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1 Elicit that work ethic, workfare and workforce (in the 
Index) are all compound nouns. Ask students if they know 
any other compound nouns which include the word work. 
You could encourage them to look for examples in their 
dictionary before the next lesson. (Examples include: 
workbasket
, workbench, workbook, etc
.)
2 Ask students to fi nd other texts or books, or information 
from the Internet, which might be useful when researching 
the topic of working hours in the United States.
B
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1 Get students to underline the references to working hours. 
After checking the answers with the class, ask students to 
fi nd the abbreviations DOL and AP. Elicit or explain that this 
information in brackets gives details of the source of the 
information. In Contemporary America, there is a Bibliography 
before the Index. This explains that the sources of the 
information were:
DOL. Department of Labor (2005) “Minimum Wage Laws in 
the States” [www.dol.gov/esa/minwage/America/html]
AP = Associated Press, NYT = New York Times
AP (2001d) “Americans’ Incomes, and Spending, Rise,” NYT 1 
February.
PHOTOCOPIABLE
 
© Cambridge University Press 2008
2 Get students to say which of their questions were answered.
3–4 Students work through the exercises, checking with a 
partner after each exercise. For Exercise 4, tell them that they 
will fi nd more information later in the section which will be 
useful in answering the question.
5–6 Get students to discuss the answers to these questions. 
When you check the answers, remind students (especially if 
they have done Unit 13: Read faster!) that they should always 
pay special attention to the fi rst sentence of a paragraph 
– because it is likely to give the main idea of the paragraph. 
Only the fi rst sentence of the next paragraph (Extract C) has 
been provided in Exercise 5 – because it is about another 
topic, and students would not therefore (need to) read the 
rest of the paragraph.