Question

It’s enough to give anyone an earache. Women spend an average of about five years on the phone during their working lives, as research has showed.

You won’t be surprised to learn that women spend a longer time than men on the phone.

Both sexes make and receive almost the same number of calls ---- 277,000 for men and 288,000 for women. But women spend 13,500 more hours in total on their conversations.

More than half of those chats are work-related but people spend on average twice as long on a personal call (ten minutes) as on a business one.

Despite the explosion in mobile phone ownership, most people still prefer to use landlines, the poll（民意调查）found.

However, when people are tired of talking, the top excuse for getting a caller off the line is to say “Someone’s at the door”. Other falsehoods（谎言）include “I’m cooking” and “I need to go to the toilet”.

Eight out of ten phone users admitted not answering their phones on purpose if they did not want to speak to the caller.

One in three people thought calls after 10 pm were unacceptable but a quarter of those polled said they did not mind calls up to midnight.

Two-thirds admitted they had people in their address books who they knew they should ring but never got round to doing so.

Joseph Blass, managing director of telecom（电信）company Toucan, said, “As a nation, we love to chat on the phone but it is quite astonishing when we look at the total number of calls we make in a lifetime”.

1．According to the poll, when someone on the phone says “Sorry, someone is at the door”, he or she may mean _________.

       A．I want to stop chatting

       B．I am going to the toilet

       C．I am too tired to talk any longer

       D．I must go to open the door for someone

2．According to the passage, which of the following statements if TRUE?

       A．Women spend about five years talking on the phone during their lifetime.

       B．On average, work-related calls are only half as long as personal calls.

       C．Women make and receive exactly the same number of calls as men do.

       D．Men spend a longer time than women on the phone.

3．From the text, we know that _________.

       A．80% of people always refuse to answer a phone call

       B．most people never ring the people in their address books

       C．calls around midnight are acceptable to some people

D．Joseph Blass was one of the people who were polled

4．What Joseph Blass says in the last paragraph shows that ________.

       A．it’s no wonder that we all love to chat on the phone

       B．people insist on often phoning their families and friends

       C．the amount of time people spend on the phone was unexpected

D．The total number of calls people make in a lifetime is astonishing

Answer 1

ABCD