成年人是否有阅读障碍？也许我们的阅读能力还没有十岁的小孩强！—— 本期跟着Jerry老师一起读外刊！看看这是个什么让人“破防”的真相~
外刊原文：
Can you read as well as a ten-year-old?
Reflection:Answer the question， after reading the whole article：
What deteriorates（使...恶化） the literacy of individuals in todays society？And what can be done to address the concern？
01.
Does it often feel as if the world is getting stupider? Data released on December 10th by the OECD, a club of mostly rich countries, suggest this may not be all in your head.Roughly（大约 =？ ）every ten years the organisation asks adults in dozens of places to sit tests innumeracy and literacy（算数&识字能力）. The questions it poses are not abstractbrainteasers（脑筋急转弯）, spelling tests ormental arithmetic（心算）. They aim to mimic problems people aged 16-65 face in daily life, whether they are working in a factory or an office, or simply trying to make sense of the news.
Insights：OECD's founding membership was composed of basically all capitalist Western European countries (Turkey included), plus the United States and Canada. AKA ”富国俱乐部”
译：
有没有觉得仿佛世界变得越来越笨了？12月OECD（富国俱乐部）发布的数据这可能并非只是你一个人的想法。大约每十年这个组织就会让来自不同地方的成年人坐下来测验自己的算术和识字能力。提出的问题并不是抽象的脑筋急转弯，拼写测试或者是心算。它们是去模仿人们16-65岁中每天遇到的问题，无论是在工厂工作，办公室工作，还是单纯的想要理解新闻。
02.
The latest tests were carried out in 31 rich countries, and their findings areunnerving（不安的）. They suggest that a fifth of adults do no better in maths and reading than might be expected of a primary-school child. The direction of travel is even less encouraging. In maths, average scores have risen in a few places over the past ten years, but fallen in almost as many. In literacy, a lot more countries have seenscores declinethanadvance, despite the fact that adults hold more and higher educational qualifications than ever before.
*Pay attention to the verbs used to describe the rise and fall of numbers
Writing Task：
【译文】
最新的测试在31个富裕国家中进行，结果令人不安。测试显示，五分之一的成年人在数学和阅读方面的表现仅相当于小学生的水平。更令人担忧的是发展的趋势。在过去十年中，数学的平均分数在少数地方有所上升，但在几乎同样多的地方有所下降。而在读写能力方面，尽管成年人拥有比以往更多且更高的教育资格，但更多国家的分数出现了下降，而非提升。
03.
Demographic change（人口变化）offers some explanation. New immigrants often struggle with a new language. The native-born have ageing brains. But even after adjusting for this, trends remaingloomy（沮丧，阴暗的）, especially in literacy. Some speculate that Netflix, video games and social media aresapping（削弱）acuity. It is just as likely that education and training systems have misfired.
★ 词汇：削弱≈undermine
【造句练习】：
01.她消极的态度削弱了大家的热情（sap）
02.在几小时的高强度工作后，压力开始侵蚀我的耐心（sap）
【译文】
人口变化提供了一些解释。新移民往往难以适应新的语言，而本土出生的人则面临大脑老化的问题。但即使在调整了这些因素后，趋势依然令人沮丧，尤其是在读写能力方面。一些人推测，Netflix、电子游戏和社交媒体正在削弱人们的敏锐度。同样有可能的是，教育和培训体系未能发挥应有的作用。
04.
These disappointing results deserve more attention than they are likely to get. Basic numeracy and literacy areoddly unfashionable（=unexpected）causes—especially when adults lack them. Students of education prefer to debate how to teach fashionable “soft skills”.Hype（热度/炒作）around generative artificial intelligence does not help:harping on(重复说）about the importance of times-tables seems even morefuddy-duddy（古板；顽固不变的）when talking robots promise to do all the hard work.
Vocab： Harp on: repeat something in an annoying way.
译文：
这些令人失望的结果值得比它们可能得到的更多关注。基本的数学和读写能力却出人意料地不受重视——尤其是当成年人缺乏这些能力时。教育研究者更倾向于讨论如何教授流行的“软技能”。围绕生成式人工智能的炒作也无济于事：当会说话的机器人承诺代劳所有繁重工作时，强调乘法表的重要性似乎显得更加老派和落伍。
05.
Yet a century of technologicalupheaval（剧变=shakeup）has not cut demand for people who are good with numbers, or who have a way with words. Adults who do badly in the OECD’s tests earn vastly less than those who ace them. They are also in poorer health, less satisfied with their life, less trusting of others and more likely to feel that they have no voice in politics. In many countries the gap in ability between the highest- and lowest-skilled grown-ups is widening (not because smarty-pants are doing better, but because the least able are doing worse).Writ large（macroscopically 宏观来看）, such trends lead nowhere good.
补充：Writ large 一般指明显的/突出的意思
【造句】整个国家都在尤为繁荣（Writ large）。
1#造句
整个国家都在尤为繁荣（Writ large）
Growing prosperity is writ large over the country as a whole.
【译文】
然而，一个世纪的技术变革并未减少对擅长数字或文字的人才的需求。在经合组织（OECD）的测试中表现不佳的成年人，其收入远低于那些表现优异的人。此外，他们的健康状况更差，对生活的满意度更低，对他人的信任度也较低，并且更可能感到自己在政治中没有发言权。在许多国家，最高技能和最低技能成年人之间的能力差距正在扩大（这并不是因为高技能者表现更好，而是因为低技能者表现更差）。从宏观来看，这种趋势注定不会带来好的结果。
06.
What to do? Improving lessons for children is the surest way of creating more capable grown-ups; governments ought to start there. England’s adults havecrept up（慢慢接近/上升）the OECD’s league table, mostly because the youngest ones (aged 16-24) are scoring better than before. That may reflect reforms which have made exams for older teenagers more difficult, and begun requiring youngsters who fail them to try again. In America, which has done fairly badly, states arejunking（v.废弃）tests that were in the past used to determine who graduated from high school. Grades there are inflating unchecked.
【译文】
该做什么？改善儿童的课程是培养更有能力成年人的最可靠方式，各国政府应从这里开始。英国的成年人在经合组织（OECD）的排名中有所上升，这主要归功于最年轻的一代（16-24岁）比以前取得了更好的成绩。这可能反映了改革的效果，例如让青少年的考试更加困难，并要求未通过考试的学生重新尝试。在美国，表现相对较差，各州正在废除过去用于决定谁能高中毕业的测试，成绩也在毫无控制地膨胀。
07.
1#翻译此句：第二项任务是为成人教育的老化系统注入活力
点击空白处查看答案
The second task is tooil（=making sth work smoothly）creaking systems（=ineffective and redundant social system）for educating adults.
⭐欣赏一下oil 作动词—润滑的用法，creaking system通过用拟声词对 aging population的替换。语言的使用是如此妙哉~
These hand（=offer）dropouts second chances; they also serve people who change careers and help migrants integrate. Yet politicians grant thempaltry（little amount of）budgets, in part because they underestimate the trickiness of what they are being asked to accomplish. People with the weakest skills tend to have the least time and money for self-improvement. They are less likely to attend adult classes, or get training, even though they are the most in need.
【译文】
第二项任务是为成人教育的老化系统注入活力。这些系统为辍学者提供第二次机会，同时也为职业转换者提供帮助，并协助移民融入社会。然而，政客们为这些系统拨出的预算微乎其微，部分原因是他们低估了这些系统所需完成任务的复杂性。技能最弱的人往往最缺乏时间和金钱来进行自我提升。尽管他们最需要帮助，但他们参加成人课程或接受培训的可能性却更低。
08.
In too many places amania(热潮/狂热）for universities has sappedfunding andfocus from all the other kinds of lessons that people aged 18 and above could be offered. Degrees are becoming less meaningful: the OECD has found that even some university graduates post numeracy and literacy scores that might embarrass a child. Meanwhile, oldies who want to return to class without embarking on long, expensive university courses often find good alternatives are lacking. Accelerating efforts to fix all these problems seems like a bright idea.
Writing technique in the highlighted phrase: Funding&Focus： alliteration（压头韵）
【译文】
在许多地方，对大学的狂热削弱了对其他类型教育的资金支持和关注，这些教育本可以提供给18岁及以上的人群。学位的意义正在减弱：经合组织（OECD）发现，即使是一些大学毕业生，其数学和读写能力得分可能会让孩子都感到羞愧。同时，那些想要重返课堂但又不愿投入时间和金钱去完成昂贵大学课程的老年人，往往发现缺乏好的替代选择。加速解决这些问题的努力似乎是一个明智的想法。
文中提到，Netflix、电子游戏和社交媒体正在削弱人们的敏锐度，事实也是如此，我们每天接受大量碎片信息，过目就忘，久而久之便养成了浅读的习惯，很难沉下心来去字句斟酌的阅读。在通才的日常教学中，我们依旧鼓励学生放下电子产品，减少刷社交媒体的时间，认真精听精读文章材料、拓展课外读物，除了可以更好地吸取知识以外，也是一种长期主义的心智锻炼呢~
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