107 指考作文猜題：大學堂英文範文
http://www.learnerhall.org/2018/06/107_26.html
某國於 2012 年、2017 年調查 15 歲以上國人的閱讀習慣，此長條圖為調查的結果。調查結果依年代、性別呈現，百分比為過去三個月內閱讀至少一本小說 (novels) 與非小說書籍 (non-fiction books) 的讀者占整體受訪者之比例。請寫一篇英文作文，文長至少 120 個單詞。文分兩段，第一段，扼要描述調查結果。第二段，針對閱讀人口減少之現象，提出可能的理由。
The chart tracked the reading habits of those aged 15 and above. What first catches my eye is that compared with that in 2012, the reading rate in 2017 showed a downturn trend. Also, among the readers, the gender gap was obvious. Women tended to read more than men. And when it comes to genres, interestingly, novels were more popular with both male and female readers than non-fiction books.
One driver of the decline in literacy reading may be the abundance of highly distracting mobile devices, along with the easy access to the Internet. A common sight in restaurants, on the MRT or wherever people hang out goes like this: Head down, eyes glued to screen, finger scrolling down feeds, applying Instagram filters to their selfies, filling their overstimulated head with the never-ending forward march of juicy gossips. It turns out that time spent on smartphone screens increases to the point where it takes over many people’s lives altogether. This leaves them little time and less motivated to read. Besides, as the digital and graphic culture flourishes, reading frustrated people’s smartphone sense of being everywhere at once and getting everything within seconds. They cannot help feeling stuck on the page when reading and soon get bored as well as impatient.
As for the lag in men’s reading, this phenomenon may have something to do with the gender stereotypes. Boys are often encouraged to stay active in physical activities, from basketball to street dancing, instead of immersing themselves in books, which has long been considered an exclusively girly thing. And what prompts all the readers to choose fictions over non-fiction books is that the latter are labelled as informative, academic, serious, and in short, not fun to read. Viewed together, reading gradually loses its charm to digital culture, which envelops the world quickly and thoroughly.
