CertTrans Sample Text
This text has a basic science and academic underpinning and covers technology and its effects on human bodies. It is therefore a piece that might need translation in a publishing, commercial, health or government policy context. At just over 300 words it is a little shorter than the Unit 01 text (which will be around 500 words) but is similar to the likely length of texts for Units 02 or 03 and illustrative of the type of text which will be used in all three units in terms of grammar and complexity of vocabulary.
Limiting screen use for one week may improve teenagers' sleep, researchers find.
Sleep problems suffered by teenagers can be improved after just one week by limiting evening exposure to light-emitting screens, a study suggests. The research indicates that by reducing their exposure to blue light-emitting devices in the evening, adolescents can improve their sleep quality and reduce symptoms of fatigue, lack of concentration and mood swings.
The research from the Netherlands found that teenagers who had more than four hours per day of screen time had a disrupted sleep pattern compared to those who recorded less than one hour per day of screen time. The team conducted a trial to assess the effects of reducing screen exposure, which resulted in a reduction in reported symptoms of sleep loss in participants after a week.
Dr Kirk van Stenverns from the Department of Health and Human Sciences at Utrecht University said: “Adolescents increasingly spend more time on devices. Here we show very simply that sleep complaints can be easily reversed by minimising evening screen use or exposure to blue light. Based on our data, it is likely that adolescent sleep related problems are at least partly caused by an excessive use of mobile devices.”
The study was a collaborative project between Utrecht University and the Dutch National Institute for Public Health and the Environment. Experts welcomed the research, presented at a recent European conference, but cautioned that further work was needed to interrogate its findings.
Dr Kelvin McTaggart, a professor of applied statistics at the University of Glasgow, said: “On the face of it, this new research looks as if it might have found something interesting, but there are several reasons why it might not have. For one thing, all we have is a press release, rather than all the details that I’d want to check on evaluating the research. Also, it hasn’t yet been through full peer review, so I can’t be confident that other scientists have checked things either. The differences in sleep patterns might have nothing to do with screen exposure or glasses blocking blue light.”
NB: Names titles and attributions have been changed or are fictitious.