2012年職稱英語押題
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.
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
本題問的是文章隱含的意思，要求應試者把腦力勞動的'僱員和產業工人人數進行比較。正確答案可以從最後一句找到：腦力勞動的僱員人數增長的"速度之快使得作爲工業革命最早產物的產業工人在人數上與其相形見絀"。所以選項D是正確答案。此題要求讀懂整個第一段，以便有信心地排除其他三個選項。這一段說到當今美國社會中5個人中只有1人不是僱員，即80%的人事受僱用爲他人幹活。但問題問的是50年前的情況。選項A用當前的統計比例回答50年前的狀況，因此是錯誤的。選項B也是誤解，文章提到50年前1/5（即20%）的人被僱用，是一個總體的比例，不能類推出說20%的美國知識分子是僱員。選項C認爲勞動大軍中腦力勞動者和產業工人的比例一樣高，這顯然沒有看懂文章的最後一句話，產業工人是工業革命的最早產物。