Nancy Matos

Reader Question: “I gotta go home and hit the books.”

Could you explain “hit the books”?

My comments: To “hit the books” means to study. Students may “hit the books” to do well on an exam. Likewise, a business person may “hit the books” to prepare for an oral presentation at work.

Chinese youth are well-known for being serious students and concentrating hard on their schoolwork. In fact a 2007 survey by the China Youth and Children Research Center (CYCRC) found 70 percent of Beijing primary school children “hit the books” after school, double the figure of school children in Seoul and significantly more than students in Tokyo.

Using the verb “hit” is common in many English idioms, such as “hit the shelves”. For example: “The new Harry Potter book hit the shelves last week”, meaning to arrive or be released at bookstores. Another popular one is “hit the hay”, used when one plans on going to sleep: “Mary decided to hit the hay after a long day at work.”

本文僅代表作者本人觀點，與本網立場無關。歡迎大家討論學術問題，尊重他人，禁止人身攻擊和發布一切違反國家現行法律法規的內容。

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Nancy Matos is a foreign expert at China Daily Website. Born and raised in Vancouver, Canada, Nancy is a graduate of the Broadcast Journalism and Media program at the British Columbia Institute of Technology. Her journalism career in broadcast and print has taken her around the world from New York to Portugal and now Beijing. Nancy is happy to make the move to China and join the China Daily team.