Could Smartphone Bans Help Students Achieve More?

2019-10-14高齐云

中学生英语·阅读与写作 2019年8期

高齐云

A study from the London School of Economics found that banning smartphones in classrooms can support learning. Are kids plugging1 in too early？

伦敦经济学院的一项研究发现，禁止在教室里使用智能手机有助于学习。孩子们接触手机太早了吗？

Todays students the world over are losing an hour a week of productivity2 due to their smartphone activity.

如今，全世界的学生因使用智能手机，每周损失一个小时的学习效率。

That is what two researchers from the London School of Economics are arguing with their new study that examined 130，000 students in 91 British schools that employed various smartphone-use policies. Then， they looked at how the students performed on the national exams.

这正是伦敦经济学院的两位研究人员所讨论的对象，他们的新研究对英国91所学校的13万名学生进行了调查，这些学校采用了各种不同的智能手机使用政策。随后，他们研究了这些学生在全国考试中的表现。

In what may not come as a surprise to some， researchers Richard Murphy and Louis-Philippe Beland found that as schools phone policies3 evolved since 2001， with some opting4 to completely ban smartphones， school test scores improved by an average of 6.4 percent. The increase in scores from underachieving students were even more stark as they saw their scores increase by an average of 14 percent.

这对有些人来说并不奇怪，研究人员理查德·墨菲和路易斯·菲利普·贝兰德发现，随着2001年以来学校电话政策的发展，有些学校选择完全禁止使用智能手机，学校的考试成绩平均提高了6.4%。成绩差的学生分数增长更为明显，他们的分数平均增长了14%。

Professors Murphy and Beland said their study does not mean that smartphones and other technology have no place in helping learning.

墨菲和貝兰德教授说，他们的研究并不意味着智能手机和其他技术在帮助学习方面没有立足之地。

“There are， however， disadvantages to new technologies，” they said， mentioning the temptation5 to text， play games or chat on social media.

“然而，新技术也有缺点，”他们说，并提到发短信、玩游戏或在社交媒体上聊天的诱惑。

Therefore， cell phones will not be completely out of classrooms anytime soon. Cell phone ownership among young people and children has skyrocketed6 in the past few years. By 2013， 78 percent of teens ages 12 to 17 owned a cell phone， 47 percent of which were smartphones.

因此，手机不会很快完全离开教室。在过去的几年里，年轻人和儿童的手机持有量猛增。截至2013年， 12至17岁的青少年中78%的人拥有手机，其中47%是智能手机。

2012， the Atlantic reported that 20 percent of American third graders owned a cell phone and that number jumped to 80 percent by middle school. The benefits7 are easy to see—parents can be in direct contact with their children in the event of an emergency8， but the overuse of mobile phones can also have bad effects on the development of teenagers.

2012年，《大西洋月刊》报道说，20%的美国三年级学生拥有一部手机，而到了中学，这个数字上升到了80%。好处是显而易见的——在紧急情况下，父母可以直接与孩子联系，但过度使用手机对青少年的发展也会有不良影响。

Notes

1. plug [ ] v. 接入电源;将……与……接通

2. productivity [ ] n. 生产力;生产率;生产能力

3. policy [ ] n. 政策，方针

4. opt [ ] vi. 选择

5. temptation [ ] n. 引诱;诱惑物

6. skyrocket [ ] v. （价格）飞涨，猛涨;（使）……猛然上涨

7. benefit [ ] n. 利益，好处

8. emergency [ ] n. 紧急情况;突发事件;非常时刻

▲Questions：

[1]What do you usually do when you use a smartphone？通常你会用智能手机做些什么呢？