计的游客。每逢周末，欧洲各地的特色奶酪制造商云集与此，丰富的产品展览使这里周周都有美食节。在吸引游客方面，“慢城市网络”号召会员“一起实践共同的、具体、有形的准则”，包括提供由“慢餐协会”推荐的美食，高品质的接待设施、绅士的服务以及良好的环境。这些城市力图保持地方特色和特有的城市肌理，保护本土手工业、文化和传统，并让游人与制作特色产品的与当地手艺人交流。

慢城市-衍生

慢学校
随着“慢城市”的兴起，应运而生的是“慢学校”。这些学校提倡没有竞争的教学方式，给学生更多的自由时间，反对填鸭式教学。“慢学校”运动提倡建立一个新的教学体系，授课时间灵活，并根据学生的需要设置课程。拥有大约1000名学生的美国加利福尼亚州的伯克利马丁·路德·金学校成为了这一运动的代表。

慢生活
慢生活，是一种生活态度，是一种健康的心态，是一种积极的奋斗，是对人生的高度自信。

慢餐
1986年，意大利记者卡洛·佩特里在罗马著名名胜西班牙石阶，碰到一群吃即食汉堡包的学生。对于讲究慢吃的意大利人来说，快餐文化近乎可耻。于是，佩特里找到志同道合之士，决心搞一场慢文化的复兴，由吃的文化开始，成立“国际慢餐协会”，是为“慢吃运动”(Slowfood Movement)。慢餐运动者有“6M”宣言：Meal(美食)、Menu(菜单)、Music(音乐)、Manner(礼仪)、Mood(气氛)、Meeting(聚会)，这其实是在强调一种放慢脚步、慢慢品味食物美味的优质生活方式。

慢城市-点评
“慢城市”并不意味着将时钟拨回到过去，让人们过“博物馆中的生活”，相反，它们更善于综合现代和传统生活中那些有利于提高生活质量的因素。

慢城市-中国

目前中国还没有一个正式的“慢城。”不过，江苏省高淳县已经提交了申请，并且有望在2010年11月于苏格兰召开的国际慢城会议上，以桠溪“生态之旅”被正式授予“国际慢城”称号，这样，高淳县将成为我国第一个“国际慢城”。

Charyll

【SA】 =_=。

Clear New Insights into the Genetics of Depression
Recent findings suggest novel paths to treatment

The psychologist Rollo May once described depression as “the inability to construct a future”.

According to the National Institute for Mental Health this “inability” can affect up to 14.8 million Americans – 7% of the population – in a given特定的 year, at an annual cost of $100 billion. That’s about five times the renewable energy budget of the United States. We hear many things about how great we’re getting at saving the planet with our hybrids and off-shore wind farms; we hear far less about how we’re doing in combating or preventing depression.

This month, however, has brought some potentially exciting news: two genetic studies with major ramifications结果 for the treatment and diagnosis诊断法 of Major Depressive Disorder. As a psychiatric geneticist, it is rare that I see such clear insights into distinct genetic mechanisms of psychiatric illnesses. Research into bipolar disorder 双向障碍and schizophrenia精神分裂症 –- the disorders I spend most of my time working on –- would benefit a great deal from breakthrough突破性发展 studies such as these.

One new study, published in Nature Medicine, suggests that a pathway called MAPK – and one gene in particular from this pathway, MPK-1 – are significantly dysregulated in certain areas of the brains of individuals with major depression. These results were obtained by looking for significant gene expression changes in post-mortem brains from 21 individuals with Major Depressive Disorder compared to 18 matched controls.
            抑郁这毛东西被脑袋里特定的一块区域所掌控。

The researchers, led by Yale’s Vanja Duric, confirmed their results in rat and mouse models. And they showed that not only did raising MPK-1 levels lead to depressive symptoms, but that antidepressant treatment reduced the expression of MPK-1.

They demonstrated that MPK-1 increases during stress and can negatively regulate MAPK, a key signaling pathway involved in neuronal plasticity, function and survival. In effect, it appears that MPK-1 may be important in depression because when too much of it is around, it disturbs the growth and viability of neurons in a part of the brain known as the hippocampus, a factor believed to contribute to symptoms of major depression.

Dr. Duric’s team conclude that developing drugs to regulate MPK-1 may offer new hope for alleviating depression and related mood disorders. Drugs take many years to develop and bring to market, but knowing the mechanisms and targets can greatly help to speed up the process. We know what sort of protein MPK-1 is and we know how it works, which makes drug development a lot simpler.

A second new study, published in “Science” and led by Brian Alexander of Cornell’s Laboratory of Molecular Neurosurgery, goes a step further by applying gene therapy to mutant mice. These mice were missing a gene, p11, the deletion of which has been shown to induce depression-like behavior. The p11 gene helps regulate the signaling of serotonin, a brain chemical targeted by many antidepressants and tied to mood, sleep and memory.

Dr. Alexander’s team found that using gene therapy – /essentially using a virus to deliver a “working” copy of a gene into a host whose copy is defective or missing – to restore p11 expression in specific parts of the brain was able to decrease depression-like behavior./
              哇，神奇了。好像很好玩。

This gene therapy approach is also being applied to Parkinson帕金森’s disease. Gene therapy offers the tantalizing possibility of a permanent treatment, eliminating the need for daily consumption of medications. This is an important point as many people do not take medications as they should. Others suffer from adverse drug reactions. With gene therapy, you get a drug that is completely natural: it is a gene; it is part of a prescription not for medication, but for building a healthy human.

The “Science” study helps give new life to the field of gene therapy, which itself was exhibiting depression-like symptoms. The idea of using gene therapy to replace defective DNA has been around since the 70’s, but suffered a large setback in 1999 with a subject’s death and subsequent suspension of several clinical trials for ethical reasons.

The MPK-1 findings point to a host of therapeutic interventions. Gene therapy may be one, as Alexander and colleagues demonstrated for p11. Characterizing the spectrum of mutations that modify the dysregulation of the pathway is another. The latter falls into the attractive realm of "pharmacogenomics" and the idea of “tailor-made” drugs, in this case antidepressants, which would be optimized for the geneticsof a given individual.

It may not be long before the sequencing of our genome becomes a routine part of medicine, and from it could arise the automated optimization of drug treatments or lifestyle recommendations (such as: do not smoke if you are at exceptionally high risk of developing lung cancer). For depression, these advances will be greatly welcomed because even though anti-depressants may be highly effective, the rates of adverse drug reaction can be high. Also, patients’ responses to a given drug vary greatly. In the world of the future, a patient’s genetic profile could help suggest which drug would work best: Would Mr. Smith do best with a drug that targets p11? Or perhaps MPK-1?  

The brain is an extremely complicated organ, with a myriad of complex loops and cycles of gene expression. It is likely that additional cascades of gene expression remain to be associated with susceptibility to depression. Genes in the MAPK pathway are unlikely to be the only “weak point” of susceptibility to the onset of Major Depressive Disorder, nor is p11. Nevertheless, every genetic mechanism for a disease that we discover is a possible path to novel pharmacological or behavioral interventions.

While there may well not be a “gene for depression”, we are quickly gaining a comprehensive, genetic understanding of the factors involved in this personally and socially crippling disorder. Depression is a prevalent, costly and harmful disorder which affects both the lives of individuals suffering from the disorder and their relatives. Finally, we may soon be in a position to help the many millions of Americans that suffer from depression to “construct a future” that is not plagued by the effects of this terrible illness.

Charyll

【SA】
Magic and science: Together again at last

Not since the ancient days of alchemy have science and magic had such a harmonious relationship.Of course, I'm speaking specifically about neuroscience and the art of illusion—not the fictional conjuring of the Harry Potter variety.

"Most of the cognitive illusions out there have been created by magicians. So we can really benefit a lot by using their insights and learning their techniques to accelerate discovery in cognitive neuroscience,好神奇额" says Susana Martinez-Conde, a neuroscientist with the Barrow Neurological Institute in Phoenix.

Martinez-Conde, along with her husband and fellow scientist Stephen Macknik are the subject of our recent video on the neuroscience of magic (see below). Joined by master pickpocket Apollo Robbins (who is not really a criminal, of course; he calls himself a "gentleman thief"), the trio gives us a new perspective on how the brain works as we watch the tricks and manipulations of the magician.

话说下面的VIDEO都听不懂- -。

Charyll

【Economist】
Learning difficulties

Making something hard to read means it is more likely to be remembered
好神奇阿，为毛会这样~

A PARADOX of education is that presenting information in a way that looks easy to learn often has the opposite effect. Numerous studies have demonstrated that when people are forced to think hard about what they are shown they remember it better, so it is worth looking at ways this can be done. And a piece of research about to be published in Cognition, by Daniel Oppenheimer, a psychologist at Princeton University, and his colleagues, suggests a simple one: make the text conveying the information harder to read.

Dr Oppenheimer recruited招募 28 volunteers aged between 18 and 40 and asked them to learn, from written descriptions, about three “species” of extraterrestrial alien, each of which had seven features. This task was meant to be similar to learning about animal species in a biology lesson. It used aliens in place of actual species to be certain that the participants could not draw on prior knowledge.做的好~

Half of the volunteers were presented with the information in difficult-to-read fonts (12-point Comic Sans MS 75% greyscale and 12-point Bodoni MT 75% greyscale). The other half saw it in 16-point Arial pure-black font, which tests have shown is one of the easiest to read.

Participants were given 90 seconds to memorise the information in the lists. They were then distracted with unrelated tasks for a quarter of an hour or so, before being asked questions about the aliens, such as “What is the diet of the Pangerish?” and “What colour eyes does the Norgletti have?” The upshot结果 was that those reading the Arial font got the answers right 72.8% of the time, on average. Those forced to read the more difficult fonts answered correctly 86.5% of the time.

The question was, would this result translate from the controlled circumstances of the laboratory to the unruly environment of the classroom?
（这句理解错了- -。 中文意思是：问题来了，在实验室控制环境下得出的结果能否也适用于教室这种难以人为控制的环境呢？）
It did. When the researchers asked teachers to use the technique in high-school lessons on chemistry, physics, English and history, they got similar results. The lesson, then, is to make text books harder to read, not easier.