CAE Reading and Use of English Part 6
You are going to read four extracts from articles in which writers give their views on the relationship between technology and work. For questions 37 – 40, choose from the writers A- D. The writers may be chosen more than once.
Technology and the future of work
A
Despite all the hype about modern jobs that would have been unimaginable to previous generations, the reality is, I believe, that the vast majority of the workforce is still employed in traditional occupations such as sales. Most workers’ actions and decisions can be predicted, based on what they’ve done in similar situations in the past, and much of this predictable work will be susceptible to automation over the coming decades. Furthermore, it is questionable whether the jobs created by technology will be numerous enough to compensate for those that disappear. And while there will doubtless be many calls for improving· retraining opportunities, it is unrealistic to expect that the bulk of the workforce can somehow be taught to take on the few roles that are beyond the reach of technology. This doesn’t mean, however, that we should miss the opportunity to begin meaningful discussions about the issues of employment, or rather unemployment, which we face as a society and the types of strategies we might employ in order to adapt to a new reality.
B
The conventional view has been that progress results in the automation of low-skilled jobs while creating more opportunity for the more highly skilled. However, in reality, technology has actually had a de-skilling effect. Shop cashiers, for example, used to have to quickly and accurately enter individual prices into the cash register. Now, they simply scan each item. In many sectors, it’s the exclusively human abilities such as communication and social awareness which are becoming most highly valued – these will ultimately separate the economy’s winners from the losers. Jobs are changing, and we need to ensure that effective learning opportunities are accessible and affordable for those who are willing and able to adapt to this rapid change. However, while progress may create new opportunities, it seems very unlikely that there will be enough of these new positions to absorb all the workers displaced from more predictable routine work.
C
We shouldn’t let uncertainties about the future of work prevent people from acquiring new skills through attending courses in order to become more valuable as the economy evolves. Individuals can and should do everything possible not only to adapt to the changes brought about by technology, but also to be ready to embrace the roles technology can’t. After all, computers will only ever have a limited ability. However, I take very seriously the possibility that technology may for the first time be reducing the total number of people in work rather than increasing it. Therefore, it is important to realise that advice directed at individuals about how they can best adapt to new work practices is quite different from a discussion about what we should do as a society. Indeed, in my opinion, society as a whole can do very little to prepare for these changes.
D
When the web first made the internet accessible worldwide, no-one predicted there would be such positions as search-engine optimisers, social media managers and countless other technology-related jobs of today. Furthermore, even those jobs which appear the same as they were a century ago are actually very different now. Bank clerks, for example, still concern themselves with tasks such as basic cash-handling. However, they have also taken on roles requiring more expertise like ‘relationship banking’. This new aspect of the role involves what no machine can do: building relationships and strengthening customer loyalty, in order to advise on a range of other financial services. Indeed, as technology takes over more routine tasks, competencies such as dealing sympathetically with customers will be increasingly important when it comes to employability. We can be confident that this trend will continue, and it’s most definitely time we began talking about government policies to deal with the changes that are coming, both in terms of jobs, and the way we do them.
Which writer …
37 has the same view as A on whether there will be enough ‘new’ job opportunities created to employ all the people whose jobs have been lost due to automation?
38 expresses a different view from the other writers on whether technology will have an impact on employment prospects?
39 has a different opinion to C on whether training can enable people to compete with technology in the job market?
40 has a different opinion to 8 on whether technology has removed the need for job-specific skills?
CAE Reading and Use of English Part 7
You are going to read an article about long-distance walking. Six paragraphs have been removed from the article. Choose from the sentences A-G the one which fits each gap (41-46). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use.
Long-distance walking
Long-distance walking is a subject that has long interested me as a journalist, but that is also of concern to geographers, poets, historians and film students. In recent years the film industry has produced Wild, an account of the writer Cheryl Strayed’s walk along the 4,000 km Pacific Crest Trail, and an adaptation of Bill Bryson’s A Walk in the Woods, in which the writer attempts to hike the 3,300 km Appalachian Trail.
41 ___
For Bryson, it was simply a response to a small voice in his head that said, ‘Sounds neat! Let’s do it.’ For Strayed, whose memoir inspired Wild, the reasons were more complex. Battered by a saddening series of personal problems, she walked the trail in the hope that the experience would provide a release.
42 ___
For me, the attraction of such walks has nothing to do with length for its own sake and everything to do with the fact that long trails invariably provide a journey with a compelling academic structure. Many long walks tick the geographic box, not least the Appalachian and Spain’s GR11 trails, which are both defined by great mountain ranges that guarantee topographical appeal.
43 ___
Such links to the past are to be found on shorter walks, but on a longer trail the passing of the days connects us more profoundly to the same slow, enforced journeys made by travellers before cars, planes or trains. They also reconnect us to the scale of our world – a kilometre, never mind 100, means something when you walk it. But what of the more specific pleasures of a long walk?
44 ___
Strayed shares this idea, writing that her trek ‘had nothing to do with backpacking fads or philosophies of any particular era or even with getting from point A to point B. It had to do with how it felt to be in the wild. With what it was like to walk with no reason other than to witness the accumulation of trees and meadows, streams and rocks, sunrises and sunsets.’
45 ___
These are what Bryson is referring to when he says, about trekking, that you have ‘no engagements, commitments, obligations or duties . . . and only the smallest, least complicated of wants’. In Wanderlust: A History of Walking, the author Rebecca Solnit explores another of hiking’s pleasures – the way it allows us to think. Walking is slow, she writes; ‘ … the mind, like the feet, works at about three miles an hour … ‘
46 ___
In my experience, though, the longer you walk, actually the less you think. A trek often begins with me teasing at some problem, but by journey’s end, walking has left my mind curiously still. As the Danish philosopher Kierkegaard put it, ‘I have walked myself into my best thoughts,’ but ‘I know of no thought so burdensome that one cannot walk away from it.’
A Mine begin with the allure of beautiful landscapes, a notion nurtured by 19th-century Romantic poets such as Wordsworth and Coleridge, both ‘walkers’ in the modern sense at a time when walking usually suggested vagrancy or poverty. They helped suggest the idea that Nature, far from being a malign force, can be a balm for the soul.
B As the ancient historian Jerome once said: ‘to solve a problem, walk around.’ ‘All truly great thoughts are conceived by walking,’ said the great philosopher Nietzsche, while the novelist Charles Dickens observed: ‘It is not easy to walk alone in the country without musing upon something.’
C Having spent most of my spare time tackling long-distance trails, including the Pacific Crest Trail and sections of Spain’s 800-km GR11, I am ideally placed to explore the question: what is it that inspires people to hike thousands of kilometres?
D The scenic highlights of those recent long walks are many. On longer walks the landscape’s effect, as Strayed suggests, is cumulative: the countryside changes over time, sometimes subtly, often dramatically. Having reached a summit or crossed a pass, a sense of ownership or belonging begins to develop.
E What’s more, to walk for long periods is to escape jobs, people and life’s minutiae for routines of a different, more nourishing kind. The effects of solitude, like those of landscape, accrue over time. Simple pleasures and modest imperatives become the most important things in life – chocolate, dry clothes, blister-free feet.
F But any long walk is also the sum of its parts, and in the Pyrenees these parts often consist of ancient paths between settlements. Time and again on the GR11, I walked along part-cobbled paths, edged with crumbling walls and terraces, the work of centuries lost in a generation.
G Between the two extremes, doing it for fun and the journey of self-discovery and healing, are countless other motivations and pleasures that draw us to the outdoors and the ancient imperative of covering immense distances on foot.
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