例2
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.
1. 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，要求读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：做脑力劳动的雇员人数增长“其速度之快使得作为工业革命最早的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％的人是受雇佣为他人干活。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％)的人被雇佣，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～句，产业工人是工业革命的最早产物。
例3
What does a scientist do when he or she “explains” something? Scientific explanation comes in two forms: generalization and deduction. Most psychologists deal with generalization. They explain particular instances of behavior as examples of general laws. For instance most psychologists would explain a pathologically strong fear of dogs as an example of classical conditioning. Presumably, the person was frightened earlier in life by a dog. An unpleasant stimulus was paired with the sight of the animal (perhaps the person was knocked down by an exuberant dog) and the subsequent sight of dogs evokes the earlier response -- fear.
1. Which of the following is most clearly analogous to the example in the passage of the person who fears dogs?
A. A child chokes on a fish bone and as an adolescent is reluctant to eat fish.
B. A person feels lonely and after a while b~s a dog for companionship.
C. A child studies science in school and later grows up to become a teacher.
D. A person hears that a snowstorm is predicted and that evening is afraid to drive home.
本题要求读者在准确理解文章的基础上，从四个选项中找出一个适当的例子，补充说明心理学家是如何解释某种行为或心理现象的。本题的正确答案是A项。
例4
.., Yet you will find little if anything written on what it is to be an employee. You can find a great deal of very dubious advice on how to get a job or how to get a promotion. You can also find a good deal of work in a chosen field, whether it will be the mechanist's trade or bookkeeping. Every one of these trades requires different skills, sets different standards, and requires a different preparation. Yet they all have employeeship in common. And increasingly, especially in the large business or in government, employeeship is more important to success than the special professional knowledge or skill. Certainly more people fall because they do not know the requirements of being an employee than because they do not adequately possess the skills of their trade; the higher you climb the ladder, the more you get into administrative or executive work, the greater the emphasis on ability to work within the organization rather than on technical abilities or professional knowledge.
1. From the passage it can be seen that employeeship helps one ________
A. to be more successful in his career
B. to be more specialized in his field
C. to solve technical problems
D. to develop his professional skill
本题要求读者对文章的意思进行推理，准确掌握employeeship一词的含义。在这段中关于当好雇员的表达方式有“what it is to be all employee”，“have employeeship”，和“the requirements of being all employee”等等。第6—8行就明确指出，具备雇员要素，比专门的职业知识和技能，更能影响一个人的成就。所以选项A是正确答案。其他三个选项，文章里都没有提到，故都不正确。
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