Holly老師的英語新天地

Task 2: Effects of television on childhood education

請注意：此為自由式的進階寫作範本，所以並未套用課程中的模板喔！同學可以先當作閱讀賞析，並從中學習漂亮的句子或片語。

Television and Childhood Education

The mass media may be a particularly effective way to reach and educate preschool children and their parents in communities where poor socioeconomic conditions are prevalent. After the family, television is probably the most important influence on child development and behaviour. Children spend more time watching television than on any other activity except sleeping. Children from low-income families spend more time in front of TV than others. Television’s influence on children is a function of the length of time they spend watching it, and the cumulative effect of what they see.

Television can also promote pro-social behaviour. Television can exert its strongest pro-social influence in the area of learning and cognitive development. ‘Sesame Street’ has created demonstrable increases in children’s abilities with simple arithmetic and the alphabet as well as the pro-social attitudes of racial harmony, cooperation, and kindness. In fact, some studies conclude that young disadvantaged children achieve better in school if they watch one to two hours of television per day, although more than this is detrimental to academic performance at all ages.

A group of academics, consisting of programmers, pediatricians, psychiatrists and teachers studied the broadcast of ‘sesame Street’ in 1989. This programme was designed to improve educational and instructional benefit to pre-school Turkish children. The preliminary study of ‘Sesame Street’ was carried out in 1991 to investigate the impact of programme on preschool education. The proportion of ‘Sesame Street’ watching among studied 147 children was 95%. Among the study population, 88% of children enjoyed ‘Sesame Street’ and wanted to watch ‘Sesame Street’. 37% of them watched it alone, 52% watched it with family and 9% with friends. After watching ‘Sesame Street’, 53% of children started to count numbers, 26% started to pun, 65% learned the names of geometrical figures while 34% of children improved their vocabulary.

Television may be a cause as well as a solution for many serious childhood problems. Excessive viewing of television has also been linked to aggressive behaviour, violence, childhood obesity. Because of the amount of time children spend in front of the television set, television exerts a so-called displacement effect, pushing aside more active pursuits like playing outside with friends or reading books.

Television is a powerful medium and powerful influence on the life of children. With respect to television, there is much that can be done, as physicians, as citizens, and as parents.

The community should support legislation making broadcast of high-quality and non-violent children programming a condition of license renewal and seek a revival of legislation mandating at least 1 hour per day of programmes of educational and instructional benefit to children. Alcohol, cigarette and toy advertising on television should be eliminated. Parents should be advised to limit their children to watching no more than one to two hours of television per day. Families should participate in the selection of the programmes that their children watch as young children sometimes have a hard time knowing what is real and what is not. Parents should watch television with their children and then talk about it after it ends. A poor programme might turn out to be a good learning experience if the mother or father is there to help the child get the right message.