Welcome to the Electronic Village to explore new ways of language teaching and learning.

The practice of students endlessly copying letters and sentences from a blackboard is a thing of the past. With the coming of new technologies like computers and smartphone, writing by hand has become something of nostalgic (怀旧的)skill. However, while today's educators are using more and more technology in their teaching, many believe basic handwriting skills are still necessary for students to be successful—both in school and in life.

    Virginia Berninger, professor of educational psychology at the University of Washington, says it's important to continue teaching handwriting and help children acquire the skill of writing by hand.

Berninger and her colleagues conducted a study that looked at the ability of students to complete various writing tasks—both on a computer and by hand. The study, published in 2009, found that when writing with a pen and paper, participants wrote longer essays and more complete sentences and had a faster word production rate.

    In a more recent study, Berninger looked at what role spelling plays in a student's writing skills and found that how well children spell is tied to know well they can write. “Spelling makes some of the thinking parts of the brain active which helps us access our vocabulary, word meaning and concepts. It is allowing our written language to connect with ideas.” Berninger said.

    Spelling helps students translate ideas into words in their mind first and then to transcribe(转换) “those words in the mind written symbols on paper or keyboard and screen,” the study said. Seeing the words in the “mind's eye” helps children not only to turn their ideas into words, says Berninger, but also to spot(发现) spelling mistakes when they write the words down and to correct then over time.

     “In our computer age, some people believe that we don't have to teach spelling because we have spell checks,” she said. “But until a child has a functional spelling ability of about a fifth grade level, they won't have the knowledge to choose the correct spelling among the options given by the computer.”

    In one of the world's most forbidding environments, Polar bears spend !heir summers roaming (漫步) the Arctic on large pieces of floating ice. They drift(漂移) for hundreds of miles, finding mates, hunting for seals , and fatting themselves up for the winter. Without the floating ice , the world's largest bears could not survive Yet at this moment , the polar bears' Arctic habitat (栖息地) is melting away under it because of global warming.

    Over the past three decades, more than a million square miles of floating ice has disappeared Scientists predict that, if the current rate of global warming continues, most, if not all, of the bears' floating ice will be gone by 2100. As a result, the world's polar bears could face global dying out by the end of this century.

    Already, the ice on the southern edge of the polar bears' habitat is melting about three weeks earlier than in the past. The loss of those key weeks leaves the bears less time to hunt, eat and store up fat. Once the ice melts, the bears must fast for up to eight months on land until the floating ice returns. As a result of early melting, there has been a 14 percent decline in the Hudson Bay polar bear population over the past ten years- a fall clearly caused by global warming.

    Besides, a growing number of polar bears may be drowning (溺水) as they are forced to swim more often, and for longer distances, looking for ice sheets(冰原). According to a report by the US Mincrals Management Service, researchers observed four dead polar bears floating 60miles off Alaska in September of2006 and said it was likely that many other bears swimming far off shore also drowned. Scientists have concluded that the worldwide population of about 20,000polar bears is likely to become smaller by more than 30 percent in the next 35 to 50 years alone.

    The World Bank is warning that the West Africa Ebola outbreak could seriously harm the economies (经济)of Guinea, Liberia and Sierra Leone unless action is taken quickly. World Bank President Jim Yong Kim spoke to reporters recently to discuss the effects of the Ebola spread.

    "Our findings show that if the virus(病毒)continues to spread, the economic cost to these countries could grow eight times by 2015. This would be a big catastrophe to their already weak economies," said Kim.

    Mr. Kim says, "saving lives and preventing new spread" is most important. The bank has given $117-million for an "immediate help." The World Bank President says the SARS outbreak between 2002 and 2004 showed how a disease could damage economies. 800 people died from SARS and the economic losses were up to $40-billion.

    Mr. Kim says SARS and the H1N1 outbreak of 2009 taught that fear and avoidance resulted in about 90-percent of the economic losses. That means the disease is causing two levels of economic damage.

    "There are two kinds of contagion(传染). One is connected with the virus itself and the second is connected with the spread of fear about the virus," said Kim.

    The World Bank thinks the losses to the economies of Liberia, Sierra Leone and Guinea will be big .Mr. Kim says losses could be about $97-million at the moment.

    Mr. Kim says fast action is necessary. He says getting the disease under control is still far away. That is because there are not enough health care workers in the affected areas. The World Bank President says the most important measure is to act quickly in order to limit economic losses.

    The government says spending £4.2 million on planting trees in towns and cities will improve the quality of people's lives. But do trees really make people happy?

    Some British and US surveys suggest a thick green lawn, or well-landscaped yard can increase the government property prices by as much as 15%. But the government's Big Tree Plant campaign, which aims to plant one million trees in English urban areas over the next four years, says trees are not only good for our bank balance, but they do wonders for our happiness. And it says getting people to plant makes communities even happier. So do people really care about trees and do they improve lives? Margaret Lipscombe, director of urban programs at the Tree Council, says, “Not only are trees beautiful but they are practical. Trees also encourage healthier lifestyles and studies have shown people are calmer when trees are in their community,” A US study suggests that patients who have a view of nature through hospital windows recover better after operations.

    Ms. Lipscombe says that the trees have also been known to slow down the traffic because drivers will go more slowly when there is something in their sights. She admits some people have negative feelings about trees because they worry about slipping on berries, bird droppings on cars or blocked light.

    Ms. Lipscombe also says when she first moved into the area, there were no trees on her street. “I t was an area where there were lots of factories with high walls. It looked like an abandoned place that you didn't want, especially as a woman on your own. Now everything is different. With lots of trees around, the street looks more attractive. People are not as frightened and no longer run down the road to get home. The trees also bring people out onto the street and make a stronger community feel.”

    When men and women take personality tests, some of the old Mars-Venus stereotypes(定式)keep reappearing. On average, women are more cooperative, kind, cautious and emotionally enthusiastic. Men tend to be more competitive, confident, rude and emotionally flat. Clear differences appear in early childhood and never disappear.

    What's not clear is the origin of these differences. Evolutionary psychologists think that these are natural features from ancient hunters and gatherers. Another school of psychologists argues that both sexes' personalities have been shaped by traditional social roles, and that personality differences will shrink as women spend less time taking care of children and more time in jobs outside the home.

    To test these hypotheses(假设), a series of research teams have repeatedly analyzed personality tests taken by men and women in more than 60 countries around the world. For evolutionary psychologists, the bad news is that the size of the gender gap in personality varies among cultures. For social-role psychologists, the bad news is that the change is going in the wrong direction. It looks as if personality differences between men and women are smaller in traditional cultures like India's or Zimbabwe's than in the Netherlands or the United States. A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal(男权的)Botswanan clan(部族)seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to separate.

    These findings are so unbelievable that some researchers have argued they must be due to cross-cultural problems with the personality tests. But according to new data from 40.000 men and women on six continents, David P. Schmitt and his colleagues conclude that the trends are real. Dr. Schmitt, a psychologist at Bradley University in Illinois and the director of the International Sexuality Description Project, suggests that as wealthy modern societies level(使平等)the barriers between women and men, some ancient internal differences are being developed.

    The biggest changes recorded by the researchers involve the personalities of men, not women.

    Men in traditional agricultural societies and poorer countries seem more cautious and anxious, less confident and less competitive than men in the most progressive and rich countries of Europe and North America.

    To explain these differences, Dr. Schmitt and his partners from Austria and Estonia point to the hardships of life in poorer countries. They note that in some other species, environmental stress tends to extremely affect the larger sex. And, they say, there are examples of stress decreasing biological sex differences in humans.