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It's enough to give anyone an earache. Women spend an average of about five years on the phone during
their working lives, research has shown.
You won't be surprised to learn that women spend 18 months longer than men on the phone-who only
chat for an average of three years.
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 (10 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 favourites 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 should ring but never got round to
doing so.
Joseph Blass, managing director of telecom 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 passage, which of the following statements is TRUE?
A. Women spend about five years talking on the phone during their lifetime.
B. Women make and receive the same number of calls as men do.
C. On average, work-related calls are only half as long as personal calls.
D. Usually a call made by a man is longer than one by a woman.
2. According to the poll, when someone on the phone says "Sorry, someone's at the door", he or
she probably means ________.
A. he/she is going to the toilet
B. he/she wants to stop chatting
C. he/she is too tired to talk any longer
D. he/she must go to open the door for someone
3. From the text, we know that _________.
A. calls around midnight are acceptable to some people
B. 80% of people always refuse to answer a phone call
C. people never ring the people in their address books
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 in many countries love to chat on the phone
C. people insist on often phoning their family and friends
D. the amount of time people spend on the phone was unexpected

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