Day 18

英文重现

In addition, the human capital theory explains why there was a high concentration of women workers in certain low-skill jobs, such as weaving, but not in others, such as combing or carding, by positing that because of their primary responsibility in child rearing women took occupations that could be carried out in the home.

——GMAT OG 2015, Reading Comprehension, Passage 11

解析

1.句子的主语和谓语很明显，是“the theory explains”，但是其后所接的“why”引导的宾语从句比较复杂，我们可以先用A代替；将整个句子简化为“the theory explains A by positing that…”。大家在遇到长难句时，应该首先找出句子骨架结构，再分别分析各项具体内容。

2.“explains”后面一长串都是“why”引导的宾语从句，我们也要先找出句子的主

干来。不难看出宾语从句是一个“there be”句型，两个“such as”后面的内容分别对“low-skill jobs”和“others”进行举例说明（根据前面的“low-skill jobs”可推测出，“others”应该指的是“other low-skill jobs”，只有前面出现过的名词才可以在后面再次出现时省略），后面的“by positing that…in the home”是方式状语。把这些次要信息去掉以后，我们可以将宾语从句简化为“why there was a high concentration of women workers in certain low-skill jobs, but not in others”。

3.我们再来分析“by positing that…”这一长串的内容。大家注意到没有，在“positing”后面的宾语从句中，原文没有用逗号断句，所以我们需要自行断句，在“rearing”和“women”之间加个逗号，这样句子的结构就比较清晰了：前面的“because of their primary responsibility in child rearing”作后面的“women took occupations that could be carried out in the home”的原因状语。

词义辨析

参考翻译

除此以外，通过指出女性因为在育儿中担任主要责任，所以会接受能在家中完成的工作，人力资本理论解释了为什么女性工作者大多集中在某些低技术含量的工作中，比如织布，而不是在其他诸如纺纱前的纤维梳理等（无法在家中完成的）工作中。

实战演练

In the seventeenth-century Florentine textile industry, women were employed primarily in low-paying, low-skill jobs. To explain this segregation of labor by gender, economists have relied on the useful theory of human capital. According to this theory, investment in human capital—the acquisition of difficult job-related skills—generally benefits individuals by making them eligible to engage in well-paid occupations. Women's role as child bearers, however, results in interruptions in their participation in the job market (as compared with men's) and thus reduces their opportunities to acquire training for highly skilled work. In addition, the human capital theory explains why there was a high concentration of women workers in certain low-skill jobs, such as weaving, but not in others, such as combing or carding, by positing that because of their primary responsibility in child rearing women took occupations that could be carried out in the home.

The passage suggests that combing and carding differ from weaving in that combing and carding were

(A) low-skill jobs performed primarily by women employees.

(B) low-skill jobs that were not performed in the home.

(C) low-skill jobs performed by both male and female employees.

(D) high-skill jobs performed outside the home.

(E) high-skill jobs performed by both male and female employees.

答案：B

答案解析

这道题相对比较简单，根据“combing”、“carding”以及“weaving”可定位到句子“In addition, …in the home”，理解清楚该句中“others”指代“other low-skill jobs”后，即可首先排除选项D“在家之外所做的高技能工作”和选项E“由男性和女性员工所做的高技能工作”；而文中“because of”后面的内容解释了女性为什么会“weaving”，而不“combing and carding”，因此“because of”后边的内容其实暗示了这两类工作的差别：

“that (weaving) could be carried out in the home”，所以“combing and carding”应该是“不能在家中做的低技能工作”，即选项B。

其他两个选项意思为：

A.“主要由女性员工从事的低技能工作”。

C.“由男性和女性员工从事的低技能工作”。