雅思学习：Asian Youth Forgetting How to Write-英语网刊-在线英语听力室

A new study commissioned by the China Daily Youth newspaper has found many young Chinese people are forgetting how to write traditional Chinese. Chinese schoolchildren grow up memorizing well over 3,000 different characters. However, the study shows they rarely need to write them by hand and are forgetting their shape. Instead, young people are using their phones and computers to write. On these, they type in a system called ‘pinyin,’ which is the sounds of the Chinese characters written on an English keyboard. A list then appears showing the corresponding character in Mandarin. The report said 83% of the 2,072 respondents have problems writing characters, while 43% said they only write when they need to sign something.
The problem is so big that there is a name for it: ‘tibiwangzi,’ which means “take pen, forget character”. Chinese characters are the oldest writing system in the world in current use. They date back over 3,000 years. University student Li Hanwei, 21, said: "I can remember the shape, but I can’t remember the strokes that you need to write it…It’s a bit of a problem." The phenomenon is known as “character amnesia” and is also common in Japan, where Chinese characters are one of four different alphabets used in writing. Ayumi Kawamoto, 23, explained why she often forgot how to recall and write characters she learnt at school: "We rely too much on the conversion function on our phones and PCs."

1. WRITING: Walk around the class and talk to other students about writing. Change partners often. Sit with your first partner(s) and share your findings.
2. CHAT: In pairs / groups, decide which of these topics or words from the article are most interesting and which are most boring.

studies / forgetting / memorizing / shapes / phones / computers / typing / characters / problems / writing systems / strokes / phenomenon / amnesia / alphabets / function

Have a chat about the topics you liked. Change topics and partners frequently.
3. FORGETTING: Can we forget these things? Complete this table with your partner(s). Change partners and share what you wrote. Change and share again.

	Dangers of forgetting	How we stop forgetting
Writing with pens
Manners
Traditional cooking
Festivals
Friends
English

4. MOBILES: Students A strongly believe mobile phones are much more important than pens and pencils; Students B strongly believe the opposite. Change partners again and talk about your conversations.
5. LANGUAGE: Which of these are most important? Rank these and share your rankings with your partner. Put the most important at the top. Change partners and share your rankings again.

Writing
Speaking
Spelling
Vocabulary

Pronunciation
Listening
Reading
Grammar

6. KEYBOARD: Spend one minute writing down all of the different words you associate with the word ‘keyboard’. Share your words with your partner(s) and talk about them. Together, put the words into different categories.

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