Have you ever picked up a pen to write some characters, but you can't (记得) what they look like?

    You're not alone. CCTV-10 started a show (叫做) Chinese Character Dictation Com-petition (《中国汉字听写大会》) last year. On the show, only three out of 10 adults（正确地）wrote bingjiling (ice cream 冰激凌), and no one could   write out penti (sneeze喷嚏). According to a survey, 94.1% of people said they had memory lapses (差错) when (写) some characters.

    It seems that Chinese characters are in danger. Since the digital(数码) age began, fewer and (少) people use pens and paper. Most people now write Chinese on keyboards using pinyin. As a(结果), many people would forget the features（特征）of a Chinese character, such as its structure and （意思）easily.

    Chinese characters are one of the world's（古老的）written languages, dating back (追溯到) to 1100 BC. It's not only a way for us to record things,（而且）it's important to pass on Chinese culture. For example, the character nan (male男) is made up of two(部分), tian (farmland田) and li (strength力). We can tell from it that in the old times Chinese men were in charge of (负责) working on the farmland.