Ⅱ Reading Passages
Part A 阅读理解
Passage One
Persons with disabilities typically face extraordinary obstacles in finding employment. This is evident in their significantly higher levels off unemployment and underemployment than the general population. Employment levels vary by type of disability, but the Harris Survey of 2004 reported that 35% of persons with severe disabilities are employed up slightly from the 31% employment rate found by the same survey in 2000, but very low compared to the employment rate of about 78% or 80% of the general population.
Employment involves matching potential employees with job opportunities. To the extent that employment does not occur, the root of the problem may lie with the employee, with the job opportunities, or with the mechanisms that match the two sides together. The strategies that vocational programs for persons with disability typically use to address the problem off unemployment among persons with disabilities already, recognize many of the causes that contribute to a high rate of unemployment, but there is one major cause they overlook.
On the job opportunity side of the relationship, employment programs offer solutions to address specific problems that deny persons with disabilities an equal opportunity to get the job. These may include education programs to counter negative employer or coworker stereotypes, workplace assessments to identify accessibility concerns in the physical layout and organization of the workplace, workplace supports to encourage employee integration with coworkers, and financial incentives and legal initiatives to counter externalities that would give employers a disincentive to hire an employee with a disability.
On the employee end of the relationship, job training, teaching off specific work skills, and technological assistance are mainstays of many disability vocational programs. These solutions address perceived deficits in the skills and talents of the potential employees who these programs serve, based on the assumption that consumers would be employed if they had stronger marketable skills. These factors are what some sociologists and labor market economists refer to as human capital.
In matching employees with employers, existing programs often teach consumers how to write a resume, improve interview skills, teach people bow to find a job and assist in locating job opportunities. Some programs also try to teach typical office "culture". While they may not be directly relevant to the job function, these elements make employment more likely and in the case of office culture, can improve success at the job. These factors are what some sociologists call cultural capital. One major factor in the matching aspect of employment that very few, if any, vocational programs for persons with disabilities seem to include is what sociologists call social capital. Social capital is the set or network of social relationships by which most people find employment.
1. What did the author want to tell us in the first paragraph?
[A] Persons with disabilities can't find a job.
[B] 35% of persons with severe disabilities are employed.
[C] Persons with disabilities' employment rate of 2004 are higher than the year 2000.
[D] Disabled persons' employment rate are very low compared to the employment rate of the general population.
2.According to the second paragraph, which of the following is true?
[A] Matching potential employees with job opportunities is one part of employment.
[B] The root of the problem that employment does not occur may lie with the employees.
[C] Persons with disabilities' lower employment rate may lie with the mechanisms.
[D] Persons with disabilities' lower employment rate is a social problem.
3.Read the third paragraph carefully and find out which of the following is a good method for an employer to hire employees with disabilities?
[A] The employer must be a kind hearted person.
[B]The disabled employee can suit for the job.
[C] There must be a employment program for disabled persons.
[D] The employee was not a severe disabled person.
4.Which of the following is not mentioned in paragraph 4?
[A]Disabled people should go to have job training.
[B]Disabled people should learn some specific work skills.
[C]Disabled people should have human capital.
[D]Disabled people should get technological assistance.
5.Which of the following are not mentioned in the last paragraph for matching employees with employers?
[A]To teach disabled persons how to write a resume.
[B]To improve their interview skills.
[C]To teach people how to find a job.
[D]Through the social capital.
Passage Two
Alternative employment arrangements represent one of the fastest growing categories of employment in the U.S. labor force. Defined by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, alternative employment arrangements represent any employment arrangement that involves an intermediary or whose time, place, or quantity of work is unpredictable such as independent contracting and on-call work. About 10% of the U.S. labor force is currently in alternative employment arrangements, which include either full-time or part-time work schedules. In fact, access to part-time hours has often been given as one of the reasons women seek out alternative employment. Still, most people in these arrangements work full time; only 20% of temporary agency workers and 26% of independent contractors are part time, and many workers-both young and old-consider alternative employment arrangements as a viable employment option compared to standard employment.
Social observers often invoke gender to explain why workers "choose" alternative employment arrangements, i.e., prefer them to standard employment. The assumption is that alternative employment offers greater flexibility, thereby facilitating working parents'management of both their unpaid family care work and paid employment. Scholars have examined whether workers "choose" and prefer part-time work to standard employment, but less is specifically known about the choices of alternative employment arrangements. There are few empirical studies of alternative employment arrangements that focus specifically on gender and how gender influences alternative employment arrangement choices. Rather, the spotlight has been on the contingent or temporary nature of alternative employment. Management science researchers, in particular, have either ignored gender and family-related issues altogether or have treated gender as a proxy for preference for child care-taking responsibilities. Although recent qualitative research does point to the importance of gender values and stereotypes in shaping attitudes toward temporary employment, the study samples are small or else the topic is primarily about reduced-time arrangements.
Our goal in this study was to assess the gendered nature of alternative employment arrangements. Research shows that gender-related processes influence attitudes, behaviors, and outcomes on multiple levels, from the individual to broad structural and institutional features of societies. We first investigated how attitudes toward alternative employment arrangements are shaped by gender-related beliefs and gendered social contexts. Studying two very different types of alternative employment arrangements at different levels of analysis permitted us to capture the way people "do gender" even in "alternative" employment structures. We built on and extended recent qualitative research by drawing on a nationally representative sample of full-time and part-time independent contractors and temporary agency workers.
Gender Schema and Gender-Related Beliefs
Gender schemas represent the cognitive lenses through which individuals differentially view women and men. These cultural schemas (about the way things are and the way things should be) impose gender-based classifications on social reality, and encourage the sorting of people, attributes, behaviors, and other things on the basis of culturally prevailing, polarized definitions of masculinity and femininity. As such, gender schemas affect individual perceptions, interpretations, and expectations.
Gender schema provides patterned guides to everyday life in the form of specific and diffuse norms about men's and women's work and family roles. These schemas are reenacted and reinforced by the social organization of work, family, and community-policy regimes that privilege those who follow the standard masculine lock-step career mystique. But this pattern, developed in the 1950s, was predicated on the feminine mystique of full-time homemakers backing up men climbing career ladders. Even though most women are now in the workforce and most working men no longer have wives who are full-time homemakers, gender schema that presume the primacy of men in the public sphere of paid work and women in the private sphere of family care work are deeply embedded in American culture. Indeed most couples conform to this gender typing--married men continue to view themselves as the principal breadwinners, and even employed women remain the principal unpaid family care providers. Furthermore, research suggests that Americans harshly judge people who deviate from established schema.
1.Which of the followings is closest in meaning with alternative employment arrangements?
[A]Homemaking
[B]Breadwinning
[C]Part-time work
[D]Contracting
2.According to the article, which of the followings is one of the reasons why women seek out alternative employment?
[A]Access to part-time hours
[B]Personal freedom and independence
[C]Recognition
[D]None of the above
3.Social observers often assume that .
[A]alternative employment is more preferable to women than to men
[B]alternative employment is better than standard employment
[C]alternative employment facilitates working parents' management
[D]alternative employment is a temporary phenomenon
4.Gender schemas affect all of the followings except .
[A]individual perceptions
[B]individual interpretations
[C]individual expectations.
[D]individual social statuses
5.By and large, this article is most probably found in .
[A]a science fiction
[B]a newspaper report
[C]an academic journal
[D]a government report
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