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BEST IELTS Academic Reading Test 568
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST 568- PASSAGE – 3
IELTS ACADEMIC READING TEST – 568
READING PASSAGE – 3
The 21st century may be known as the era of lifelong learning and lifelong working. Retirement, the end stage of a linear working life, may be replaced with a learning, working, leisure, life cycle. Full-time work may be interspersed with periods of flexible working arrangements such as part-time, seasonal, occasional, and project work. The traditional notion of retirement may be replaced with lifelong working-in various positions and in varying amounts of time throughout adult life.
In the future a declining birthrate may result in a shortage of skilled and knowledgeable employees, making the notion of retirement for older workers a serious drain on organizational productivity. Increasing demands for work force productivity, a projected shortage of skilled and experienced workers, and older adults who are healthier and living longer than previous generations are powerful societal forces shaping future employment practices.
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Two decades ago, Sheppard and Rix forecast the changing nature of the workplace and suggested that keeping older persons in the work force would make sound economic and social policy sense. The trend toward longer periods of employment is beginning to become evident. Forced retirements and early retirement incentives have contributed to the decline of expertise in the workplace. Inflation, increasing health care costs, and inadequate pensions are propelling older adults to remain in or reenter the work force past the traditional retirement age. Retirement as permanent separation from the workplace is being replaced with the idea of bridge employment.
Bridging is a form of partial retirement in which an older worker alternates periods of disengagement from the workplace with periods of temporary, part-time, occasional, or self-employed work. The key aspect of bridging is that it is work in other than a career job. In US, among workers age 60, more than 50 percent retire from a career job but only one in nine actually disengages from the workplace. Bridging allows older workers to “practice” retirement, to fill labor market shortages, or to try a variety of occupational positions after an initial period of retirement.
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Bridging is sometimes described as a second career. The American Association of Retired Persons received 36,000 responses to a working life survey, covering 375 job titles from workers age 50 plus who had returned to the workplace after an initial period of retirement. The three most frequently cited reasons for returning included having financial need, liking to work, and keeping busy. However, closer examination of the data revealed that “financial need” included money to help the children as well as to meet basic needs. “Liking to work” included feeling successful, enjoying the excitement of the workplace, and making a contribution.
“Keeping busy” included working with a spouse, staying healthy, or fulfilling a social need. Reasons cited for remaining or returning to the workplace expressed the social meaning of work. Ginzberg proposed that work provides income, status, and personal achievement; structures time; and provides opportunities for interpersonal relationships. In the study by Stein, Rocco, and Goldenetz in 2000, older workers remaining in or returning to the workplace mentioned not planning wisely, the need to contribute, appreciation from others, and the desire to create something as reasons for not retiring from the workplace. Work is more than earning a living. It is a way to live.
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To some extent older workers remain in the workplace because they are healthier, cognitively able, and want to remain engaged. In a review of older worker studies, Rix concluded that many aging workers continue to work at peak efficiency and that there is usually much more variation within age groups than among age groups. Shea summarized the studies on older workers by pointing out that “age-related changes in physical ability, cognitive performance, and personality have little effect on workers’ output except in the most physically demanding tasks”.
Farr, Tesluk, and Klein found that there is no consistent relationship between age and performance across settings. Among faculty in the sciences, age had a slight negative relationship to publishing productivity. Some studies have shown a stronger negative relationship between age and work performance for nonprofessional and low-level clerical jobs than for higher-level craft, service, and professional jobs.
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With declining birthrates and an anticipated shortage of new entrants to the work force, early retirement will become an issue for organizations to explore in more detail. Organizations will need to assess the consequences to profits and productivity of encouraging talented and wise elders to exit the work force. As a society we need to recognize all of the costs of supporting a nonworking population capable of productive work and living healthier and longer lives.
Organizations need to rethink allocating opportunities to older workers as well as changing the attitudes and expectations of managers and younger employees toward an increasing number of older workers. There is a growing interest among organizations to reengineer the work environment to account for physiological changes due to aging and to reorganize work schedules to account for seasonal or contingent labour pools composed of older workers. Few positions in our information society remain static and do not require some type of education. Education and job redesign are the means by which the older segment of the community can enter, reenter, and advance in the workplace.
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Older workers represent a rich source of experience, accumulated knowledge, and wisdom. The quality and sensitivity of an institution’s program for counseling, training, retraining, and preparing older workers for life and career transition might be the means by which organizations recruit and retain valued and productive workers.
Questions 28-31
Choose the appropriate letters A-D.
28. Organizational productivity will seriously be affected in future by
A. older adults who are healthier.
B. the declining birthrate.
C. lifelong working.
D. the retirement of older workers.
29. Older adults are returning to the workplace because of
A. early retirement incentives.
B. the decline of expertise.
C. cost of living.
D. forced retirements.
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30. Partial retirement is a key opportunity for older workers to
A. continue their career.
B. try a new job.
C. disengage from the workplace.
D. remain in their job.
31. One reason not mentioned for returning to the workplace was
A. appreciation from others.
B. meeting basic needs.
C. feeling successful.
D. keeping fit.
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Question 32
Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each blank.
32. Name the three reasons for not retiring from the workplace, according to the study in 2000 ……………, …………… and ……………
Questions 33-36
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Rix found that many older workers 33…………… at maximum efficiency while Shea found that age-related changes had 34…………… on their productivity unless they had jobs that were 35…………… . According to Fair, Tesluk and Klein there was a 36…………… relationship in higher-level professions.
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Questions 37-39
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 3? In boxes 37-39 on your answer sheet write
TRUE – if the statement is true
FALSE- if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN – if the information is not given in the passage.
37. Organizations need to examine in more detail the reasons of declining birthrates.
38. Profits and productivity of organizations may fall because of early retirement.
39. Older workers will be needed in the education and design fields.
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Question 40
From the list below choose the most suitable title for the whole of Reading Passage 3.
A. The New Meaning of Retirement
B. Warning, the Society is Aging
C. Reasons for Not Retiring
D. Liking to Work
E. Concern about Future Employment
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ANSWERS
28. D
29. C
30. B
31. A
32. NOT PLANNING WISELY/NEED TO CONTRIBUTE/APPRECIATION FROM OTHERS/CREATE SOMETHING (ANY THREE)
33. CONTINUE TO WORK
34. LITTLE EFFECT
35. PHYSICALLY DEMANDING
36. SLIGHT NEGATIVE
37. FALSE
38. TRUE
39. NOT GIVEN
40. A
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