TEXT A

In the past thirty years many social changes have taken place in Britain. The greatest of these have probably been in the economic lives of women.
The changes have been significant, but, because tradition and prejudice can still handicap women in their working careers and personal lives, major legislation to help promote equality of opportunity and pay was passed during the 1970s.
At the heart of women's changed role in society has been the rise in the number of women at work, particularly married woman. As technology and society permit highly effective and generally acceptable methods of family planning there has been a decline in family size. Women as a result are involved in child-rearing for a much shorter time and related to this, there has been a rapid increase in the number of women with young children who return to work when the children are old enough not to need constant care and attention.
Since 1951 the proportion of married women whose work has grown from just over a fifth to a half. Compared with their counterparts elsewhere on the Continent, British women    comprise a relatively high proportion of the work force, about two-fifths, but on average they work fewer hours, about 31 a week. There is still a significant difference between women's average earnings and men's, but the equal pay legislation which came into force at the end of 1975 appears to have helped to narrow the gap between women's and men's basic rates.
As more and more women joined the work force in the 1960s and early 1970s there was an increase in the collective incomes of women as a whole and a major change in the economic role of large numbers of housewives. Families have come to rely on married women's earnings as an essential part of their income rather than as "pocket money". At the same time social roles within the family are more likely to be shared, exchanged or altered.

66. The general idea of the passage is about ______
A. social trends in contemporary Britain.
B. changes in women's economic status.
C. equal opportunity and pay in Britain.
D. women's roles within the family.
正确答案是

67. According to the author, an increasing number of married women are able to work because ______
A. their children no longer require their care.
B. there are more jobs available nowadays.
C. technology has enabled them to find acceptable jobs.
D. they spend far less time on child care than before.
正确答案是

TEXT B

Nature's Gigantic Snow plough

On January 10,1962, an enormous piece of glacier broke away and tumbled down the side of a mountain in Peru. A mere seven minutes later, when cascading ice finally came to a stop ten miles down the maintain, it had taken the lives of 4 000 people.
This disaster is one of the most devastating example of a very common event: an avalanche of snow or ice. Because it is extremely cold at very high altitude, sow rarely melts. It just keeps piling up higher and higher. Glaciers are eventually created when the weight of the snow is so great that the lower layers are pressed into solid ice. But most avalanches occur long before this happens. As snow accumulates on a steep slope, it reaches a critical point at which the slightest vibration will send it sliding into the valley below.
Even an avalanche of light power can be dangerous, but the Peruvian catastrophe was particularly terrible because it was caused by a heavy layer of ice. It is estimated that the ice that broke off weighted three million tons. As it crashed down the steep mountainside like a gigantic snow plough, it swept up trees, boulders and tons of topsoil, and completely crushed and destroyed the six villages that lay in its path.
At present there is no way to predict or avoid such enormous avalanches, but, luckily, they are very rare.
Scientists are constantly studying the smaller, more common avalanches, to try to understand what causes them. In the future, perhaps dangerous masses of snow and ice can be found and removed before they take human lives.

68. The first paragraph catches the reader's attention with a ______