Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each, choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.
Innovation, the effective recipe of progress, has always cost people their jobs. Over the past 30 years the digital revolution has 1 many of the mid-skill jobs that supported 20th-century middle-class life. Typists, ticket agents, bank tellers and many production-line jobs have been 2 with.
For those who believe that technological progress has made the world a better place, such change is a natural part of rising 3 Although innovation kills some jobs, it creates new and better ones, as a more productive society becomes richer and its wealthier inhabitants 4 more goods and services. A hundred years ago one in three American workers was employed on a farm. Today less than 2% of them produce far more food. The millions freed from the land were not delivered to joblessness, but found better-paid work as the economy grew more 5 . Today the pool of secretaries has 6 , but there are ever more computer programmers and web designers.
Optimism remains the right starting-point, but for workers the dislocating (扰乱的) effects of technology may make themselves evident faster than its benefit. Even if new jobs and 7 products emerge, in the short term income gaps will widen, causing huge social dislocation and perhaps even changing politics. Technology’s impact will feel like a tornado, hitting the rich world first, but 8 sweeping through poorer countries too. Worse, it seems likely that this wave of technological 9 to the job market has only just started. From driverless cars to clever household devices, innovations that already exist could destroy jobs that have 10 been untouched.
A. prosperity B. dispensed C. inquire D. wonderful
E. partition F. eventually G. sophisticated H. displaced
I. conversely J. Shrunk K. fragile L. disruption
M. demand N. complicated O. hitherto