Category American

26 ‘ I " raditionally, white males have dominated American business—earning the highest

JL salaries, achieving the greatest successes, and certainly wielding[63] most of the power.

They have been the “bosses,” setting the standards and the working conditions for the rest of the working population. But times are changing.

27 The percentage of women entering the workforce rose steadily from the 1960s through the 1980s, leveling off in the 1990s. Women now make up about one-half of the workforce. More and more women have reached middle-management positions, but very few (less than 10 or 15 percent) are the chief executives of large corporations. In the past, women were prevented from moving all the way to the top by what some call “the glass ceiling,” a subtle[64] form of discrimination.[65] The men above them often did not offer women the opportunities they needed to advance in the company. However, women are now earning more undergraduate college degrees

than men, and many are receiving MBAs (masters of business administration degrees) as well. Many of the young women now in the workforce feel that the “glass ceiling” no longer keeps them from advancing. Other women would argue that it is still there. Today, women hold about half of the professional specialty, executive, administrative, and managerial occupations in the United States. However, many women still do not receive as high salaries as men do.

Many jobs in corporate America are “fast-track,” requiring that both women and men put their job first and their family second. Studies show that an employee perceived to be on the “mommy track” or the “daddy track” will not earn as much money or be given as much responsibility as the one willing to sacrifice[66] time at home for time at the office. Some families are now beginning to question whether success is really worth the price. Some businesses provide flexible working hours and day care centers in the building, but most do not. A number of women are

choosing to drop out of the workforce and stay home with their children. Some find work they can do at home—working on a computer linked to their office {telecommuting), for example. Interestingly, more than twice as many women as men now try their hand at starting their own small business, following the dream of the entrepreneur. Many of these small businesses are operated out of their own homes.

One of the worst problems facing American women is that overall they earn about seventy-eight cents for every dollar earned by American men. In spite of the ideal of equality of opportunity, women sometimes earn less money than men do for the same work. Minorities often face similar discrimination in the workplace, earning less money than white workers with similar jobs would earn.

However, in the future, the white American male may no longer have advantages over other workers. The recent arrival of millions of new immigrants is changing the makeup of the American workforce. Traditionally, within ten or twenty years of their arrival, immigrants (or their children) will earn as much as or more money than people born in the United States who are of similar age, education level, and skills. Some businesses now provide English as a Second Language courses at the workplace, and others conduct diversity training to promote understanding among the different racial and ethnic groups who now work together. Many believe that this multicultural workforce will ultimately help the United States compete in the global marketplace, since American workers will represent a microcosm[67] of the world.

Although the institution of American business has undergone enormous changes in recent decades, it has remained one of the most important institutions in the United States. In many ways, the business of America is still business.

Understand Main Ideas

Check the predictions you made on page 117 before reading the chapter. Look at the headings in the chapter and work with a partner to complete the outline of the main ideas.

A. The Characteristics of American Business: private, for-profit

B. How Business Competition Reinforces Other Values

1. Competition protects the freedom of individual___________________________

2. Competition strengthens______________________________________________

3. Business competition encourages_______________________________________

C. The Dream of Getting Rich

1. Careers in business offer______________________________________________

2. Americans distrust__________________________________________________

D. The Entrepreneur as Business Hero

1. Entrepreneurs are respected because_____________________________________

2. Americans were influenced by Horatio Algers____________________________

3. Americans respect individuals who build businesses from the beginning but not

4. Many Americans are still willing to_____________________________________

E. The Corporate CEO

1. CEOs are not self-made entrepreneurs___________________________________

2. Americans have lost respect for CEOs because____________________________

E American Business in ____________________________________________________

1. In the 1900s________________________________________________________

2. In the 2000s_______________________________________________________

G. _____________________________________________________________________

1. More and more women are in management positions

2. Americans are now beginning to question________________________________

3. Women still earn____________________________________________________

In the American education system, there is a great deal of emphasis on recognizing and remembering main ideas. Highlighting main ideas as you read helps you remember them. In Chapter 3 (pages 60-61), we discussed identifying topic sentences and how they usually contain the main idea of a paragraph. In Chapter 4 (page 79), and Chapter 5 (page 104), you practiced highlighting topic sentences.

Remember that most topic sentences are the first sentence of the paragraph. Therefore, if you just focus on the first sentence of the paragraph in an academic reading, you should have an understanding of the main ideas of the reading. And if you want a summary of the reading, using the first sentence of each paragraph is an easy way to summarize it.

Review the exercises on topic sentences and highlighting main ideas on pages 60-61, 79, and 104. Then go through this chapter and highlight the first sentence of each paragraph. For most paragraphs, this will give you the main idea, and these topic sentences will contain the main ideas of the chapter. You can use this information to write a summary of the chapter in your own words.

TUlk About It

Work in small groups and choose one or more of these topics to discuss.

1. What do you think is the ideal number of children to have? What responsibilities should children have in the family?

2. What type of parenting do you think is most effective? How would you discipline and parent your children? Would you give your teenagers the same amount of freedom as you had as a teenager? Why or why not?

3. Which type of marriage is most common in your country? Which of the four types do you think is ideal? Why?

4. How is divorce viewed in your country? If two people are unhappy, should they get a divorce? What if they have children? Under what circumstances would you get divorced?

5. Do you think it’s important for one parent to stay home with the children?

In your country, who takes care of the children when both parents work? Would you leave your child in a day care center?

6. Should husbands be able to choose to stay at home while their wives go to work? In the United States, these men are sometimes called “househusbands.” Are there househusbands in your country?

Build Your Vocabulary

Vocabulary Check Use the words in the box to complete the sentences.

1. Many______________ American mothers would like to stay at home with

their young children, but they have to work to make ends meet.

2. a career and family responsibilities is very stressful.

3. Many young mothers who work have an_____________________________________________________ lifestyle—they

work all day at their jobs and then care of their families and homes.

4. Most Americans would probably agree that fathers, as well as mothers,

should be able to__________________ their children.

5. Parents who do not have enough time for their children may feel guilty and

then try to_________________ by giving their children material gifts.

6. Sometimes a demanding career can be a_________________ , even though a

parent would like to have more time to spend with the children.

7. _____________ families may be a source of stress, as parents try to cope

with raising each others children, plus their own.

8. In the United States,______________ is the time that young people in love

get to know each other and decide if they want to get married.

9. Although marriages are not very_______________ in the United States,

most Americans still believe that it is an important institution in society.

10. Families have traditionally provided an important_______________ from the

competitive stresses of American society.

11. _____________ studies show that young Americans are now waiting longer

to get married and have children.

12. In spite of all its problems, the institutions of marriage and the family will

certainly never_________________ .

More AWL Words Test your knowledge of these additional AWL words in the reading by doing the crossword puzzle below. The clues are on the next page.

Use Context Clues There are several types of context clues that will help you guess the meaning of words you do not know. By looking at the words around an unfamiliar word, you may be able to figure out its meaning. See the four kinds of context clues on the next page. In the examples, the vocabulary words are in boldface. The context clues are in italics.

1. The word may be defined in the sentence. Sometimes the definition is set off by commas or dashes. Other times it is not.

EXAMPLE: There is still a tie that binds Americans together. That tie is a sense of national identity—of being an American.

EXAMPLE: A quota system was established that specified the number of immigrants that could come from each country.

2. There may be a synonym used in the same sentence.

EXAMPLE: Native Americans belong to separate and distinct Indian nations, each with its own language, culture, and even government.

3. There may be a comparison or contrast with a word (or a phrase) more familiar to you.

Example: As the minority, nonwhite population of the United States continues to grow, the white majority grows smaller.

4. The sentence may give an example that helps you figure out the meaning.

EXAMPLE: Tocqueville, however, was a neutral observer and saw both the good and bad sides of these qualities.

A. Use the context clues to figure out the meaning of the boldfaced words in the sentences above. Then write the correct word next to its definition.

___________ 1. a limit on the number allowed

___________ 2. a group of people whose race is different from that of most

people in a country

___________ 3. someone who observes without expressing an opinion

___________ 4. the qualities a group of people have that make them different

from other people

___________ 5. clearly different or separate

B. Now fill in the blanks with some of the boldfaced words above to complete the paragraph.

What qualities give people a national __________________ ? Do they have to

have characteristics that are__________________ from those of other countries?

2

The people who are part of a_________________ group may feel they have a set

of characteristics that differ from those of the majority in their country.

More AWL Words Test your knowledge of these additional AWL words in the reading by doing the puzzle below. First match the AWL words with their definitions. Then find the AWL words in the puzzle and circle them. Words may run horizontally, vertically, diagonally, or backwards.

Understand Prefixes Recognizing the meaning of a prefix, a group of letters added to the beginning of a word (or its root), will also help you guess the meaning of a new word. For example, the prefix re- means again (reunification) and the prefix /ий – means wrong {misunderstand).

Each of the boldfaced words in the sentences below has a prefix. Identify the prefix and write its meaning. Use a dictionary, if necessary.

EXAMPLE: Before the 1960s, the majority of immigrants to the United States were Europeans, but changes in immigration laws resulted in large numbers of non-Europeans.

Prefix: ___ non____ Meaning: ___________

1. Estimates were that in addition to legal immigration, illegal immigration was adding more than a half a million more people per year.

Prefix: _________ Meaning: ___________

2. In some parts of the country with established communities that share a common language or culture, bilingualism and biculturalism continue. Cultural pluralism is more accepted now than in the first half of the twentieth century, and many of the school systems have developed bilingual programs and multicultural curricula.

Prefix:__________ Meaning: ___________

Prefix: _________ Meaning: ___________

3. People may migrate to another location in order to find work. While many people immigrate to the United States each year, very few Americans choose to emigrate to another country to live.

Prefix: _________ Meaning: ___________

Prefix: _________ Meaning: ___________

4. In the census of 2000, there were nineteen racial categories to choose from. The number of interracial marriages is increasing. . . and the majority of young people believe it does not matter which race they marry.

Prefix:__________ Meaning: ___________

Word Partners Certain words and phrases tend to go together in English, for example, ethnic diversity or traditional values. This is called collocation. Learning these word partners will increase your ability to use new words correctly and help you express yourself as native speakers do.

Read the sentences below. Then match the adjectives on the left with their noun partners on the right. Use the collocations to complete the sentences.

1. In parts of the country with____ established communities_______ that share a

common language, bilingualism continues.

2. Tocqueville was a_____________________________ who saw both the good

and bad sides of the American character traits.

3. Ethnic diversity is a____________________________ affecting American life.

4. Think of the traditional values in this book as

_____________________________ that you can test against your own

observations.

5. The United States now takes in more_______________________________

each year than all other_______________________________ combined.

6. When several cultures exist together successfully in a society, there is

7. The________________________

white in the twenty-first century.

in the United States is becoming less

EXPAND YOUR KNOWLEDGE

24 ПП he frontier is an expression of individual freedom and self-reliance in its purest (and

X most extreme) forms, and it is also a pure expression of the ideal of equality of opportunity. On the western frontier there was more of a tendency for people to treat each other as social equals than there was in the more settled eastern regions of the country. On the frontier, the highest importance was placed on what people could do in their own lifetime. Hardly any notice was taken of their ancestors. Frontier people were fond of saying, “What’s above the ground is more important than what’s beneath the ground.”

25 Because so little attention was paid to a person’s family background, the frontier offered a new beginning for many Americans who were seeking opportunities to advance themselves. One English visitor to the United States in the early 1800s observed that if Americans experienced disappointment or failure in business, in politics, or even in love, they moved west to make a new beginning. The frontier offered millions of Americans a source of hope for a fresh start in the competitive race for success and for a better life. On the frontier there was a continuing need for new farmers, skilled laborers, merchants, lawyers, and political leaders.

26 There were fewer differences in wealth between rich and poor on the frontier than in the more settled regions of the nation. People lived, dressed, and acted more alike on the frontier than in other parts of the United States. The feeling of equality was shared by hired helpers who refused to be called “servants” or to be treated as such. One European visitor observed, “The clumsy gait[45] and bent body of our peasant is hardly ever seen here. . . . Everyone walks erect[46] and easy.” Wealthy travelers to the frontier were warned not to show off their wealth or to act superior to others if they wished to be treated politely.

27 The American frontier may not be the key to American development, as Frederick Jackson Turner said, but it is certainly one major factor. The frontier provided the space and conditions which helped to strengthen the American ideals of individual freedom, self-reliance, and equality of opportunity. On the frontier, these ideals were enlarged and made workable. Frontier ideas and customs were continuously passed along to the more settled parts of the United States as newer frontier regions took the place of older ones during a westward march of settlers which lasted more than two centuries. In this way, many of the frontier values became national values.

Understand Main Ideas

A. Check the predictions you made on page 72 before you read the chapter. Work with a partner. Answer these questions about the main ideas.

1. What are the three values that are traditionally associated with the frontier heritage?

2. What two new values are introduced in this chapter?

3. What are the two types of rugged individualists?

4. Describe someone with a can-do spirit.

5. What personal characteristics did the frontier settlers share?

B. In academic writing, paragraphs often begin with a topic sentence that contains the main idea. Read and highlight the first sentence of each paragraph of the reading. Then choose one main idea from each of the five main sections that you think is the most important. Write these ideas below. Compare your list with a partner’s.

1. _______________________________________________________________

2. ___________________________________________________

3.

4.

5.

Understand Details

Write T if the statement is true and F if it is false according to the information in the chapter.

___ 1. The frontier experience began in about 1890 and is still continuing in

the American West today.

___ 2. One reason why many Americans are still fascinated by the frontier

period is that it represents a time when the traditional basic American values were expressed in their purest form.

___ 3. The settling of the frontier did little to affect the lives of the American

Indians.

___ 4. Daniel Boone is an example of the earliest type of rugged individualist

hero, a man who fights against the wilderness.

5. The primary qualiries of the American macho hero are intelligence, sensitivity, and caring for others.

6. It is difficult for the average American to buy a gun, so very few people own them.

7. Members of the NRA (and many gun owners) believe the right to own a gun is guaranteed in the United States Constitution.

8. The can-do spirit came from the willingness of the pioneers to work together on a cooperative project for the good of all.

9. On the frontier, family name and ancestry were more important than what a person could do.

10. On the frontier, the rich and the poor rarely mixed, and social class was more important than in the more settled regions.

Complete a Timeline: Scanning

Scanning is looking for a specific piece of information. Scan the chapter to find these dates. Write what happened next to the date to complete the timline. Some are done for you.

1600s: __ Settlers established colonies on the east coast._______________________

1760s and 1770s: ________________________________________________________

1778:___ Boone was captured by Native Americans.___________________________

1860s: ——————————————————————————————-

April 1889: _____________________________________________________________

1890: __________________________________________________________________

until 1960s: __ 25 percent of all American movies made were westerns.__________

1980s:__________________________________________________________________

1990s: __ Gun control became a critical issue after shootings in schools.___________

2001: _____________________________________________________________________________

Fill in this graphic organizer with information about how the U. S. government is organized. Take notes about each branch and fill in the boxes with your notes. First write the names of the three branches of government. Then write who the people are in each branch. Finally, write what the responsibilities are for each branch. When you have finished, share your notes with a partner.