Americans Give Up $34 Billion of Vacation (3rd December, 2011)
U.S. workers are among the worst in the world (1) ____ not taking all their vacation days. Their bosses might say they are among the best in the world for working their holidays. (2) ____ way, Americans will give up $34.3 billion in paid vacation leave in 2012, which is the (3) ____ of 226 million days off. These figures come from an annual survey (4) ____ by Harris Interactive for Expedia. They questioned 7,083 employees in 20 countries in North America, Europe, Asia, South America and Australia. The top reason for Americans not using (5) ____ their holidays was not being able to afford a holiday (34%). This was followed by lack of planning (15%), the statement "work is my life" (15%) and feeling bad about asking the boss for time (6) ____.
Workers in other countries don’t appear to have a problem taking vacations. French workers get an average 30 vacation days a year and (7) ____ use them all. In the UK, employees get 25 days and pretty (8) ____ take all of them. Asia is the only region where workers receive and take (9) ____ holidays than Americans. The average Japanese worker only gets 11 days a year and takes just five of them. Indians are also (10) ____ to take all of their vacation. Expedia found that 20 per cent of workers in India did not take all their holidays because they "may be perceived (11) ____ at work". In America, bosses believe it is important that workers use all their vacation so they can come back to work feeling (12) ____.
Put the correct words from the table below in the above article.
| 1. | (a) | for | (b) | with | (c) | so | (d) | as |
| 2. | (a) | Even | (b) | Either | (c) | Every | (d) | Ever |
| 3. | (a) | prevalent | (b) | malevolent | (c) | equivalent | (d) | insolent |
| 4. | (a) | conduction | (b) | conducting | (c) | conductor | (d) | conducted |
| 5. | (a) | from | (b) | off | (c) | away | (d) | up |
| 6. | (a) | up | (b) | it | (c) | off | (d) | now |
| 7. | (a) | generally | (b) | genially | (c) | genuinely | (d) | generously |
| 8. | (a) | most | (b) | much | (c) | many | (d) | some |
| 9. | (a) | little | (b) | smaller | (c) | fewer | (d) | lesser |
| 10. | (a) | reluctant | (b) | reluctantly | (c) | reluctance | (d) | reliance |
| 11. | (a) | positively | (b) | normally | (c) | abnormally | (d) | negatively |
| 12. | (a) | refresher | (b) | refreshed | (c) | refreshingly | (d) | refreshing |
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