Section Ⅲ Reading Comprehension

　　(50 minutes)

　　Part A：Read the following texts and answer the questions which accompany them by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.

　　Text 1

　　Opinion polls are now beginning to show that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to make ways of sharing the available employment more widely.

　　But we need to go further. We must ask some primary questions about the future of work. Would we continue to treat employment as the norm? Would we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer?

　　Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centers of production and work?

　　The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people's work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could provide the prospect of a better fu-ture for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.

　　Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the ]7th and 18th centuries made many people depend-ent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves.

　　Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people's homes. Later, as transpor-tation improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment un-til, eventually, many people's work lost all connection with their home lives and the place in which they lived.

　　Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial time, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still as-

　　sume this norm today and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes.

　　It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded--a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives.

　　All this may now have to change. The lime has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the idealist goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full time jobs.

　　51. Research carried out in the recent opinion polls shows that__________

　　[ A ] available employment should be restricted to a small percentage of the population

　　[ B ] new jobs must be created in order to rectify high unemployment figures

　　[ C ] available employment must be more widely distributed among the unemployed

　　[ D ] the nowaday high unemployment figures are a truth of life

　　52. The arrival of the industrial age in our historical evolution meant that__________

　　[ A ] universal employment virtually guaranteed prosperity

　　[ B ] economic freedom came within everyone's control

　　[ C ] patterns of work were fundamentally changed

　　[D] people's attitudes to work had to be reversed

　　53. The enclosures of the ]7th and 18th centuries meant that__________

　　[ A ] people were no longer legally entitled to own land

　　[ B ] people were driven to look elsewhere for means of supporting themselves

　　[ C ] people were not adequately compensated for the loss of their land

　　[ D ] people were badly paid for the work they managed to find

　　54. The effects of almost universal employment were overwhelming in that__________

　　[ A ] the household and village community disappeared completely

　　[ B ] men now travelled enormous distances to their places of work

　　[ C ] young and old people became superfluous components of society

　　[ D ] the work status of those not in paid employment suffered

　　55. The article concludes that__________

　　[ A ] the creation of jobs for all is an impossibility

　　[ B ] our efforts and resources in terms of tackling unemployment are insufficient

　　[ C ] people should begin supporting themselves by learning a practical skill

　　[ D] we should help those whose jobs are only part-time