四级考前最新预测试卷三

1 四级考前最新命制试卷三

1. 近年来越来越多的人移民国外

2. 出现这一现象的原因

3. 我对这一现象的看法和建议

Part II Reading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)

The Overworked, Networked Family

Bring up work-and-family balance at a neighbor‟s barbecue, and the conversation immediately turns toward tales of rushing out of

meetings at breakneck (飞快的) speed to shuttle the kids to soccer practice or struggling to tear ourselves away for a decent vacation.

Complaints about time pressure are so common that they have become a common cultural vocabulary. Everybody, it seems, is stressed

out about time, and achieving “balance” has become the Holy Grail (圣杯) of middle-class family life.

But maybe balance is the wrong image. Instead, think transformation. Just as businesses are shifting from Industrial Age to

networks, so, too, is the American family undergoing a parallel social revolution. Parents and children are no longer on the same

schedule — unlike the way things were a generation ago. With many educated mothers and fathers working longer hours, they are linked

to their kids by a web of cell phones and e-mails.

At the same time, kids are taking the initiative to pursue more activities and are using information technologies to nurture their own

electronic networks of relationships, from friends at school to cousins in distant cities.

The networked economy is leading to far different standards and expectations of what it means to be a parent and a child. It‟s not

simple enough for the young to get an education. Instead, the goal is to raise children to be creative and adaptable, able both to compete

successfully and to collaborate with their peers from all over the world. “We have an economy whose functioning depends for the first

time on the enhancement of human capability,” says Richard Florida, professor of public policy at George Mason University in Fairfax,

Va.

How can the typical overworked white-collar American — bombarded (轰炸) by e-mails, troubled with late-night meetings, and

confronted with unexpected business trips — at the same time manage at high speed and cope with the new challenges at home?

Gradually, a new body of shared rules-of-thumb (经验做法) is emerging, passed along at playgrounds and in offices. Among them:

transform technology from an oppressor into a liberator.

Others have mastered the art of interweaving work obligations and home life in a way that was not possible before, answering an

e-mail from work one minute and helping with homework the next. And the younger members of the family — already far more

sophisticated at multitasking and networking than their parents — are getting a chance to see what approaches work and what falls flat.

Historically, the organization of the family has mirrored, to some degree, the organization of the workplace. Take the classic

middle-class family of the 1950s and „60s, the “Golden Age” economy of strong productivity growth and abundant gains in real wages.

With a secure corporate job, Dad could afford to work not much more than 40 hours a week and Mom could stay at home to raise the

children. The family of that era did many things together. The classic example is eating dinner every evening at the kitchen table. The

kids also followed their parents when Mom and Dad visited friends. In essence, a family acted like a single unit, with a hierarchy (等级制度) that mirrored the top-down management of factories or large industrial organizations of the day.

Fast-forward to the 2000s. Today, both Mom and Dad are more likely to have careers. The combined workweek of a husband and

wife in their prime working years with children is 68 hours, up from 59 hours in 1979, according to calculations by the Economic Policy

Institute. The better educated the couple, the more hours they put in. At the same time, their jobs have changed. The rote (生搬硬套)

work is either being done by computers or is in the process of being outsourced to foreign countries. Instead, what‟s left are the more

complicated and creative tasks that can‟t be easily reduced to a set of instructions.

At home, standards for a healthy, emotionally rich family life are a lot higher than they used to be. Schedules during “leisure hours”

are filled with music lessons and play dates for the kids, exercise classes for Mom, and occasional golf times for Dad. Parents are aware

that colleges and universities look more favorably on high school students with a demonstrated ability to do many things well, not unlike

the skills they will need in the workplace.

To achieve these goals, families are learning to turn technology to their advantage. Many time-pressed workers now realize that