Should Fragmented Reading Be Encouraged?

The rapid development of information technology has profoundly changed the way people read, as there is no need to buy printed books with the current proliferation of computers and smart mobile devices. While some people applaud the change in reading trends for its flexibility and convenience, others believe that such change may harm people’s reading and thinking capabilities.

A survey on reading habits released by the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication in mid-April shows that 73 percent of Chinese adults read digitally, via online, mobile, digital readers and smart pads, compared to 68.2 percent in 2016. Experts point out that the major part of this falls in the category of light and fragmented reading.

Fragmented reading refers to readers only getting incomplete and intermittent information, especially from digital books via smart phones and other online terminals. Xu Shengguo, Director of Applied Theory Studies Institute of the Chinese Academy of Press and Publication, who chaired the survey, noted that fragmentary information is mainly from short contents on platforms such as Weibo, Facebook and Twitter, as well as short pieces broken down from long articles, which can be read in fragmentary time.

There have been debates on whether fragmented reading should be encouraged. Some people believe that fragmented reading can enable readers to better utilize their short free time to obtain knowledge. For them, fragmented reading is the trend of the future.

But those who are against it think such a habit will negatively impact people’s ability of independent thinking as they cannot get in-depth, critical, rational and systematic knowledge through reading simple and fragmentary information.

pros

Zhao Jianmin

Professor of Shanghai University

Thanks to fragmentary information, readers can access a sea of knowledge rapidly anywhere and at any time. In addition, readers can interact with the authors on their digital terminals. In this sense, it represents the future development trend of reading in the Internet era. Readers only need to focus on the information they are interested in and conveniently share the information with their friends via social media. This way, socialized information sharing can help readers study, think and exchange views. In addition, fragmented reading can help popularize knowledge. Because information on the Internet is vast in quantity, readers are able to access information anywhere and at any time.

Zhang Wei 　

Founder of we-media www.shixiang.xin

Fragmented reading is a savior of our current society as its greatest contribution is to encourage people to read in their daily life. What makes people powerful is not reading itself, but people’s thinking and emotions triggered by daily reading. Compared with long articles or big books, fragmentary information can cover much larger areas and provide as much information as possible for readers within a limited time frame. In this sense, fragmentary information is more important for daily reading, while systematic knowledge, usually gained through intensive reading is important for handing down knowledge from generation to generation. In the era of the Internet, people can have a brand-new way of reading by taking full advantage of fragmented reading featuring convenience and efficiency.

Nie Zhenning

Hainan Daily

Throughout human history, people’s reading habits consist of two major parts: fragmented reading and in-depth reading, both of which are important. For example, The Analects of Confucius, written by Confucius’ students more than 2,500 years ago, and The Republic, by Plato, are complied with fragmentary information. They are still the greatest works today. The fragmentary information also did not influence the emergence of large amounts of long articles and, on the contrary, it greatly encouraged people’s intensive reading. Reading a newspaper is also a kind of fragmented reading. The rise of the newspaper industry has greatly encouraged the literary development in modern China, giving rise to numerous modern classical works. China’s national reading ratio is comparatively low worldwide. Fragmented reading is an efficient way to encourage people to read.

cons

Hao Jianguo

Associate Editor in Chief of Hebei Education Publish House

As a way of reading in the Internet era, fragmented reading, strictly speaking, is more like browsing, not reading. Without integrated, consistent and in-depth contents, fragmentary information can only provide superficial knowledge. As the information is unsystematically complied, readers usually soon forget what they have read.

Fragmented reading can only provide temporary and shortpiece information. In the past, people needed to read a lot of books before they could get the information they wanted or answers to their questions. Actually, through this process, though quite long, readers greatly expand their knowledge, enhance their understanding and digest more information.

Feng Xu

Founder of www.xinli001.com

I am against fragmented reading as it has several demerits. First of all, it can make people lazy in reading paper-based books to study in-depth knowledge. The main purpose of fragmentary information is not for spreading knowledge, but for attracting Internet users’ attention so as to get higher click-through rate. Thus, the fragmentary information on the Internet, usually with attractive headlines, aims at arousing readers’ emotions instead of making them think independently.

Second, unsystematic knowledge can harm people’s reasoning process. Fragmentary information cannot provide people with in-depth and comprehensive knowledge, but some shallow and simple suggestions. Readers cannot get a sense of fulfillment through fragmentary viewpoints.

Zhang Quanmin

Teacher from Zhejiang Province

As a teacher, I worry very much about my students’ fragmented reading habits and the one-dimensional way of thinking it brings about. For many young students not well capable of thinking independently and making appropriate judgment, fragmented reading is not a way for them to improve themselves, but a way of shallow and vulgar entertainment.

Because of the convenience of digital information, students usually first turn to the Internet for solutions when they face challenges. But they lack the capacity of making judgments independently and selecting the correct information, which could give them the wrong message that they could solve any problems.

So, students should stay away from fragmented reading and improve themselves through in-depth and intensive reading.