British men are couch potatoes. They spend nearly half their freetime watching TV. They watch more TV than women, do less housework, less charity work and less childcare—but spend more time shopping, a poll(民意测验) suggests. Analysts(分析家) from Eurostat, the EU's statistical office, interviewed working men and women in 10 countries.
Britain, where men devoted 49% of their freetime to the box, came a narrow second to the Hungarians with 51%.German and Norwegian men watched the least TV—just over one third of their spare time.
The analysts took the average of the figures for the whole year including holidays and weekends. They broke down the “average day” into five categories(类)—free-time, sleep, meals and personal care, travel, domestic chores(家务事) and work or study. It shows that British men have four hours and 41 minutes free time each day—20 minutes more than women. But women spend nearly double the amount of time on domestic chores than men. Almost three-and-a-half hours of a woman's day is taken up with domestic work, compared to less than two hours for men.
Food preparation makes up the bulk(量) of the chores, with leaning and shopping the next most time-consuming. They further broke down the free-time and domestic categories to show that men spend 137 minutes each day in front of the TV, compared to women's 114 minutes.
Women spend slightly more time socializing resting and reading than men, but slightly less time on hobbies, sport and exercise. Universally unpopular with both sexes is culture—accounting for just 2% of both men and women's leisure time.
小题1:According to the passage, couch potatoes refer to _______.
A．a kind of potatoes produced in Britain
B．people spending much time sitting and watching television
C．a kind of food offered by the English people
D．people who like doing housework instead of watching TV小题2: According to the passage, which of the following may NOT be included in the ten countries?
A．Germany.
B．Norway.
C．Hungary.
D．Russia.小题3:What both men and women don't like in their spare time is _______.
A．taking part in cultural activities
B．shopping
C．enjoying their hobbies
D．doing domestic chores小题4: What would be the best title for the passage?
A．Domestic Chores—Only Women's Right
B．British Men—Couch Potatoes
C．What the Research Means
D．Men and Women in Different Situations