研究所、轉學考(插大)、學士後-英文題庫下載題庫

II. Reading Comprehension: Read the article below and answer the questions that follow. Mark your answers
on the scan sheet. (10%) [本大題於答案卡作答]

A report released last month suggests that video games are a vital and positive part of college students'
social lives, even though games may be keeping them from their studies.

The study on which the report was based was conducted by the Pew Internet & American Life Project,
which sponsors research to gauge the effect of the Internet on various aspects of everyday life. The
researchers made distinctions among video games played online, those played through a personal computer,
and those using a dedicated video-game console, such as a Sony PlayStation.

The study shows that for this generation of college students, gaming does not edge out other activities,
says Steve Jones, a professor of communication at the University of Illinois at Chicago, who supervised the
research.

"It's been with them forever, and they have never had to choose between gaming and other things," he
says. "It's already been in the mix for them since the kindergarten days.... It's not that disruptive as a result."
The researchers distributed paper surveys to more than 1,100 students at colleges across the country. The
findings are accurate to within 3.5 percentage points, the report says.

The study's least surprising finding is that most respondents -- 65 percent -- said they were regular
video-game players. One in five college students said games had helped them develop, and even improve,
friendships. Sixty percent said games provided a pastime when friends are not around.

The genders showed differences in the ways that they approached games: Women play computer and
Internet games more than men, while the two sexes play console games at about the same rate. The
researchers speculate that because console games are generally more violent and feature stereotyped gender
roles, they are less attractive to women.

"The men were telling us that gaming was a standard part of the entertainment and media mix for them,
and it was something they looked forward to doing," Mr. Jones says. "Women were telling us that they were
doing it to kill time, so it wasn't as prominent an activity in their everyday lives."
The time spent on gaming and socializing does seem to cut into classwork. About half of the students
said gaming distracts them from studying.

For one in 10, gaming is a procrastination tool. A third of the respondents said they played games during
class.

However, in a somewhat contradictory finding, two-thirds of the students said video games had no effect
on their college performance. The researchers noted that the amount of time the students spent studying
closely matched the results of other surveys. Sixty-two percent of the students said they studied about 7 hours
a week, and 15 percent said they studied 12 hours a week.

James Gee, a professor of education at the University of Wisconsin at Madison, is not heartened by the
figures on students’ reported study habits -- merely an hour a day for a full load of college courses.
But the professor, whose book _What Video Games Have to Teach Us About Learning and Literacy_ was
published in May, says that in his research on high-school and middle-school students, he has had a hard time
finding any whose schoolwork is, in fact, damaged by video games. "From the earliest ages, the game is one
among multiple tasks that people do and switch between," he says.

Gaming is a much more integral part of students' social lives than the Pew study suggests, Mr. Gee
believes. "The report is a good first swipe, but with any new technology, you want to know what the niches
are," he says.

Mr. Jones says the study is only a beginning for research on video games -- something that could be used
to push the creation of educational games for students.

"Those of us working in higher education could do more to show some of the positive sides of gaming,"
he says. "In some ways, it's unfortunate that we call them games, because that makes it hard for us to take
them seriously." (Published by Scott Carlson, in _The Chronicle of Higher Education_, 15 Aug. 2003.)