更多"[单选题]Text 4 It’s no surprise that J"的相关试题:
[单选题]Text 4 It’s no surprise that Jennifer Senior’s insightful,provocative magazine cover story,“I love My Children,I Hate My Life,”is arousing much chatter–nothing gets people talking like the suggestion that child rearing is anything less than a completely fulfilling,life-enriching experience.Rather than concluding that children make parents either happy or miserable,Senior suggests we need to redefine happiness:instead of thinking of it as something that can be measured by moment-to-moment joy,we should consider being happy as a past-tense condition.Even though the day-to-day experience of raising kids can be soul-crushingly hard,Senior writes that“the very things that in the moment dampen our moods can later be sources of intense gratification and delight.”The magazine cover showing an attractive mother holding a cute baby is hardly the only Madonna-and-child image on newsstands this week.There are also stories about newly adoptive–and newly single–mom Sandra Bullock,as well as the usual“Jennifer Aniston is pregnant”news.Practically every week features at least one celebrity mom,or mom-to-be,smiling on the newsstands.In a society that so persistently celebrates procreation,is it any wonder that admitting you regret having children is equivalent to admitting you support kitten-killing?It doesn’t seem quite fair,then,to compare the regrets of parents to the regrets of the children.Unhappy parents rarely are provoked to wonder if they shouldn’t have had kids,but unhappy childless folks are bothered with the message that children are the single most important thing in the world:obviously their misery must be a direct result of the gaping baby-size holes in their lives.Of course,the image of parenthood that celebrity magazines like Us Weekly and People present is hugely unrealistic,especially when the parents are single mothers like Bullock.According to several studies concluding that parents are less happy than childless couples,single parents are the least happy of all.No shock there,considering how much work it is to raise a kid without a partner to lean on;yet to hear Sandra and Britney tell it,raising a kid on their“own”（read:with round-the-clock help）is a piece of cake.It’s hard to imagine that many people are dumb enough to want children just because Reese and Angelina make it look so glamorous:most adults understand that a baby is not a haircut.But it’s interesting to wonder if the images we see every week of stress-free,happiness-enhancing parenthood aren’t in some small,subconscious way contributing to our own dissatisfactions with the actual experience,in the same way that a small part of us hoped getting“the Rachel”might make us look just a little bit like Jennifer Aniston.39.According to Paragraph 4,the message conveyed by celebrity magazines is
A.soothing.
B.ambiguous.
C.compensatory.
D.misleading.
[单选题]Text 3 England's problematic vocational education system has been subjected to wave after wave of reform.Yet improving the quality of technical education has eluded governments of all colours.University technical colleges（UTCs）are only the latest example of a shiny innovation that ran on to the rocks.Seven UTCs have now announced they are closing their doors.UTCs were intendecl to provide quality vocational education,combining technical and academic learning,for young people from the age of 14.Despite the millions the government has invested in them,ihey have on the whole been plagued by poor GCSE results and an inability to attract sufficient numbers of young people.Several attempts to establish quality vocational eclucation from 14 have failed.The issues affecting UTCs provide an opportunity to revisit whether this merits continuing support.We should take it.Barely a year passes without a lament about the low status of vocational qualifications.These often fail to recognise the chicken and egg that holds vocational learning back.Its status will only improve when ii is not seen as the preserve of those who have been failed by the school system.But while its status is low,these are the only young people likely to try something unproven and untested.This dynamic means new institutions often replicate the problems of the old seconclary moderns.Young people who attend UTCs are more likely to be from poor backgrounds,have made poor progress in primary school,and have attended secondary schools rated poorly by Ofsted.They are children who have been failed by the school system.In this day and age,there is no such thing as a career that does not require functional literacy and numeracy.Yet drawing low-achieving children out of mixed-ability schooling at age 14 makes them less likely to get the decent GCSEs in maths and English that are so critical in the eyes of employers.Setting up alternative vocational institutions for 14-year-olds thus risks closing down future vocational options,rather than expanding them.Vocational education is often posited as an alternative for those who are not"academically minded",orten a code for those who have disengaged from school.Yet this is far more likely to be a symptom of poor teaching ancl a lack of adequate support rather than a young person's inability to engage with a broad pre-16 curriculum that includes both academic and applied learning.Selection by academic ability at age 11 is wrong.But so i.s backdoor selection by academic ability at 14.The rlght to experience an engaging curriculum and finish school with adequate levels of literacy and numeracy is best achieved by options at 16 not 14.This wili not solve everything;but it is a better basis for ensuring 16-year-olds have the skills they need to flourish in any job.
We can learn that those who are not"academically minded"____
A.indicate poor teaching in the school system
B.lack the ability to engage with academic learning
C.blame inadequate support for their failure
D.fail to meet national educational standards
[单选题]Text 2 Britain's flexible labour market was a boon during the economic slump,helping keep joblessness down and then,when the recovery began,allowing employment to rise.Yet one of its bendier bits is causing politicians to fret.Ed Miliband,the leader of the Labour Party,has promised a crackdown on"zero-hours contracts"if he wins the next election.The government has launched a con8ultation.Zero-hours contracts allow finns to employ workers for as few or as many hours as they need,with no prior notice.In theory,at least,people can refuse work.Fully l.4m jobs were based on these contracts in January 2014,according to the Office for National Statistics.That is just 4%of the total,but the share rises to a quarter in the hospitality business.The contracts are useful for finns with unstable pattems of demand,such as hotels and restauranLs.Ihey have also helped firms to expand during the recovery-allowing them to test new business lines before hiring permanem stafir,who would be more costly to make redundani if things went wrong.Flexibility suits some workers,too.According to one survey,47%of those employed on zerohours conUacts were content to have no nunimum contracted hours.Many of these workers are in full-time education.The ability to tum down work is important to students,who want to revise at this time of year.Pensioners keen for a liLtle extra income can often live with the uncertainty of not having guaranteed hours.Yet that leaves more than a quarter of workers on zero-hours contracts who say they are unhappy wirh their condirions.Some of this is cyclical.During recessions,a dearth of permanent positions forces people into jobs with no contracted hours even if they do not want them.Underemployment is pfuticularly prevalent among these workers,35%of whom would like more hours compared with 12qo in offier jobs.As the economy recovers,many should be able to renegotiate their contracts or find permanent jobs.But the recovery will not cause unwanted zero-hours contracts to disappear.Some workers will never have much negoLiating power:they are constrained by geography,family commitments and lack of competition for their skills among a small number of big employers.Zero-hours contracts make it easier for employers to abuse their labour-market power.Some use them to avoid statutory obligations such as sick and matenuty pay.Workers are penalised for not being available when requested.And some contracts contain exclusivity clauses which prevent workers from taking additional jobs.These can harm other employers as well as workers,and actually reduce labour market flexibility.That,at least,is worth doing away with.
Zero-hours contracts may allow employers to_____
A.satisfy their need
B.violate legal provision
C.avoid legal punishment
D.fulfill their responsibility
