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Passage One

In talking about the personal and social rewards, we should not forget certain other psychological returns from work. Human beings have a strong need to feel knowledgeable, even to want their store of knowledge to grow constantly. Partially this is because we learn at an early age that knowledge helps us to control our environment, to avoid unpleasant surprises and a sense of being helpless before unknown buffeting forces. Knowledge—the ability to figure things out, to understand how the system works—is also part of feeling competent and adult, of knowing the score.

When jobs are handled well it usually means the individual has learned to comprehend the organization: to know such things as who can quickly fix a part, who can get you needed supplies, who can explain an unusual request, how to interpret the boss's cryptic comments, when he means it and when he doesn't. Being "in on" things, being able to "figure out" the system, detecting an ever-growing sense of seeing the "pieces fit together": knowing what makes the job and the group and the company "tick," all are potent sources of personal pride.

In much the same way, the sense of making progress in one's level of skill, in one's job rating or in the types of work one can handle with minimal supervision or instruction, all provide confirmation of one's competence and merit. In our society we are taught to anticipate progress and to question its absence. We expect to improve ourselves and we assess our own worthiness by monitoring how well we are moving along. Most organizations provide for an ever-increasing quantity of responsibility and the opportunity to build on old skills in learning new ones for those who wish to enjoy the feeling of progress and self-advancement.

We have moved a long distance from the old clichés about work and money and survival. It is probably not much more sensible to ask the question about working to live and living to work than it is to play the "live-to-eat or eat-to-live" theme. Obviously these elements interrelate. The important point is that human beings would have to find some very potent substitutes for the personal satisfactions derived from work if they didn't have to work. Many psychologists have real doubts about our capacities to use leisure—all the time in which we have to make our own decisions about what to do, whom to do it with and when to do it—to provide an equivalent amount of pride and fulfillment. To be sure, it can be done. But most of mankind has learned to derive this need—satisfaction from the world of work.

(440 words)

1. "Psychological returns" in the first paragraph means ________ . ( D )

(a) money earned from work

(b) having a strong need to feel knowledgeable

(c) feeling helpless before unknown buffeting forces

(d) the sense of being competent and having grown up

2. In the second paragraph, the author discusses ________ . ( D )

(a) how to comprehend the organization

(b) how to arrange parts

(c) the importance of interpreting the boss's comments

(d) knowledge as a source of personal pride

3. The competence and merit can be confirmed by all of the following except ________ . ( B )

(a) increased level of skill

(b) doing more types of work

(c) an ability to shoulder more responsibility

(d) the feeling of progress and self-advancement

4. According to the author, ________. ( B )

(a) the "live-to-eat or eat-to-live" theme is more sensible

(b) working and living are interrelated

(c) people have to do some work for personal satisfactions

(d) leisure can provide equal amounts of pride and fulfillment

5. The above passage discusses ________. ( A )

(a) the psychological returns from work

(b) knowledge and advancement

(c) skills and progress

(d) the question about working to live and living to work

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Passage Two

Whether work should be placed among the causes of happiness or among the causes of unhappiness may perhaps be regarded as a doubtful question. There is certainly much work which is exceedingly irksome, and an excess of work is always very painful. I think, however, that, provided work is not excessive in amount, even the dullest work is to most people less painful than idleness. There are in work all grades, from mere relief of tedium up to the profoundest delights, according to the nature of the work and the abilities of the worker. Most of the work that most people have to do is not in itself interesting, but even such work has certain great advantages. To begin with, it fills a good many hours of the day without the need of deciding what one shall do. Most people, when they are left free to fill their own time according to their own choice, are at a loss to think of anything sufficiently pleasant to be worth doing, and whatever they decide on, they are troubled by the feeling that something else would have been pleasanter. To be able to fill leisure intelligently is the last product of civilization, and at present very few people have reached this level. 

Moreover, the exercise of choice is in itself tiresome. Except to people with unusual initiative it is positively agreeable to be told what to do at each hour of the day, provided the orders are not too unpleasant. Most of the idle rich suffer unspeakable boredom as the price of their freedom from drudgery. At times, they may find relief by hunting big game in Africa, or by flying round the world, but the number of such sensations is limited, especially after youth is past.  

Accordingly the more intelligent rich men work nearly as hard as if they were poor, while rich women for the most part keep themselves busy with innumerable trifles of whose earth-shaking importance they are firmly persuaded.

(338 words)

6. The author is certain that ________. ( D )

(a) work causes happiness

(b) work causes unhappiness

(c) there is always too much work

(d) too much work causes pain

7. Work not interesting ________. ( D )

(a) can also give profound delight

(b) can produce only tedium

(c) also needs creative spirit

(d) may also be beneficial

8. According to the author, the majority of people ________. ( C )

(a) have  interesting work to do

(b) don't need to decide what to do

(c) are troubled by what is the right work for them

(d) feel sad after they have decided what to do

9. Which of the following is NOT true according to the passage? ( B )

(a) It is better to receive orders which are not unpleasant than to give orders.

(b) The rich people are happy because they don't have to do tedious work.

(c) The rich people can enjoy sensations such as hunting or flying round the world only when they are not too old.

(d) Intelligent rich people work as hard as poor people.

10. The above passage discusses ________ . ( C )

(a) the rich and the poor

(b) work as sources of happiness

(c) the importance of work

(d) the use of less interesting  work

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Passage Three

There are of course, the happy few who find a savor in their daily job: the Indiana stonemason, who looks upon his work and sees that it is good; the Chicago piano tuner, who seeks and finds the sound that delights; the bookbinder, who saves a piece of history; the Brooklyn fireman, who saves a piece of life ... But don't these satisfactions, like Jude's hunger for knowledge, tell us more about the person than about his task? Perhaps. Nonetheless, there is a common attribute here: a meaning to their work well over and beyond the reward of the paycheck.

For the many, there is a hardly concealed discontent. The blue-collar blues is no more bitterly sung than the white-collar moan. "I'm a machine," says the spot-welder. "I'm caged," says the bank teller, and echoes the hotel clerk. "I'm a mule," says the steelworker. "A monkey can do what I do," says the receptionist. "I'm less than a farm implement," says the migrant worker. "I'm an object," says the high-fashion model. Blue collar and white call upon the identical phrase: "I'm a robot." "There is nothing to talk about," the young accountant despairingly enunciates. It was some time ago that John Henry sang, "A man ain't nothin' but a man." The hard, unromantic fact is: he died with his hammer in his hand, while the machine pumped on. Nonetheless, he found immortality. He is remembered.

As the automated pace of our daily jobs wipes out name and face—and, in many instances, feeling—there is a sacrilegious question being asked these days. To earn one's bread by the sweat of one's brow has always been the lot of mankind. At least, ever since Eden's slothful couple was served with an eviction notice, the scriptural precept was never doubted, not out loud. No matter how demeaning the task, no matter how it dulls the senses and breaks the spirit, one must work. Or else.

Lately there has been a questioning of its "work ethic" especially by the young. Strangely enough, it has touched off profound grievances in others, hitherto devout, silent, and anonymous. Unexpected precincts are being heard from in a show of discontent. Communiques from the assembly line are frequent and alarming; absenteeism. On the evening bus, the tense, pinched faces of young file clerks and elderly secretaries tell us more than we care to know. On the expressways, middle management men pose without grace behind their wheels as they flee city and job.

(305 words)

11. The Indiana stonemason, the Chicago piano tuner, the bookbinder, and the Brooklyn fireman are mentioned in the passage to show that ________. ( C )

(a) people are happy with their job

(b) people get paid through their work

(c) people can find a meaning to their work beyond money

(d) a good job can give satisfaction

12. The second paragraph reveals that ________. ( B )

(a) everyone is working hard

(b) most people cannot get satisfaction from their work

(c) people are robots

(d) people are immortalized and remembered through their work

13. The word "sacrilegious " in paragraph three means ________. ( C )

(a) religious

(b) pious

(c) profane

(d) free

14. According to the author, ________. ( D )

(a) people do not ask questions about their work nowadays

(b) people are willing to live by the sweat of their brow

(c) people can endure hard and demanding tasks

(d) people have to work no matter how low the work is

15. The final paragraph discusses _________. ( A )

(a) people's discontent with their work

(b) unexpected precincts

(c) absenteeism

(d) escape from city

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