工作与职业类话题是雅思写作大作文中一类比较常见的话题，相比于教育类，作为学生的大部分雅思考生可能对此不太熟悉，并不像教育类话题那样有话可说。比如2013年9月12日的雅思写作真题Countries with a long average working time are more economically successful than those countries which do not have a long working time. To what extent do you agree or disagree? 平均工作时间长的国家在经济上更成功，你同意不同意?

　　作为没有什么工作经验的学生，对于工作时间长短对国家的影响并不太容易分析，那么我们就一起来看一下Economist在2013年9月24日的一篇题目为Working hours--Get a life的文章是如何来论述的吧。

　　文章开头引用英国著名文学家罗素的观点：BERTRAND RUSSELL, the English philosopher, was not a fan of work. In his 1932 essay, “In Praise of Idleness”, he reckoned that if society were better managed the average person would only need to work four hours a day. Such a small working day would “entitle a man to the necessities and elementary comforts of life.” The rest of the day could be devoted to the pursuit of science, painting and writing.

　　从这一段中我们可以学习到的表达有：

　　1、a fan of 是…的疯狂爱好者，这里是说罗素不是一个工作狂(a fan of work)

　　2、reckon that… 断定，在表达某人的观点时，可以使用这个词语来替换同学们经常使用的think, believe等。另外文章的下一段在引用John Maynard Keynes表明观点时使用了moot这个动词，也非常好，可以用来表明“提出…问题/观点”。

　　3、entitle sb.to do sth. 使某人有资格/权利做某事，很多同学在大作文写作中动词贫乏，只会用make/let等词语，非常不地道，这里我们就可以用这个词组，表明人们可以通过不用工作太久时间，就能够获得生存的必备品。

　　4、devote to…; the pursuit of… 致力于追求…

　　在接下来的文章中，两幅图表向我们展示了全世界人们的工作时间的变化情况，以及工作时间与创造的GDP之间的关系，很多表达可以使用在我们的小作文中，在2012年的雅思考试中就考察过有关工作时长的柱状图。并且通过上述图表，证明了工作时间越长，创造的GDP越少。

　　比如：The Greeks are some of the most hardworking in the OECD, putting in over 2,000 hours a year on average. Germans, on the other hand, are comparative slackers, working about 1,400 hours each year. But German productivity is about 70% higher.

　　1、 putting in +数据，给我们提供了一种引用数据的方法

　　2、 comparative slackers 相对懒惰

　　3、 X%higher 比较级的用法

　　有关工作时间与人们的薪水之间的关系，文章是这样描述的：One important question concerns whether appetite for work actually diminishes as people earn more. There are countervailing effects. On the one hand, a higher wage raises the opportunity cost of leisure time and should lead people to work more. On the other hand, a higher income should lead a worker to consume more of the stuff he or she enjoys, which presumably includes leisure.

　　1、 countervailing effects: 互补的影响，类似于我们常用的controversial

　　2、 raises the opportunity cost of leisure time 提高娱乐的机会成本

　　文中还引用了亚当斯密的观点进一步论证，Alternatively, the graph above might suggest that people who work fewer hours are more productive. This idea is not new. Adam Smith reckoned that[T]he man who works so moderately as to be able to work constantly, not only preserves his health the longest, but in the course of the year, executes the greatest quantity of works.

　　Not only… but (also)…

　　在文章的最后，还论述了一些例外情况，文中用了一个很好的表达There are aberrations(偏差)。这样文章就会更有逻辑、更全面。文章以罗素的话结尾，做到了首尾呼应So maybe we should be more self-critical about how much we work. Working less may make us more productive. And, as Russell argued, working less will guarantee “happiness and joy of life, instead of frayed nerves, weariness, and dyspepsia".