留学群英语栏目为大家提供“2017全国英语等级（三级）考试阅读A训练”，希望对大家有所帮助。
Section IIReading
( 50 minutes)
Part A
Directions:
Read the following two texts. Answer the questions on each text by choosing A, B, C or D. Mark your answers on ANSWER SHEET 1.
Text 1
Technology has been an encouragement of historical change. It acted as such a force in Eng- land beginning in the eighteenth century, and across the entire Western World in the nineteenth. Rapid advances were made in the use of scientific findings in the manufacture (制造 ) of goods, which has changed ideas about work. One of the first changes was that other forms of energy have taken the place of human power. Along with this came the increased use of machines to manufac- ture products in less time..
People also developed machines that could produce the same parts for a product: each nail was exactly like every other nail, meaning that each nail could be changed for every other nail. This means that goods could be mass produced, though mass production required breaking production down into smaller and smaller tasks.
Once this was done, workers no longer started on the product and labored to complete it. In- stead, they might work only one thousandth of it, other workers completing their own parts in cer- tain order. There is nothing strange about this manufacturing work by today' s standards. Highly skilled workers were unable to compare ...