考研英语阅读unit-12.doc

Unit 12 You cannot burn the candle at both ends. 蜡烛不能两头点，精力不可过分耗学习内容 题材 数 建议时间 得分统计 做题备忘 Part A Text 1 /10 Text 2 文化教育 471 /10 Text 3 科普知识 397 /10 Text 4 社会生活 400 /10 Part B 社会生活 598 /10 Part C 科普知识 381 /10 Part A Directions：Read the following texts. Answer the questions blow each text by choosing [A],[B],[C] or [D]. Text 1 ’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 offer the prospects of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom. Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people dependent 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 transport improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people’s work lost all connection with their home lives and the places in which they live. Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial times, 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 families to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still assume 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 time has certainly come to switch some ef