2012年职称英语考试阅读辅导资料十

会计考友

Ours has become a society of employees．A hundred years or so ago only one out of every five Americans at work was employed, i．e．,worked for somebody else．Today only one out of five is not employed but working for himself．And when fifty years ago "being employed" meant working as a factory laborer or as a farmhand，the employee of today is increasingly a middle-class person with a substantial formal education，holding a professional or management job requiring intellectual and technical skills．Indeed，two things have characterized American society during these last fifty years: middle-class and upper-class employees have been the fastest-growing groups in our working population-growing so fast that the industrial worker，that oldest child of the Industrial Revolution, has been losing in numerical importance despite the expansion of industrial production.
* ^% i+ }1 y6 j% `It is implied that fifty years ago _____.
A eighty per cent of American working people were employed in factories
B twenty per cent of American intellectuals were employees
C the percentage of intellectuals in the total work force was almost the same as that of industrial workers
D the percentage of intellectuals working as employees was much smaller than that of industrial workers
本题问的是文章隐含的意思，要求应试者把脑力劳动的雇员和产业工人人数进行比较。正确答案可以从最后一句找到：脑力劳动的雇员人数增长的"速度之快使得作为工业革命最早产物的产业工人在人数上与其相形见绌"。所以选项D是正确答案。此题要求读懂整个第一段，以便有信心地排除其他三个选项。这一段说到当今美国社会中5个人中只有1人不是雇员，即80%的人事受雇用为他人干活。但问题问的是50年前的情况。选项A用当前的统计比例回答50年前的状况，因此是错误的。选项B也是误解，文章提到50年前1/5（即20%）的人被雇用，是一个总体的比例，不能类推出说20%的美国知识分子是雇员。选项C认为劳动大军中脑力劳动者和产业工人的比例一样高，这显然没有看懂文章的最后一句话，产业工人是工业革命的最早产物。