第二十七天：新題型模擬練習二

今天的結束語是：“性相近，習相遠”（“Man is similar by nature, but becomes different by nurture”）。

Directions:

You are going to read a list of headings and a text about what workers are complaining about. Choose a heading from the list A-G that best fits the meaning of each numbered. There are two extra headings that you do not need to use. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1. (10 points)

A. Companies can change how their workers feel

B. Workers are more willing to report stress than before

C. Workers talk about increased stress

D. Stress is a hot topic in many developed countries

E. Complaint of stress is better than having a real disease

F. Stress has attracted the attention of the government

G. Companies can defeat workers by stress

Workers Now Complain of Stress

Without at least a touch of stress, a job may be rather boring. Yet an increasing number of workers find stress not a welcome buzz but an offence perpetrated by their employers. In Britain, days lost to stress, depression and anxiety increased from 6.5m in 1995 to 13.4m in 2001-02. In the past year alone, over half of all employers saw increased absenteeism due to stress, according to the Chartered Institute of Personnel and Development.

41.

In France, a new bestseller called Bonjour paresse (“Hello laziness”) provides one response: keep activity to a minimum and lie low. That's amusing, but not great for productivity. Preventing people from becoming stressed means providing expensive helplines and hiring even more expensive counsellors. That's bad enough. Making stressed workers turn up to work is difficult too. And if they can be coaxed or cajoled into work they may sue if they feel their employer hasn't taken their ailment seriously enough.

42.

Before he set off on holiday, Tony Blair chaired a discussion in his Downing Street offices on balancing work and life outside it. The Health and Safety Executive (HSE), which has done a good job of making sure people do not get mangled by machines at work (see chart), is now trying out guidelines to save workers from the horrors of stress. They will be issued to companies in November.

43.

Worrying about work is preferable to being physically endangered by it. In this respect, more stress is good news. Eric Teasdale, chief medical officer at AstraZeneca, says that when he started out in occupational medicine in 1976, workplace illness meant nasty diseases caused by asbestos, deafness from noisy machinery and skin problems caused by spilt chemicals. Those problems have mostly been replaced by more cerebral complaints.

44.

What has changed is the readiness of workers to say they are stressed. That's self-reinforcing: information on the prevalence of stress is collected through surveys. But the more people are asked whether they are stressed, the more willing they are to say yes. Philip Hodson, of the British Association for Counselling and Psychotherapy, reckons this is part of a natural process: as people get richer, their sense of entitlement to happiness increases and their threshold for worry often becomes lower. Stress, unlike, say, inadequacy, also has few negative connotations, making it painless to acknowledge. “Stress can almost become a badge of honour,” says Mr Teasdale.

45.

So what should companies do to beat it? The HSE's stress guidelines are probably not the best starting point. The latest draft includes some rum notions: 65% of the workforce, for example, should feel that their employer “engages them frequently” in organisational change. In fact, many companies already know that keeping workers happy can save money. AstraZeneca, which runs various programmes to increase the wellbeing of its workforce, reckons it saves £210,000 ($380,000) annually in lower insurance premiums.

The advantages of having happy and productive workers are likely to push other companies the same way. Given the vagaries of stress, preventing it by regulation is as impractical as trying to legislate against tiredness or, for that matter, boredom.

參考答案：

41. D 42. F 43. E 44. B 45. A