Functional Illiterates
The affliction of illiteracy is being wiped out, but a new disease is replacing it. People can read, but won’t. They buy newspapers and magazines, even books on occasion, but only scan them. Their reading skills atrophy, and their bellies grow bigger in front of T.V sets.
A certain percentage of the population, which is over 14, can read and write a little, but not well enough, say, to read want ads, fill out forms or follow safety instructions. They are called functional illiterates.
But ! am concerned about an upper group, those people who graduated from high school or college, and are regarded as literade. They account for the part of the population that should be running the country, making decision, keeping business and schools going, tending to our health and safety, even voting on occasion.
There people have allowed their reading interests, and therefore their reading skills, to slipThe less they read, the more their reading skills diminish: the old vicious cycle.
Then there is the generation now in its 30s, reared in the TV age. They spend nearly as many hours in front of TV sets as they did in classrooms. They often become scanners of reading material. Naturally, they pass their habits on to their children, now of school age. Their children will become even more TV and audio-visual minded, and so the cycle continues.
TV proliferates. It is watched in airports, boats, patios. If TV sets were placed in libraries, I’m sure many people would drop books and watch. Reading material must now compete for attention with TV, even in some bathrooms. I’am not against TV, but am I for reading because it’s fundamental to thinking? Reading makes the mind work. TV usually does not. Minds that don’t work become flabby. The result is a mediocre society.
Vocabulary:
Flabby: mou
To wipe out: to rub, to erase completely
To scan: parcourir
Wants ads: demande d’emploi
To rear: to bring up
Questions
1) Find title to the text and justify it (3pts)
2) Name the three groups in which the author puts people. Tell what they have in common (3pts)
3) “Reading makes the mind work. T.V usually does not” Explain this assertion of the writer and illustrate with examples (4pts)
4) What are the advantages and disadvantages of watching television for a pupil? (4pts)
Translation
Translate the last paragraph of the text into French. (“T.V proliferates…….. The result is a mediocre society ‘’)