Across Britain,burnt toast will be served to mothers in bed this morning as older sons and daughters rush to deliver their supermarket bunches of flowers.But,according to a new study,we should be placing a higher value on motherhood all year.
Mothers have long known that their home workload was just as heavy as paid work.Now,the new study has shown that if they were paid for their parental labours,they would earn as much as£172,000 a year.
The study looked at the range of jobs mothers do,as well as the hours they are working,to determine the figure.This would make their yearly income£30,000 more than the Prime Minister earns.
By analysing the numbers,it found the average mother works 119 hours a week,40 of which would usually be paid at a standard rate and 79 hours as overtime.After questioning 1,000 mothers with children under 18,it found that,on most days,mums started their routine work at 7 am and finished at around 11 pm.
To calculate just how much mothers would earn from that labour,it suggested some of the roles that mums could take on,including housekeeper,part-time lawyer,personal trainer and entertainer.Being a part-time lawyer,at£48.98 an hour,would prove to be the most profitable of the“mum jobs”,with psychologist(心理学家)a close second.
It also asked mothers about the challenges they face,with 80 percent making emotional(情感的)demand as the hardest thing about motherhood.
Over a third of mums felt they needed more training and around half said they missed going out with friends.
The study shows mothers matter all year long and not just on Mother’s Day.The emotional,physical and mental energy mothers devote to their children can be never-ending,but children are also sources of great joy and happiness.Investing(投入)in time for parenting and raising relationships is money well spent.How much does a Prime Minister earn,according to the passage?
A.£30,000. | B.£142,000. |
C.£172,000. | D.£202,000. |
The biggest challenge for most mothers is from_____.
A.emotional demand | B.1ow pay for work |
C.heavy workload | D.1ack of training |
What is stressed in the last paragraph?
A.Mothers’importance shows in family all year long. |
B.The sacrifices mothers make are huge but worthwhile. |
C.Mothers’devotion to children can hardly be calculated. |
D.Investing time in parenting would bring a financial return. |
What can we conclude from the study?
A.Mothers’working hours should be largely reduced. |
B.Mothers should balance their time for work and rest. |
C.Mothers’labour is of a higher value than it is realized. |
D.Mothers should be freed from housework for social life. |
A sixth of undergraduates in Beijing this year have registered at driving school. The students, mostly from majors such as business management or international trade, will finish their driving courses within 20 days or so.
Training costs have dropped to 2, 600 yuan for students, according to the Haidian Driving School in Beijing. The price is not really low, but students will accept it, seeing it as an investment (投资)in their future. Familiarity with the operation of computers and fluent English are the basic skills graduating students need to find a job. But a driver’s permit has become another factor (因素).
“In the job market, owning a driver’s permit sometimes strengthens a graduating student’s competitiveness for a good position, ”says Zhou Yang, an undergraduate at the China University of Political Science and Law.
Cars will become a necessary part of many people’s lives in the coming years, and it is difficult to get a permit of campus because of the pressures on working people’s time. “Having a fulltime job after graduation offers limited time to learn to drive. We senior students have plenty of spare time, plenty of opportunity to learn. ”Zhou says.
Xu Jian, an official at the driving school, said undergraduates were very able and serious, and could grasp in an hour what ordinary people took four hours to learn. In this driving school, middle -aged people, young women and college students are the main customers.
To get a driver’s permit, a beginner is now required to have at least 86 hours’practice before the final road test.
________ in Beijing want to learn to drive.
A.Most of the undergraduates |
B.Many undergraduates |
C.Many students in the driving school |
D.Most of the students who learn business or international trade |
The undergraduates are learning to drive because ________.
A.they need this skill to find a good job |
B.they like to drive cars |
C.they will not have any time to learn to drive after they have found a full - time job |
D.most of them will be able to buy cars in the future |
Which of the following is likely to be Xu Jian’s opinion of students learning to drive?
A.He thought it was better to learn it at college than at work. |
B.He decided it was a waste of money and time to learn to drive. |
C.He agreed that they could learn to drive. |
D.He thought they would spend three times more time to learn to drive than usual. |
Which of the following can be the best headline for the passage?
A.Students Pay Less to Learn to Drive Now. |
B.Students Learn to Drive. |
C.It is Better to Learn to Drive at Colleges. |
D.Welcome to the Driving School. |
Inside China Daily
China, Japan ink fishery accord
The New China -Japan Fishery Agreement will be put into effect starting June this year, Chinese vice - minister of agriculture, Qi Jingfa told a press conference yesterday in Beijing.
—Page 2
Offshore funeral
The remains of more than 500 dead will be scattered at sea this spring near the mouth of Yangtze River in Shanghai. To save space Shanghai officials discouraged land burials.
—Page 3
The only wise choice
Co -operation with the mainland for a peaceful reunification should be the only wise choice for the newly elected Taiwan leader.
—Page 4
Interest in activity such as fairs, galleries and exhibitions has caused the art market to take shape in China. —Page 9
Two sides of a story.
The government’s efforts to cut the homework burden of primary and middle school students have drawn mixed reactions.
—Page 10
Blind, but not out.
Yang Jia, an English professor at the Chinese Academy of Science meets the challenges brought by the sudden loss of her eyesight and continues to make it in her work.
—Page 11
The above section may possibly appear on ________ of China Daily.
A.Page 5 | B.the Front Page |
C.Page 9 | D.the last page |
From the text we can learn that ________ .
A.no one will be buried in the ground after they die in Shanghai |
B.Chinese fishermen can go fishing freely in Japan soon |
C.a blind professor can work better |
D.more and more people have begun to do art business |
When you look through this issue of China Daily, you are sure to find ________ .
A.how Taiwan’s new leader was made |
B.that people think differently of reducing pupils’ burden |
C.sad stories about students with heavy burden in primary and middle schools |
D.interesting stories of art fairs, galleries and exhibitions of different shapes in China |
Without proper planning, tourism can cause problems. For example, too many tourists can crowd public places that are also enjoyed by the inhabitants of a country. If tourists create too much traffic, the inhabitants become annoyed and unhappy. They begin to dislike tourists and to treat them impolitely. They forget how much tourism can help the country’s economy. It is important to think about the people of a destination country and how tourism affects them. Tourism should help a country, keep the customs and beauty that attract tourists. Tourism should also advance the wealth and happiness of local inhabitants.
Too much tourism can be a problem. If tourism grows too quickly, people must leave other jobs to work in the tourism industry. This means that other parts of the country’s economy can suffer.
On the other hand, if there is not enough tourism, people can lose jobs. Businesses can also lose money. It costs a great deal of money to build large hotels, airports, air terminals, first- class roads, and other support facilities(配套设施)needed by tourist attractions. For example, a major international class tourism hotel can cost as much as 50 thousand dollars per room to build. If this room is not used most of the time, the owners of the hotel lose money.
Building a hotel is just a beginning. There must be many support facilities as well, including roads to get to the hotel, electricity, sewers to handle waste, and water. All of these support facilities cost money. If they are not used because there are not enough tourists , jobs and money are lost.
Which of the following do you think has been discussed in the part before this selection?
A.It is extremely important to develop tourism. |
B.Building roads and hotels is essential. |
C.Support facilities are highly necessary. |
D.Planning is of great importance to tourism. |
The underlined word“ inhabitants” (in Paragraph 1 ) probably means________.
A.tourists | B.passengers |
C.population | D.citizens |
Too much tourism can cause all these problems EXCEPT ________ .
A.a bad effect on other industries |
B.a change of tourists’ customs |
C.over - crowdedness of places of interest |
D.pressure on traffic |
It can be inferred from the text that ________ .
A.the author doesn’t like tourism developing so fast |
B.local people will benefit from tourist attraction |
C.other parts of a country’s economy won’t benefit from tourism much |
D.we can't build too many support facilities |
Many people believe the glare(炫目的光)from snow causes snowblindness. Yet, with dark glasses or not, they find themselves suffering from headaches and watering eyes, and even snowblindness ,when exposed to several hours of“ snow light”.
The United States army has now determined that glare from snow does not cause snowblindness in troops in a snow -covered country. Rather ,a man’s eyes frequently find nothing to focus on (聚集)in a broad space of snow- covered without- grass land. So his gaze continually moves and jumps back and forth over the entire landscape in search of something to look at. Finding something, hour after hour, the eyes never stop searching and the eyeballs become tired and the eye muscles ache. Nature makes up for this discomfort by producing more and more fluid (流体) which covers the eyeball. The fluid covers the eyeball in increasing quantity until it makes eyes difficult to see dearly, and the result is total, even though for a short time, snowblindness.
Experiments led the Army to a simple method of overcoming this problem. Scouts(侦察兵)ahead of the troops are trained to shake snow from evergreen bushes, creating a dotted line as they cross completely snow - covered landscape. Even the scouts themselves throw lightweight, dark - colored objects ahead on which they can focus too. The men following can then see something. Their gaze is arrested. Their eyes focus on a bush and having found something to see, stop searching the snow -blanketed landscape. By focusing their attention on one object at a time. the men can cross the snow without becoming hopelessly snowblind or lost. In this way the problem of crossing a continuous white land is overcome.To prevent snowblindness caused by the strong light from snow, wearing glasses or not ________.
A.depends on whether the snow is white enough |
B.makes no difference |
C.makes much difference |
D.depends on whether the snow is thick |
When the eyes are tired, tears flow out ________.
A.to clear the vision |
B.to make the eyes stop searching |
C.to make the vision unclear |
D.to produce more and more liquid |
Snowblindness can be avoided ________.
A.by moving one’s gaze back and forth |
B.by walking ahead and keeping looking around |
C.by making up for the discomfort of one’s eyes |
D.by providing the eyes with something to focus on |
The dream of flying into outer space, cherished by the Chinese people for centuries, will soon come true.
China launched its fourth unmanned spacecraft (飞船)“Shenzhou Ⅳ” on December 30 at the Jiuquan Satellite Launch Centre in Gansu Province. It was the 27th consecutive(连续的)and successful launch of China - made rockets since October 1996. This launch has made it more realistic for China to send a person into space on its own following Russia and the USA.
Qi Faren,leading designer of the spacecraft system, said all the functions (功能) designed for manned flights have withstood (经受住)the test of three previous, successful launches and return landings of the “Shenzhou” spaceships.
China launched the “Shenzhou Ⅰ ”, “Shenzhou Ⅱ ”and “Shenzhou Ⅲ ”spacecrafts in 1999,2001 and 2002 respectively.
“Shouzhou Ⅳ” was to make it a more comfortable place in which astronauts can live and work. All parts of the application system for manned flight are aboard the “Shenzhou Ⅳ”craft in all test flights.
China’s manned flight programme began in 1992. A number of unmanned test flights will be launched before Chinese astronauts are sent into space.
Leading scientists in charge of China’s manned space programme said the successful launch of the “Shenzhou Ⅳ” laid a solid foundation for the country’s future task of sending Chinese astronauts to outer space.
The spacecraft returned to the earth on January 5, after completing seven experiments in space.
Officials at the centre said that“ Shenzhou Ⅴ”, a manned spacecraft, is expected to be launched later this year.
How many countries can send a person into space on its own by now?
A.2. | B.3. |
C.4. | D.Not mentioned. |
China’s manned flight programme began in ________.
A.1992 | B.October 1996. |
C.1999 | D.January 2003 |
As a matter of fact, ________ .
A.“Shenzhou Ⅴ ”has been launched |
B.“Shenzhou Ⅳ” was a manned spacecraft |
C.“Shenzhou Ⅲ ”and“ Shenzhou Ⅳ” were not launched in the same year |
D.the dream of man flying into outer space has come true in China |
Which is the most suitable title for the passage?
A.The Successful Launching of “Shenzhou Ⅳ ”. |
B.The Landing of “Shenzhou Ⅳ ”. |
C.Chin a’s Manned Flight Programme. |
D.The Third Country Sending a Person into Outer Space. |