Section 2 passage 4

这篇文章于2006年8月21日发表在英国卫报上, 原题为< More Americans swap beach for the office>,讲述了一个大家都非常熟悉的工作压力话题, 由于话题非常热门,根据新东方多年的教学经验,考生面对这样的文章基本上心就会比较定。由于在课堂中，我们新东方的老师也一直补充英美文化的知识，所以我们的学生应该看到工作压力问题就知道美国人工作压力要比欧洲人大得多，对文章有一个基本的预计和判断。

文章的第一段，第二段就开宗明义，说明了工作压力问题，美国人的工作压力太大，甚至有一些“闲无能”了。后面的第16题就说了美国人对欧洲人的看法，这只要具备基本的英美文化知识，这道题就是迎刃而解了。

从第三段到第五段，文章中说了现在美国人繁重的工作量，似乎没有什么时间去放假休闲，第17，18题就是针对这部分的问题，特别是第17题提到了人名，那去第三段找答案就很方便了。

第六段，第七段中说明了即使美国人放假也没有办法“放心”，神经一直是紧绷着，第19题就是针对它的提问。

第八段是对帮助美国人脱离这样的困境所提出的建议，第20题就是对其发问，提干中本身就有长串名词的提示，所以找到答案应该是没有难度的。

1 It is already common knowledge, on the beaches and in the cafes of mainland Europe, that Americans work too hard - just as it is well known on the other side of the Atlantic that Europeans, above all the French and the Germans, are slackers who could do with a bit of America's vigorous work ethic.

2 But a new survey suggests that even those vacations American employees do take are rapidly vanishing, to the extent that 40% of workers questioned at the start of the summer said they had no plans to take any holiday at all for the next six months, more than at any time since the late 1970s.

3 It is probably mere coincidence that George Bush, one of the few Americans who has been known to enjoy a French-style month off during August, cut back his holiday in Texas this year to a fortnight. But the survey by the Conference Board research group, along with other recent statistics, suggests an epidemic泛滥 of overwork among ordinary Americans.

4 A quarter of people employed in the private sector in the US get no paid vacation at all, according to government figures. Unlike almost all other industrialized nations, including Britain, American employers do not have to give paid holidays.

5 The average American gets a little less than four weeks of paid time off, including public holidays, compared with 6.6 weeks in the UK - where the law requires a minimum of four weeks off for full-time workers - and 7.9 weeks for Italy. One study showed that people employed by the US subsidiary of a London-based bank would have to work there for 10 years just to be entitled to the same vacation time as colleagues in Britain who had just started their jobs.

6 Even when they do take vacations, overworked Americans find it hard to switch off. One in three finds not checking their email and voicemail more stressful than working, according to a study by the Travelocity website, while the traumas 创伤of travel take their own toll. "We commonly complain we need a vacation from our vacations," the author Po Bronson wrote recently. "We leave home tired; we come back exhausted."

7 Christian Schneider, a German-born scholar at the Wharton business school in Philadelphia, argues that there is "a tendency to really relax in Europe, to disengage脱离from work. When an American finally does take those few days of vacation per year they are most likely to be in constant contact with the office."

8 Mindful that well-rested workers are more productive than burnt-out ones, the accounting firm PricewaterhouseCoopers has started closing all its US offices completely twice a year, for 10 days over Christmas and about five around Independence Day. "We wanted to create an environment where people could walk away and not worry about missing a meeting, a conference call or 300 emails," Barbara Kraft, a partner at the company, told the New York Times.

9 Left to themselves, Americans fail to take an average of four days of their vacation entitlement - an annual national total of 574m unclaimed days.