If our society ever needed a reading renaissance(复兴), it’s now. A study shows that adult reading (47) have dropped 10 percentage points in the past decade, with the steepest drop among those 18 to 24. "Only one half of young people read a book of any kind in 2002. If you read one short story in a teenager magazine, that would have (48) ," laments a director of research and analysis. He (49) the loss of readers to the booming world of technology, which attracts would-be readers to E-mail, online chats, and video games and leaves them with no time to cope with a novel. "These new forms of media undoubtedly have some benefits," says Steven Johnson, author of Everything Bad Is Good for You. Video games (50) problem-solving skills; TV shows promote mental gymnastics by (51) viewers to follow complex story lines. But books offer experience that can’t be gained from these other sources, from (52) vocabulary to stretching the imagination. "If they’re not reading at all," says Johnson, "that’s a huge problem." In fact, fewer kids are reading for pleasure. According to data (53) last week, the number of 17-year-olds who reported never or hardly ever reading for fun (54) from 9 percent in 1984 to 19 percent in 2004. At the same time, the (55) of 17-year-olds who read daily dropped from 31 to 22. This slow but steady retreat from books has not yet taken a toll on reading ability. Scores tot the nation’s youth have (56) constant over the past two decades(with an encouraging upswing among 9-year-olds). But given the strong apparent correlation between pleasure reading and reading skills, this means poorly for the future.
A. amount
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I. believing
J. released K. forcing L. improve M. styles N. building O. attributes