GRAMMAR BOOK EXERCISES

1.Born in 1948, he spent much of his childhood abroad as his father was an army officer,
2.He studied English literature and creative writing at  the universities of Sussex and East Anlia.
3.He has written a number of successful collections of short stories and novels.
4.His novel The Child in Time won  the Whitbread  Novel Award in 1987.
5.His later novels, including Amsterdam, Atonoment  and Saturday  have been  very successful.
6.Amsterdam received the Booker Prize for Fiction in 1998.
7.However, Mc Ewan has always been a controversial writer.
8.Some writers have accused  him of stealing details in Atonoment from the work of another author Lucilla Andrews.
9.However, he pointed out the acknowledgement made to Lucilla Andrews in an author's note in the book.
10.During the controversy, the American  author Thomas I'ynchon wrote  a defense of Mc Ewan in a British newspaper.

THE AGING POPULATION

The  number of men and woman in the US  aged 60 or over still in work has been rising for more than a decade.  Economists have given a number of reasons for this trend. First, since 1985 the US economy has been expanding so there has been an increased demand for labour.At the same time, the cost of some services, such as health care, has been increasing, so workers need to earn more money in later life.In addition, changes in social security benefits and rules have had a considerable effect on labour patterns.First, in 1977 and 1983 changes to the Social Security Act raised  the full benefit age from 65 to 67 and introduced other changes that make delaying retirement more attractive. Then, in 1986 the Age Discrimination Act ended compulsory retirement for all workers, allowing them to work later in life. Changes to pension laws encouraged workers to staying employment longer, as this gives them more change of a larger pension when they retire.