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Section B
Directions: There are 2 passages in this section. Each passage is followed by some questions or unfinished statements. For each of them there are four choices marked [A],[B],[C] and [D]. You should decide on the best choice and mark the corresponding letter on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the center.
Passage One
Questions 52 to 56 are based on the following passage.
What makes Americans spend nearly half their food dollars on meals away from home? The answers lie in the way Americans live today. During the first few decades of the twentieth century, canned and other convenience foods freed the family cook from full-time duty at the kitchen range.
Then, in the 1940s, work in the wartime defense plants took more women out of the home that ever before, setting the pattern of the working wife and mother. Unless family members pitch in with food preparation, women are not fully liberated from that chore.
It's easier to pick up a bucket of fried chicken on the way home from work or take the family out for pizzas or burgers than to start opening cans or heating up frozen dinners after a long, hard day. Also nowadays, the rising divorce rate means that there are more single working parents with children to feed. And many young adults and elderly people, as well as unmarried and divorced mature people, live alone rather than as a part of a family unit and don't want to bother cooking for one. Fast food is appealing because it is fast, it doesn't require any dressing up, it offers a "fun" break in the daily routine, and the outlay of money seems small. It can be eaten in the car-sometimes picked up at a drive-in window without even getting out-or on the run. Even if it is brought home to eat, there will never be any dirty dishes to wash because of the handy disposable wrappings. Children, especially, love fast food because it's finger food, no struggling with knives and forks, no annoying instructions from adults about table manners.
52. Americans enjoy fast food mainly because ________.
[A] it can be eaten in the car
[B] it is much more tasty than home-made food
[C] one only uses his fingers while eating it
[D] it is time-saving and convenient
53. It can be inferred that children ________.
[A] want to have freedom at table
[B] wash dishes after each meal
[C] are not good at using forks and knives while eating
[D] take eating time as a fun break
54. Many Americans are eating out and not cooking at home nowadays because ________.
[A] they want to make a change after eating the same food for years at home
[B] the food made outside home tastes better than food cooked at home
[C] many of them live alone or don't like taking trouble to cook
[D] American women refuse to cook at home due to women's liberation movement
55. According to the text, a drive-in window is a ________.
[A] car window from which you can see the driver
[B] window in the restaurant from which you get your meal in the car
[C] place where you check the mechanic condition of your car
[D] entrance where you return the used plates after eating
56. The expression "pitch in with" (Line 2, Para. 2) probably means________.
[A] complain
[B] enjoy
[C] help
[D] deny
