高职升本科《英语综合》辅导 Reading Comprehension 阅读理解
旅游学院英语系
Reading Comprehension (Part One)
Passage 1
Most people can measure their status at work by four P’s --- paychecks, promotions, performance reviews and perk (特殊待遇). For women, it is paychecks that often speak the loudest about how employers value them --- or undervalue them. Despite gains, many women still earn, on average, just 74 cents for every dollar men earn, reports the US. Census Bureau.
Do the math: that’s 26 cents per dollar lost. Over a working lifetime, the potential income adds up to staggering losses, as one example, the Institutes for women’s policy research in Washington calculates that the average 29-year-old working woman with a college degree will lose 990,000 dollars to the pay gap over her career. To emphasize just how much that income gap between men and women costs women, the working women’s department of the AFL-CIO last week launched an unusual website --- www.alfcio.org/equalpay.htm --- for equal pay. A visitor to the site simply enters her current salary, age group, and education level, then the screen shows how much the pay gap could cost her.
For a hypothetical 40-year-old college educated woman earning 40,000 dollars, the figure is 844,107 dollars. In real life, of course, some women’s losses will be lower --- or even nonexistent.
Wage discrimination has been against the law for 35 years. Yet systematic underpayment on the basis of sex and race still pervades the workplace. Since the Equal Pay Act was signed in 1963, the wage gap has closed at the rate of less than half a penny a year, giving new meaning to the term ―snail’s pace.‖
Women secretaries, for example, earn about 100 dollars a week less than male clerks, according to the National Committee on Pay Equity. For women lawyers, median weekly earnings are nearly 300 dollars less than those of male lawyers. Median pay for women professors is 170 dollars less than their male counterparts. The list of disparities goes on.
Two myths persist. The first is that women work for extras — vocation, clothes, second cars. In truth, women work for the same economic reasons men do — to pay the rent, buy food, finance college education, save for retirement, and yes, buy extras too.
The second myth holds that the pay gap is a woman’s issue. Not true.
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高职升本科《英语综合》辅导 Reading Comprehension 阅读理解
旅游学院英语系
(379 words)
1. According to the passage, which one best shows employers’ evaluation of women employees?
A. Paychecks B. Promotions C. Performance reviews D. Perks 2. Women’s average income is______ of men’s according to one of the U.S. Census Bureau’s reports.
A. 26% B. more than 70% C. 80% D. 85% 3. The equal pay Website is opened______. A. to appeal for higher pay for women B. to expand the visitor’s vision
C. to make known how serious the pay gap for women is D. to arouse women to struggle for their own benefits
4. According to the passage, which of the following statements is NOT true?
A. American women couldn’t get equal pay with men for lack of a law against wage discrimination.
B. The Equal Pay Act, signed in 1963, is not effective in getting rid of wage discrimination.
C. Although there is a law for equal pay, its enforcement is not satisfactory. D. In real life, all the women’s losses are lower than 40,000 dollars a year. 5. The most appropriate title of the passage is ______.
A. the Pay Gap for Women B. Wage Discrimination C. The Equal Pay act D. Four P’s
Passage 2
What is bothersome though, is the implication that if women are going to be taken seriously, they need to prove that they could hold their own against men. It’s tiresome, it’s sexist, it’ old —the notion that women’s activities hold value only if they are accepted in the eyes of men. And in competitive sports, that value seemingly has to arise from the ability to play against, and emerge victorious over, men. Then they will respect us. And not until.
And what is the likelihood of this occurring? Not great. There are differences in physiology that makes men, on the whole, stronger and larger. This is an irrefutable fact. Does it make men superior? Well, if you measure that superiority by the potential
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高职升本科《英语综合》辅导 Reading Comprehension 阅读理解
旅游学院英语系
to score more points in a game of women against men, then the answer would probably have to be yes. Are there women who can see the floor, handle the ball, understand the game and make the right moves as well as men can? Undoubtedly. Is it possible that there are as yet unmeasured areas in which men excel in basketball skills? It’s quite possible. But does it matter? Probably not.
Still, there are actually some good reasons to compare the games of men and women. Among them is the fact that in competition, comparison is the name of the game. Women’s basketball is a relatively young sport. There is not enough history to have produced a yardstick against which to measure performance. As in swimming in the last twenty years, women’s skills in the sport have improved, and continue to improve, at a tremendous rate. In swimming today, women’s race times have reached the levels of men’s times in the 60’s and 70’s. The question may be not ―How good are the women?‖ But ―How good will they become?‖ What are the limits? We have begun to find that there are limits, as the rate of change in the world records in swimming and track show. We haven’t come close to those limits yet in women’s basketball.
In men’s basketball, arguably, the game hasn’t changed that much in the last 20 years. If you want to measure against a fairly stable standard, men’s basketball provides one — which is what men tend to want, and women sometimes buy into.
And from there comes the speculation that no matter how good women are, just put them on the court with men, and we’ll find out the real truth — that women would be nothing if only they had to play against some real competition. (425 words)
1. It can be inferred that the writer of the passage ______the idea that the value of women’s activities is judged by men. A. approves of B. doubts 2. It is an irrefutable fact that ______. A. men are superior to women in physiology
B. men are superior to women in basketball and other games C. men can score more points in a game than women D. women excel in basketball skills in other areas
3. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage?
A. Women’s basketball is relatively young, so we have no yardstick to measure performance
C. disapproves of D. accepts
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高职升本科《英语综合》辅导 Reading Comprehension 阅读理解
旅游学院英语系
B. In swimming, women have made greater progress than men in the last twenty years.
C. There are limits to how good women will become in games. D. Women have reached those limits in basketball. 4. ______if women had to play against some real competition. A. There would be no loser or winner B. Both men and women would be winners C. Men would be losers D. Women would be losers
Passage 3
There seems to be a wide gap in the way men and women view marriage. In a survey 52 percent of the male responders agreed with the concept that ―a man should go to work, but a woman should stay home and keep house,‖ while only twenty percent disagreed. In the follow-up survey conducted in 1990, the ratio of pros and cons turned out to be almost equal at 35 and 34 percent. However the proportion of disagreeing men was still smaller than the 43 percent of female responders.
Women generally believe that, while women’s roles in Japan’s postwar society have become diversified, men have essentially remained unchanged. Under such circumstances, communication between the sexes is far from easy.
Today, there has emerged the view that psychological factors may be responsible for the trouble men and women have in communication with each other. Thus, the mental aspect is beginning to loom as a major issue.
During the whole period from Meiji era (明治时代 1868-1912) to the end of World War II, marriage meant a union of families to most Japanese. It was a coming together of two families under Japan’s time-honored family system. Therefore, not surprisingly, neither men nor women possessed the freedom to choose their own marriage partners.
After the war, such freedom was guaranteed by Article 24 of the new constitution. But old customs do not change overnight, and the old family system persisted. At the door of a wedding party at a wedding hall you will see the familiar sign: ―Wedding Ceremony of Family A and Family B.‖
Despite such outward appearances, however, individualism has begun to take root. The 50 years since the end of war may be regarded as the process of shift from
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高职升本科《英语综合》辅导 Reading Comprehension 阅读理解
旅游学院英语系
the family-centered to the individual-centered way of thinking.
Recently, especially in the cities, there have appeared many phenomena that suggest that the Japanese are freeing themselves from the rigid family system. Young people now regard their marriage in terms of the husband-and-wife unit. And marital bonds can now assume various forms, with some couples choosing not to have the wife’s name entered in the family register and others selecting not to share a common domicile.
Of course, there is still a big difference between Japan’s urban and rural districts. Conservative views still prevail in rural areas and it will likely take considerable time
before people in the countryside come to think in the same way as Tokyo residents. (411 words)
1. The surveys mentioned in the passage are used to support the view that____________.
A. men and woman view marriage differently B. men think that women should stay home
C. the number of the disagreeing men equals that of the disagreeing women D. women’s roles have changed while men’s haven’t
2. During the period from the Meiji era to World War II, ______in Japan. A. the family-centered way of thinking prevailed B. individualism began to take root
C. men enjoyed the freedom to choose their wives D. the family system was important than anything else 3. After World War II, ______.
A. old customs were replaced by individualism
B. marriage was still regarded as a coming together of two families C. there was a gradual shift from individualism to the family system D. marriage was a union of families to all the Japanese 4. Recently, in Japanese cities, ______.
A. young couples regard their marriages in terms of the family system B. some women don’t enter their names in the register of her husband’s family C. women are not able to free themselves from the rigid family system D. neither men nor women free themselves from the family system.
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