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 托福閱讀真題 Artisans and Industrialization Taks (1)

  Paragraph 1: Before 1815 manufacturing in the United States had been done in homes or shops by skilled artisans. As master craft workers, they imparted the knowledge of their trades to apprentices and journeymen. In addition, women often worked in their homes part-time, making finished articles from raw material supplied by merchant capitalists. After 1815 this order form of manufacturing began to give way to factories with machinery tended by unskilled or semiskilled laborers. Cheap transportation networks, the rise of cities, and the availability of capital and credit all stimulated the shift to factory production.

1) Which of the following can be inferred from the passage about articles manufactured before 1815?

○ They were primary produced by women.

○ They were generally produced in shops rather than in homes.

○ They were produced with more concern for quality than for speed of production.

○ They were produced mostly in large cities with extensive transportation networks.

  Paragraph 2: The creation of a labor force that was accustomed to working in factories did not occur easily. Before the rise of the factory, artisans had worked within the home. Apprentices were considered part of the family, and masters were responsible not only for teaching their apprentices a trade but also for providing them some education and for supervising their moral behavior. Journeymen knew that if they perfected  their skill, they could become respected master artisans with their own shop. Also, skilled artisans did not work by the clock, at a steady pace, but rather in bursts of intense alternating with leisurely time.

2) Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in the passage?

Incorrect answer choices change the meaning in important ways or leave out essential information.

○ Masters demanded moral behavior from apprentices but often treated them irresponsibly.

○ The responsibilities of the masters to the apprentice went beyond the teaching of a trade.

○ Maters preferred to maintain the trade within the family by supervising and educating the younger family members.

○ Maters who trained members of their own family as apprentices demanded excellence from them.