Questions 31 to 35 are based on the following passage:
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 labourer 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.
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 be the mechanist’s trade or bookkeeping (簿记). 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 fail 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.
31. 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 not so large as that of industrial workers
32. According to the passage, with the development of modern industry,
A) factory labourers will overtake intellectual employees in number
B) there are as many middle-class employees as factory labourers
C) employers have attached great importance to factory labourers
D) the proportion of factory labourers in the total employee population has decreased
33. The word “dubious” (Para. 2, Line 2) most probably means .
A) valuable
C) doubtful
B) useful
D) helpful
34. According to the writer, professional knowledge or skill is .
A) less important than awareness of being a good employee
B) as important as the ability to deal with public relations
C) more important than employer-employee relations
D) as important as the ability to co-operate with others in the organization
35. 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 |
