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  剑14Test1雅思阅读Passage1原文-THE IMPORTANCE OF CHILDREN'S PLAY

  Brick by brick,six- year-old Alice is building a magical kingdom. Imagining fairy-tale turrets and fire-breathing dragons, wicked witches and gallant heroes, she's creating an enchanting world.Although she isn't aware of it, this fantasy is helping her take her first steps towards her capacity for creativity and so it will have important repercussions in her adult life.

  Minutes later, Alice has abandoned the kingdom in favour of playing schools with her younnger brother.When she bosses him around as his "teacher",she's practising how to regulate her emotions through pretence.Later on,when they tire of this and settle down with a board game, she's learning about the need to follow rules and take tums with a partner.

  "Play in all its rich variety is one of the highest achievements of the human specials,"says Dr David Whitebread from the Faculty of Education at the University of Cambridge, UK.It underpins how we develop as intellectual,problem-solving adults and is crucial to our success as a highly adaptable species

  Recognising the importance of play is not new:over two millennia ago,the Greek philosopher Plato extolled its virtues as a means of developing skills for adult life,and ideas about play-based learning have been developing since the 19th century

  But we live in changing times,and Whitebread is mindful of a worldwide decline in play,pointing out that over half the people in the world now live in cities. "The opportunities for free play,which I experienced almost every day of my childhood, are becoming increasingly scarce,"he says.Outdoor play is curtailed by perceptions of risk to do with traffic, as well as parents'increased wish to protect their children from being the victims of crime, and by the emphasis on"earlier is better which is leading to greater competition in academic learning and schools.

  International bodies like the United Nations and the European Union have begun to developpolicies concerned with children's right to play, and to consider implications for leisure facilitiesand educational programmes. But what they often lack is the evidence to base policies on.

  ‘The type of play we are interested in is child-initiated, spontaneous and unpredictable - but, as soon as you ask a five-year-old "to play", then you as the researcher have intervened,'explains Dr Sara Baker. 'And we want to know what the long-term impact of play is. It's a real challenge.'

  Dr Jenny Gibson agrees, pointing out that although some of the steps in the puzzle of how and why play is important have been looked at, there is very little data on the impact it has on the child's later life.

  Now, thanks to the university's new Centre for Research on Play in Education, Development and Learning (PEDAL), Whitebread, Baker, Gibson and a team of researchers hope to provide evidence on the role played by play in how a child develops.

  'A strong possibility is that play supports the early development of children's self-control,' explains Baker. 'This is our ability to develop awareness of our own thinking processes - it influences how effectively we go about undertaking challenging activities.'

  In a study carried out by Baker with toddlers and young pre-schoolers, she found that children with greater self-control solved problems more quickly when exploring an unfamiliar set-up requiring scientific reasoning. 'This sort of evidence makes us think that giving children the chance to play will make them more successful problem-solvers in the long run.'

  If playful experiences do facilitate this aspect of development, say the researchers, it could be extremely significant for educational practices, because the ability to self-regulate has been shown to be a key predictor of academic performance.

  Gibson adds: 'Playful behaviour is also an important indicator of healthy social and emotional development. In my previous research, I investigated how observing children at play can give us important clues about their well-being and can even be useful in the diagnosis of neurodevelopmental disorders like autism.'

  Whitebread's recent research has involved developing a play-based approach to supporting children's writing. 'Many primary school children find writing difficult, but we showed in a previous study that a playful stimulus was far more effective than an instructional one.' Children wrote longer and better-structured stories when they first played with dolls representing characters in the story. In the latest study, children first created their story with Lego*, with similar results. 'Many teachers commented that they had always previously had children saying they didn't know what to write about. With the Lego building, however, not a single child said this through the whole year of the project.'

  Whitebread, who directs PEDAL, trained as a primary school teacher in the early 1970s, when, as he describes, 'the teaching of young children was largely a quiet backwater, untroubled by any serious intellectual debate or controversy.' Now, the landscape is very different, with hotly debated topics such as school starting age.

  'Somehow the importance of play has been lost in recent decades. It's regarded as something trivial, or even as something negative that contrasts with "work". Let's not lose sight of its benefits, and the fundamental contributions it makes to human achievements in the arts, sciences and technology. Let's make sure children have a rich diet of play experiences.'

  剑14Test1雅思阅读Passage1原文翻译

  六岁的Alice正在一点点地建造一个魔法王国。她一边幻想着童话里的塔楼和喷火的E龙,邪恶的女巫和勇敢的英雄,一边创造着一个让人着迷的世界。这种幻想正在帮她朝创造力迈出第一步,并将对她的成年生活产生重要影响,尽管她自己还没有意识到。

  几分钟后,Aice抛下她建造的王国,转而和弟弟玩起了假装上学的游戏。当Alice像老师”一样给弟弟发号施令时,她正通过假扮行为来练习如何调节情绪。随后,当他们玩腻了这个游戏而专心于棋盘游戏时,她又在学习遵守规则和与伙伴轮流上阵的必要性。

  “形式多样的玩要是人类这个物种最伟大的成就之一,”英国剑桥大学教育学院的David Whitebread博士这样说."玩耍帮助我们成长为有才智、善于解决问题的成年人,对我们这种适应力强的物种取得成功来说至关重要。”

  玩耍的重要性并不是最近才被意识到的:200年前,希腊哲学家柏拉图就赞美了玩耍的好处,认为它是为成年生活培养技能的手段;而自19世纪起,以玩耍为基础的学习理念就在不断发展。

  但我们生活在一个不断变化的时代, Whitebread注意到全球范围内的玩耍都正在减少,他指出全球一半以上的人口都居住在城市。“我在童年时几乎每天都能自由玩耍,如今这种机会正在逐渐减少,”他说道。户外玩耍的减少是出于对交通事故风险的担忧、家长想要保护孩子远离犯罪伤害的强烈愿望,以及当前对“越早越好”学习理念的看重,而这一强化也引起了激烈的学业和学校竞争。

  联合国和欧盟等国际组织已经开始制定保护儿童玩耍权利的政策,并开始考量休闲设施和教育项目的影响。但他们通常缺少制定相关政策的依据。

  “我们感兴趣的玩耍是儿童主导的、自发的、不可预知的——但是,一旦你叫一个五岁的孩子‘去玩’,那你作为研究者就已经对其进行了干预,” Sara Baker博士这样解释。“我们想知道玩耍的长期影响是什么。这真是项挑战。”

  Jerry Gibson博士对此表示赞同,并指出:虽然在玩耍如何以及为何重要这个难题中我们已经有了一些阶段性研究,但关于玩耍对儿童今后的生活到底有何影响的数据少之又少。

  现在,得益于剑桥大学新成立的“教育、成长、学习中的玩耍行为研究中心(PEDAL), Whitebread、Baker、Gibson和研究团队希望能够为玩耍在儿童成长中所起的作用提供依据。

  一个很大的可能性是玩耍有助于儿童自控力的早期发展,” Baker解释道。“自控力是指能够培养自己的意识来认知自己的思考模式——这一能力影响我们着手应对挑战性活动的效率。”

  在 Baker针对幼儿和学龄前儿童进行的一项研究中,她发现在探索一个需要科学推理的陌生领域时,自控力较强的儿童能更快地解决。“这类证据让我们认为,从长远来看,给儿童玩耍的机会能使他们更擅于解决问题。

  研究者们说,如果玩耍经历真的能够促进这方面的发展,这将对救育实践产生极其重要的影响,因为自我控制力已经成为学业表现的一个关键性预测指标。

  Gibson补充道;“玩耍行为也是健康的社交和情绪发展的重要指标。在之前的研究中，我研究了观察玩要中的儿童如何可以为我们提供他们健康状况的重要线索。甚至如何帮助我们诊断自闭症等神经发育障碍。”

  Whitebread最近的研究提到了开发一种以玩耍为基础的方法来帮助儿童写作。“许多小学生觉得写作很困难,但在之前的一项研究中,我们发现玩要的激励远比教有的激励更有效。”当孩子们第一次和代表故事中角色的娃娃玩耍时,就写出了更长、结构更好的故事在最新的研究中,孩子们第一次用乐高积木来创作故事,也得到了相似的结果。“许多老师留言说,他们先前总遇到一些孩子说自己不知道写些什么。然而,以乐高建筑为对象时,在长达一年的研究中没有一个孩子再这样说过。”

  主管 PEDAL的 Whitebread在20世纪70年代早期曾是一位小学老师,他形容那时幼儿教育在很大程度上是一潭死水,不存在任何严肃的智力辩论或争议。”而现在,形势不同了,连入学年龄都成为热议的话题。

  “不知为何,玩要在最近几十年失去了重要性。玩要被视为微不足道的事情,甚至是和‘努力’相冲突的消极事情。我们不能忽视玩耍的好处,也不能忽视它对人类在艺术、科卷和技术领域取得的成就的重大贡献。我们必须确保孩子们有丰富的玩要经历。”

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