2010年3月高级口译考试上半场阅读第一篇文章解析
此篇文章选自2009年5月的 TIME, 属于经济类话题。这篇文章主要讲述经济形势的变化对人们的工作模式产生的影响:越来越多的员工倾向于在家办公，越来越多的公司也在采取新的措施适应这种变化。同时这一变化，也给白领们的生活带来了影响——他们开始更加注重生活与工作的平衡。
On the worst days, Chris Keehn used to go 24 hours without seeing his daughter with her eyes open. A soft-spoken tax accountant in Deloitte's downtown Chicago office, he hated saying no when she asked for a ride to preschool. By November, he'd had enough. "I realized that I can have control of this," he says with a small shrug. Keehn, 33, met with two of the firm's partners and his senior manager, telling them he needed a change. They went for it. In January, Keehn started telecommuting four days a week, and when Kathryn, 4, starts T-ball this summer, he will be sitting along the baseline.
文章开头即出现人名，很显然，作者在运用例子做铺垫引出后文主旨。这种开头模式非常符合新闻文体的结构特征。意识到这点后，我们也应该立刻明白，本段的内容旨在引出主题，其作用是举出典型例子论证主题。我们可以看到问题的第一道题目即考察了相应的例子功能题。
In this economy, Keehn's move might sound like hopping onto the mommy track — or off the career track. But he's actually making a shrewd move. More and more, companies are searching for creative ways to save — by experimenting with reduced hours or unpaid furloughs or asking employees to move laterally. The up-or-out model, in which employees have to keep getting promoted quickly or get lost, may be growing outmoded. The changing expectations could persist after the economy reheats. Companies are increasingly supporting more natural growth, letting employees wend their way upward like climbing vines. It's a shift, in other words, from a corporate ladder to the career-path metaphor long preferred by Deloitte（德勤） vice chair Cathy Benko: a lattice. (See pictures of cubicle designs submitted to The Office.)
