But the notion of a sharp division between the working young and the idle old misses a new trend,the growing gap between the skilled and the unskilled. Employment rates are falling among youngerunskilled people, whereas older skilled folk are working longer. The divide is most extreme inAmerica, where well-educated baby-boomers(二戰后生育高峰期出生的美國人)are putting offretirement while many less-skilled younger people have dropped out of the workforce.

　　Policy is partly responsible. Many European governments have abandoned policies that used toencourage people to retire early. Rising life expectancy(預期壽命), combined with the replacementof generous defined-benefit pension plans with less generous defined-contribution ones,means that even the better-off must work longer to have a comfortable retirement. But thechanging nature of work also plays a big role. Pay has risen sharply for the highly educated, andthose people continue to reap rich rewards into old age because these days the educated elderlyare more productive than the preceding generation. Technological change may well reinforce thatshift: the skills that complement computers, from management knowhow to creativity, do notnecessarily decline with age.

　　注意：此部分試題請在答題卡2上作答。

　　56. What is happening in the workforce in rich countries?

　　A) Younger people are replacing the elderly.

　　B) Well-educated people tend to work longer.

　　C) Unemployment rates are rising year after year.

　　D) People with no college degree do not easily find work.

　　57. What has helped deepen the divide between the well-off and the poor?

　　A) Longer life expectancies.

　　B) A rapid technological advance.

　　C) Profound changes in the workforce.

　　D) A growing number of the well-educated.

　　58. What do many observers predict in view of the experience of the 20th century?

　　A) Economic growth will slow down.

　　B) Government budgets will increase.

　　C) More people will try to pursue higher education.

　　D) There will be more competition in the job market.

　　59. What is the result of policy changes in European countries?

　　A) Unskilled workers may choose to retire early.

　　B) More people have to receive in-service training.

　　C) Even wealthy people must work longer to live comfortably in retirement.

　　D) People may be able to enjoy generous defined-benefits from pension plans.

　　60. What is characteristic of work in the 21st century?

　　A) Computers will do more complicated work.

　　B) More will be taken by the educated young.

　　C) Most jobs to be done will be creative ones.

　　D) Skills are highly valued regardless of age.

　　考試采取“多題多卷”模式，試題順序不統一，請依據試題進行核對。

　　56. B) Well-educated people tend to work longer.

　　57. B) A rapid technological advance.

　　58. A) Economic growth will slow down.

　　59. C) Even wealthy people must work longer to live comfortably in retirement.

　　60. D) Skills are highly valued regardless of age.

　　Passage Two

　　Questions 61 to 65 are based on the following passage.

　　Some of the world’s most significant problems never hit headlines. One example comes fromagriculture. Food riots and hunger make news. But the trend lying behind these matters is rarelytalked about. This is the decline in the growth in yields of some of the world’s major crops. A newstudy by the University of Minnesota and McGill University in Montreal looks at where, and how far,this decline is occurring.

　　The authors take a vast number of data points for the four most important crops: rice, wheat,corn and soyabeans(大豆). They find that on between 24% and 39% of all harvested areas, theimprovement in yields that took place before the 1980s slowed down in the 1990s and 2000s.

　　There are two worrying features of the slowdown. One is that it has been particularly sharp in theworld’s most populous(人口多的)countries, India and China. Their ability to feed themselves has beenan important source of relative stability both within the countries and on world food markets. Thatself-sufficiency cannot be taken for granted if yields continue to slow down or reverse.

　　Second, yield growth has been lower in wheat and rice than in corn and soybeans. This isproblematic because wheat and rice are more important as foods, accounting for around half of allcalories consumed. Corn and soyabeans are more important as feed grains. The authors note that“we have preferentially focused our crop improvement efforts on feeding animals and cars ratherthan on crops that feed people and are the basis of food security in much of the world.”

　　The report qualifies the more optimistic findings of another new paper which suggests that theworld will not have to dig up a lot more land for farming in order to feed 9 billion people in 2050, asthe Food and Agriculture Organisation has argued.

　　Instead, it says, thanks to slowing population growth, land currently ploughed up for crops might beable to revert(回返)to forest or wilderness.This could happen. The trouble is that the forecastassumes continued improvements in yields, which may not actually happen.

　　注意：此部分試題請在答題卡2上作答。

　　61. What does the author try to draw attention to?

　　A) Food riots and hunger in the world.

　　B) News headlines in the leading media.

　　C) The decline of the grain yield growth.

　　D) The food supply in populous countries.

　　62. Why does the author mention India and China in particular?

　　A) Their self-sufficiency is vital to the stability of world food markets.

　　B) Their food yields have begun to decrease sharply in recent years.

　　C) Their big populations are causing worldwide concerns.

　　D) Their food self-sufficiency has been taken for granted.

　　63. What does the new study by the two universities say about recent crop improvementefforts?

　　A) They fail to produce the same remarkable results as before the 1980s.

　　B) They contribute a lot to the improvement of human food production.

　　C) They play a major role in guaranteeing the food security of the world.

　　D) They focus more on the increase of animal feed than human food grains.

　　64. What does the Food and Agriculture Organisation say about world food production inthe coming decades?

　　A) The growing population will greatly increase the pressure on world food supplies.

　　B) The optimistic prediction about food production should be viewed with caution.

　　C) The slowdown of the growth in yields of major food crops will be reversed.

　　D) The world will be able to feed its population without increasing farmland.

　　65. How does the author view the argument of the Food and Agriculture Organisation?

　　A) It is built on the findings of a new study.

　　B) It is based on a doubtful assumption.

　　C) It is backed by strong evidence.

　　D) It is open to further discussion.

　　考試采取“多題多卷”模式，試題順序不統一，請依據試題進行核對。

　　61. C) The decline of the grain yield growth.

　　62. A) Their self-sufficiency is vital to the stability of world food markets.

　　63. D) They focus more on the increase of animal feed than human food grains.

　　64. D) The world will be able to feed its population without increasing farmland.

　　65. B) It is based on a doubtful assumption.