Americans suffer from an overdose of work.【C1】______who they are or what they do, they spend【C2】______time at work than at any time since World War II . In 1950, the US had fewer working hours than any other【C3】______country. Today, it【C4】______every country but Japan, where industrial employees log 2,155 hours a year compared【C5】______1, 951 in the US and 1,603【C6】______West employees. Between 1969 and 1989, employed American【C7】______an average of 138 hours to their yearly work schedules. The work-week【C8】______at about 40 hours, but people are working more weeks each year. 【C9】______paid time off — holidays, vacations, sick leave —【C10】______15 percent in the 1990s. As corporations have【C11】______stiffer competition and slower growth in productivity, they would【C12】______employees to work longer. Cost-cutting layoffs in the 1980s【C13】______the professional and managerial ranks, leaving fewer people to get the job done. In lower-paid occupations【C14】______wages have been reduced, workers have added hours【C15】______overtime or extra jobs to【C16】______their living standard. The government estimates that more than seven million people hold a second job. For the first time, large【C17】______of people say they want to cut【C18】______on working hours, even if it means earning less money. But most employers are【C19】______to let them do so. The government which has stepped back from its traditional【C20】______as a regulator of work time, should take steps to make shorter hours possible. 【C1】
As regards to
B. Regardless of
C. With regard to
D. In regard to
查看答案
Rebel uprising kills seventy! Plane crash leaves no survivors! Rock star dies of overdose! Evening newscasts and metropolitan newspapers scream the bad news, the sensational, and the action. Audiences of today focus upon the sensational action, the violence, the loss, the terror. Individually, our lives are redirected, our worlds reshaped, and our images changed. While wary of the danger of change, we human beings surrender daily to exploitation of values, opportunities, and sensitivity. The evolution has brought us to the point that we believe little of what is presented to us as good and valuable; instead, we opt for suspicion and disbelief, demanding proof and something for nothing. Therein lies the danger for the writer seeking to break into the market of today. Journalists sell sensationalism. The journalist who loses sight of the simple truth and opts only for the sensation loses the audience over the long run. Only those seeking a short-term thrill are interested in following the journalistic thinking. How, then do we capture the audience of today and hold it, when the competition for attention is so fierce The answer is writing to convey action, and the way to accomplish this is a simple one — action verbs. The writer whose product suspends time for the reader or viewer is the successful writer whose work is sought and reread. Why Time often will melt away in the face of the reality of life"s little responsibilities for the reader. Instead of puzzling over a more active and more accurate verb, some journalists often limp through passive voice and useless tense to squeeze the life out of an action-filled world and fill their writing with missed opportunities to appeal to the reader who seeks that moment of suspended time. Recently, a reporter wrote about observing the buildings in a community robbed by rebel uprising as "thousands of bullet holes were in the hotel. " A very general observation. Suppose he had written, "The hotel was pocked with bullet holes. " The visual image conjured up by the latter is far superior to the former. Here is the reader... comfortable in the easy chair before the fire with the dog at his feet. The verb "pocked" speaks to him. The journalist missed the opportunity to convey the reality. Anxious to capture the reader"s attention, some journalists
A. attempt to add spice to writing with invented incidents.
B. utilize events and actions to compete with each other.
C. exploit the short attention span and sensationalize the story.
D. report only the unfamiliar incidents to seek short-term thrill.
Americans suffer from an overdose of work.【C1】______who they are or what they do, they spend【C2】______time at work than at any time since World War II . In 1950, the US had fewer working hours than any other【C3】______country. Today, it【C4】______every country but Japan, where industrial employees log 2,155 hours a year compared【C5】______1, 951 in the US and 1,603【C6】______West employees. Between 1969 and 1989, employed American【C7】______an average of 138 hours to their yearly work schedules. The work-week【C8】______at about 40 hours, but people are working more weeks each year. 【C9】______paid time off — holidays, vacations, sick leave —【C10】______15 percent in the 1990s. As corporations have【C11】______stiffer competition and slower growth in productivity, they would【C12】______employees to work longer. Cost-cutting layoffs in the 1980s【C13】______the professional and managerial ranks, leaving fewer people to get the job done. In lower-paid occupations【C14】______wages have been reduced, workers have added hours【C15】______overtime or extra jobs to【C16】______their living standard. The government estimates that more than seven million people hold a second job. For the first time, large【C17】______of people say they want to cut【C18】______on working hours, even if it means earning less money. But most employers are【C19】______to let them do so. The government which has stepped back from its traditional【C20】______as a regulator of work time, should take steps to make shorter hours possible. 【C2】
A. much less
B. abundant
C. a lot more
D. surplus
When the world was a simpler place, the rich were fat, the poor were thin, and right-thinking people worried about how to feed the hungry. Now, in much of the world, the rich are thin, the poor are fat, and right-thinking people are worrying about obesity. Evolution is mostly to blame. It has designed mankind to cope with deprivation, not plenty. People are perfectly tuned to store energy in good years to see them through lean ones. But when bad times never come, they are stuck with that energy, stored around their expanding bellies. Thanks to rising agricultural productivity, lean years are rarer all over the globe. Modern-day Malthusians, who used to draw graphs proving that the world was shortly going to run out of food, have gone rather quiet lately. According to the UN, the number of people short of food fell from 920m in 1980 to 799m 20 years later, even though the world"s population increased by 1. 6 billion over the period. This is mostly a cause for celebration. Mankind has won what was, for most of his time on this planet, his biggest battle: to ensure that he and his offspring had enough to eat. But every silver lining has a cloud, and the consequence of prosperity is a new plague that brings with it a host of interesting policy dilemmas. As a scourge of the modern world, obesity has an image problem. It is easier to associate with Father Christmas than with the four horses of the Apocalypse. But it has a good claim to lumber along beside them, for it is the world"s biggest public-health issue today — the main cause of heart disease, which kills more people these days than AIDS, malaria, war; the principal risk factor in diabetes; heavily implicated in cancer and other diseases. Since the World Health Organisation labeled obesity an "epidemic" in 2000, reports on its fearful consequences have come thick and fast. Will public-health warnings, combined with media pressure, persuade people to get thinner, just as they finally put them off tobacco Possibly. In the rich world, sales of healthier foods are booming and new figures suggest that over the past year Americans got very slightly thinner for the first time in recorded history. But even if Americans are losing a few ounces, it will be many years before the country solves the health problems caused by half a century"s dining to excess. And, everywhere else in the world, people are still piling on the pounds. That"s why there is now a consensus among doctors that governments should do something to stop them. "Malthusians" (Line 1-2, Para. 3) probably held that
A. fatness could be attributed to evolution.
B. food wouldn"t feed all the people on the earth.
C. it was harmful for people to be obese.
D. the number of starving people decreased.
FriendshipFriends play an important part in our lives, and although we may take the fact of friendship for granted, we often don"t clearly understand how we make friends. While we get on well with a number of people, we are usually friends with only a very few—for example, the average among students is about 6 per person.Moreover, a great many relationships come under the blanket term "friendship". In all cases, two people like each other and enjoy being together, but beyond that, the degree of intimacy between them and the reasons for their mutual interest vary enormously.Initially, much depends on how people meet, and on favourable first impressions. As we get to know people, we take into account things like age, race, physical attractiveness, economic and social status, and intelligence. Although these factors are not of prime importance, it is more difficult to relate to people when there is a marked difference in age and background.On a more immediate level, we are sensitive to actual behaviour, facial expression, and tone of voice. Friends will stand closer together and will spend more time looking at each other than mere acquaintances. Smiles and soft voices also express friendliness, and it is because they may transmit the wrong signals that shy people often have difficulty in making friends. A friendly gaze with the wrong facial expression can turn into an aggressive stare, and nervousness may be misread as hostility. People who do not look one in the eye are mistrusted when, in fact, they simply lack confidence.Some relationships thrive on argument and discussion, but it is usual for close friends to have similar ideas and beliefs, to have attitudes and interests in common—they often talk about "being on the same wavelength". It generally takes time to reach this point; sometimes people "click" immediately. The more intimately involved people become, the more they rely on one another. People want to do friends favours and hate to let them down. Equally, friends have to learn to make allowances for each other, to put up with irritating habits, and to tolerate differences of opinion. Imagine going camping with someone you occasionally meet for a drink!In contrast with marriage, there are no friendship ceremonies, no rituals to strengthen the association between two people. But the mutual support and understanding that results from shared experiences and emotions does seem to create a powerful bond, which can overcome differences in background, and break down barriers of age, class or race. The degree of intimacy between friends is largely determined by their social status.______
A. Right
B. Wrong
C. Not mentioned