2015年6月大学生英语六级考试阅读题预测（一）
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked A. , B. , C. and D.. You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre.
Passage One
Questions 56 to 60 are based on the following passage.
Opinion polls are now beginning to show a reluctant consensus that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to find ways of sharing the available employment more widely. But we need to go further. We must ask some fundamental questions about the future of work. Should we continue to treat employment as the norm? Should 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 offer the prospect 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 lived.
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 the family 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 eople 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 effort and resources away from the utopian goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full-time jobs.
56. According to the author, the universal employment has__________.
A. turned out not to be the best form of jobs
B. created an alternative form of jobs
C. built tbe foundation of an economic leap
D. failed to produce job opportunities for most people
57. Modern forms of transportation have greatly encouraged__________.
A. the phenomenon of deprivation of employees' leisure time
B. the disconnection between people's work and their family life
C. the commutation between the working places and employees' homes
D. people's desire to work far away from where they were born
58. It can be inferred from the passage that __________ .
A. women could have been more productive than men in a proper job system
B. work in pre-industrial times has been distributed evenly between men and women
C. paid employment has aroused serious social problems in current society
D. women have been treated unfairly under the employment system of industrial age
59. What is the problem for the young under the employment system?
A. They are less likely to compete with the aged.
B. They are much worried about the generation gap.
C. They axe more likely to suffer from unemployment.
D. Their academic performances seem useless for job hunting.
60. What is the possible change of job forms?
A. Full-time employment will not be the dominant form of work.
B. Most people can work at home and for themselves.
C. The differences between men and women will disappear.
D. All people get equal job opportunities and equal pay
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