Part III Reading Comprehension

Section A
Directions: In this section, there is a passage with ten blanks. You are required to select one word for each blank from a list of choices given in a word bank following the passage. Read the passage through carefully before making your choices. Each choice in the bank is identified by a letter. Please mark the corresponding letter for each item on Answer Sheet 2 with a single line through the centre. You may not use any of the words in the bank more than once.

The things people make, and the way they make them, determine how cities grow and decline, and influence how empires rise and fall. So, any disruption to the world's factories  26  . And that disruption is surely coming. Factories are being digitised, filled with new sensors and new computers to make them quicker, more  27  , and more efficient.
Robots are breaking free from the cages that surround them, learning new skills and new ways of working. And 3D printers have long  28  a world where you can make anything, anywhere, from a computerised design. That vision is  29  closer to reality. These forces will lead to cleaner factories, producing better goods at lower prices, personalised to our individual needs and desires. Humans will be  30  many of the dirty, repetitive, and dangerous jobs that have long been a  31  of factory life.
Greater efficiency  32  means fewer people can do the same work. Yet factory bosses in many developed countries are worried about a lack of skilled human workers—and see  33  and robots as a solution. But economist Helena Leurent says this period of rapid change in manufacturing is a  34  opportunity to make the world a better place. “Manufacturing is the one system where you have got the biggest source of innovation, the biggest source of economic growth, and the biggest source of great jobs in the past. You can see it changing. That's an opportunity to  35  that system differently, and if we can, it will have tremendous significance.”

A) automation   B) concerns   C) enormously   D) fantastic   E) fascinated   F) feature   G) flexible   H) inevitably   I) interaction   J) leaning   K) matters   L) moving   M) promised   N) shape   O) spared