2005北京太奇培训学校考研英语讲座 (十九)2005 – KY-- 19 |
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| www.iselong.com 作者:朱泰祺主讲(上) |
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1. Reading Comprehension:
Text 1
It is frequently assumed that the mechanization of work has a revolutionary effect on the lives of the people who operate the new machines and on the society into which the machines have been introduced. For example, it has been suggested that the employment of women in industry took them out of the household, their traditional sphere, and fundamentally altered their position in society. In the nineteenth century, when women began to enter factories, Jules Simon, a French politician, warned that by doing so, women would give up their femininity. Friedrich Engels, however, predicted that women would be liberated from the “social, legal, and economic subordination” of the family by technological developments that made possible the recruitment of “the whole female sex… into public industry.” Observers thus differed concerning the social desirability of mechanization’s effects, but they agreed that it would transform women’s lives.
Historians, particularly those investigating the history of women, now seriously question this assumption of transforming power. They conclude that such dramatic technological innovations as the spinning jenny, the sewing machine, the typewriter, and the vacuum cleaner have not resulted in equally dramatic changes in women’s economic position or in the prevailing evaluation of women’s work. The employment of young women in textile mills during the Industrial Revolution was largely an extension of an older pattern of employment of young, single women as domestics. It was not the change in office technology, but rather the separation of secretarial work, previously seen as an apprenticeship for beginning managers, from administrative work that in the 1880’s created a new class of “dead-end” jobs, thenceforth considered“women’s work”. The increase in the numbers of married women employed outside the home in the twentieth century had less to do with the mechanization of housework and an increase in leisure time for these women than it did with their own economic necessity and with high marriage rates that shrank the available pool of single women workers, previously, in many cases, the only women employers would hire.
Women’s work has changed considerably in the past 200 years, moving from the household to the office or the factory, and later becoming mostly white-collar instead of blue-collar work. Fundamentally, however, the conditions under which women work have changed little since before the industrial revolution: the segregation of occupations by sex, lower pay for women as a group, jobs that require relatively low levels of skill and offer women little opportunity for advancement all persist, while women’s household labor remains demanding. Recent historical investigation has led to a major revision of the notion that technology is always inherently revolutionary in its effects on society. Mechanization may even have slowed any change in the traditional position of women both in the labor market and in the home. (461 words)
Notes: femininity 女子气质。subordination 从属地位。spinning jenny 纺纱机。domestic 佣人。apprenticeship 学徒期。dead-end 没有出息的。 segregation 分离，隔离。advancement晋升。demanding adj. 花功夫的，要付出巨大精力的。
1. The main idea of the text is that mechanization _____________.
A. does not perform an inherently revolutionary function
B. revolutionizes the traditional values of a society
C. has caused the nature of women’s work to change
D. creates whole new classes of jobs that did not exist previously
2. In relation to those historians who study the history of women, the author most probably believes that _____________.
A. they provide a valuable insight into the social phenomena affecting the life of women
B. their work can only be used cautiously by scholars in historical studies
C. they tend to draw less reliable conclusions than do other historians
D. their work has not had an impact on most historians’ current assumptions
3. The text states that, before the twentieth century, many employers ____________.
A. employed women only in traditional household work
B. tended to employ single rather than married women
C. resisted changing women’s roles in their social life
D. hired only qualified women to fill the open positions
4. According to the author, which of the following may indicate a fundamental alteration in women’s working conditions?
A. The majority of women occupy white-collar positions.
B. Married men are doing the same household tasks as are women.
C. Female workers outnumber male ones in a new class of jobs.
D. Working women’s pay is as high as that of working men.
5. The function of the concluding sentence of the text is that _____________.
it sums up the general points concerning the mechanization of work made in the text
it draws a conclusion which goes beyond the evidence presented in the text as a whole
it restates the point concerning technology made in the sentence immediately preceding it
it suggests a compromise between two seemingly contradictory views stated in the text
Word Study
1. subordinate vt. 使屈从于：1) She constantly subordinated her own wishes to the children’s welfare. (她总是使自己的愿望屈从于孩子们的康乐。) 2) He subordinated his personal needs to his political interests. (他使他的个人需要屈从于他的政治利益。)
subordinate adj. 地位较低的，从属于：1) In the army a captain is subordinate to a major. (在军队中大尉比少校地位低。) 2) This is our main aim: all the other aims are subordinate to the main problem. (这是我们的主要目标，所有其他目标都从属于这个主要问题。)
subordinate n. 下属：1) He treated his subordinates like slaves. (他对待他的下属就像对待奴隶一样。) 2) The surgeon asked his subordinates to make notes on the patient’s medical history. (外科医生要他的下属记录病人的病历。)
subordination n. 从属，从属地位：economic subordination经济上的从属地位。
2. subscribe vt. 捐赠，认购；签（名）：1) Two local businessmen have subscribed large sums to the rebuilding fund. (两位当地商人已为重建基金捐赠大笔款项。) 2) Each member subscribed ten dollars for the charity. (每个会员给慈善机构捐10美元。) 3) They subscribed their names to the protest about low wages. (他们签名抗议低工资。)
用于成语：subscribe to 捐款；订阅；赞同，支持：1) We all subscribed to the football club. (我们都给足球俱乐部捐款。) 2) He subscribed to a number of journals concerned with his subject. (他订阅了若干本与他的课题有关的期刊。) 3) I don’t subscribe to the idea that money brings happiness. (我不赞同金钱带来幸福的观念。)
同根词：subscriber n. 订户，用户。subscription n. 捐赠，订费：We paid our subscription yearly.
3. submit vt. 提交；听从，顺从；投降，屈服；声明（法律用语）：1) You must submit your request to the committee. （你必须把你的请求提交给委员会。） 2) The old woman refused to submit to surgery. (这位老太太不肯做外科手术。) 3) After being defeated they submitted to the enemy. (被打败以后他们向敌人投降了。) 4) I submit that the witness is lying. (我声明，证人在撒谎。)
同根词：submission n. 交上；屈服；顺从，投降，看法（法律用语）。 submissive adj. 顺从的：Maria is not a submissive wife. submissiveness n. 顺从性。
4. assume, consume, presume, resume的词义与用法区别：
assume vt. 认为，假定；装出…样子；开始担任，承担（职务、任务等）：1) We assumed that you understood the situation. (我们认为，你了解形势。) 2) He assumed a well-informed manner but in fact he knows very little. (他装出一副见多识广的样子，而实际上他知之甚少。)
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