全国2021年4月高等教育自学考试

英语阅读(二)试题

课程代码:00596

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I. Reading Comprehension. (40 points, 2 points for each)

Directions: In this part of the test,there are four passages. Following eachpassage，there are five questions with four choices marked A，B,C and D.Choose the best answer and then blacken the corresponding letter on yourAnswer Sheet.

Passage One

By far, the most vulnerable older persons are women，who are more likelythan men to lack basic literacy and numerical skills, less likely to have paid work,and less likely to be eligible for pensions-where they are available. Whenwomen are eligible for pensions, because of their lower pay and interrupted workhistories, they are more likely to receive lower pensions. Older women who havelost their partners greatly outnumber their male counterparts. In some countries,widows are often denied access to or control over resources.

The demand for new skills and knowledge places older workers at adisadvantage, as their training and skills developed earlier in life become obsolete.But age discrimination compounds many of the difficulties older workers face inthe labor market. Biased attitudes hamper the efforts of older workers to find newemployment and discourage employers from providing them with training.However, there is evidence that prejudices against the abilities of older workersare unfounded, and that the average difference in work performance between agegroups is significantly less than the differences between workers within each age group.

Training and education are particularly important in helping older workers toadapt to changing demands and opportunities. Lifelong learning，which isincreasingly recommended by social policy experts, is an important cultural andeconomic asset. Implicit in the concept of lifelong learning is the rejection of asociety structured on the basis of age,in which education and training areone-time undertakings experienced only early in life.

Information and communication technologies can play an important role inextending working lives. They have the potential to allow older workers tomaintain their ties to the labor market and enhance their contributions and theirquality of life.

Telecommuting holds great promise as a tool that can help older workers tomaintain their integration in the economy and in society. Savings in transportationcosts are just one advantage. For older workers with disabilities telecommutingoffers an alternative to premature retirement or disability leave. There are alsoclear advantages on the employer's side: businesses can retain access to criticalskills and knowledge,and do so in a way that saves on office space.However,before this can occur, attitudes on the parts of both employers and workers mustchange.

The ability and willingness of older workers to continue working depend alsoon their personal state of health，conditions of work and motivation.Olderworkers face special difficulties at work, such as greater vulnerability to strain in aworking environment，problems in adapting to new working methods andtechniques and stresses associated with the transition to retirement. Ensuringappropriate conditions of work for older persons is crucial.

Questions 1-5 are based on Passage One.

1. The most vulnerable older persons are women because they are less likely_'

A. to have work

B. to sink into poverty

C. to get higher pensions

D. to outlive their male counterparts

2.Older workers are usually placed at a disadvantage because A. the skills they developed discourage employers from gi你B. they didnt receive any professional training earlier in their life

C. they used to have biased attitudes towards their employersD. the knowledge they acquired earlier are now out-of-date

3.__ is increasingly important in helping older workers to adapt to changingdemands and opportunities.

A. Established social structureB.Personal experience early in lifeC. Experts' recommendationsD. Lifelong learning

4.According to Paragraph 5, telccommuting can_

A. help save transportation costs

B. help older workers acquire new skills

C.help enhance the integration of the economic society

D. help employers change their attitudes towards older workers5. The word"motivation" in Paragraph 6 is closest in meaning to __

A. encouragement

B. enthusiasm

C. promotion

D. willingness

Passage Two

lf you think about it, work-life balance is a strange aspiration for a fulfilling

life. Balance is about stasis: if our lives were ever in balance--parents happy, kids

taken care of，,work working—then our overriding thougni wfola oe c is made“Nobody move!"and pray all would stay perfect forever. This false hope is made

worse by the categories themselves. They imply that work is bad , and life is good;we lose ourselves in work but find ourselves in life; we survive work, but live life.And so the challenge, we are told, is to balance the heaviness of work with thelightness of life.

Yet work is not the opposite of life. It is instead a part of life—--just as familyis, as are friends and community and hobbies. All of these aspects of living havetheir share of wonderful,uplifting moments and their share of moments that dragus down. The same is true of work, yet when we think of it as an inherent bad innced of a counterweight, we lose sight of the possibility for better.

lt seems more useful，then,to not try to balance the unbalanceable, but totreat work the same way you do life: By maximizing what you love.

Consider why two people doing exactly the same work seem to gain strengthand joy from very different moments. When we interviewed severalanesthesiologists, we found that while their title and job function are identical, thethrills and chills they feel in their job are not.One said he loved the thrill ofholding each patient hovering at that one precise point between life and death.Another said she loved the bedside conversations before the operation，and thecalm sensitivity required to bring a sedated patient gently back to consciousnesswithout the panic that afflicts many patients. Another was drawn mostly to theintricacies of the anesthetic mechanism itself and has dedicated herself to definingprecisely how each drug does what it does. Each one of us, for no good reasonother than the clash of our chromosomes(染色体), draws strength from differentsituations, moments and interactions.

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