A recruitment firm gives this advice to new workers:
It is important to ...... time in your relationships with others at ....... Get to know the people who work near you: ...... yourself to them and tell them something about yourself. If people ask for your help, always ...... positively. Don’t ...... emails or phone calls just because you are busy. If you make a mistake, it is better to ...... it and then apologise. When things go wrong, stay calm and ...... shouting and using bad language. Remember good ...... help to ...... your working ......, and you will find you can enjoy your work more.
Etiquette is the name we give to the rules for being polite in a social group. Business etiquette is important for people who often have to make new contacts and build relationships in their work. Politeness can also help to improve the working environment for people in the same office. Some cultures and situations are formal, which means that we have to follow rules; other cultures and situations are more informal.
Text 2 Office workers “admit being rude”
Most office workers say they are rude or bad-mannered at work. Two out of three workers regularly arrive late for meetings, most ignore emails and three out of four use bad language. In a survey of 1,000 workers, two-thirds say that pressure of work is the reason for bad manners.
Other common examples of bad office etiquette include ignoring colleagues and answering mobile phone calls during meetings. Using mobile phones in meetings is impolite and distracts others, research by the University of Surrey shows. If you respond to call when speaking to somebody, it means that the phone call is more important than the person, the survey said. If you answer a call during a meeting, it could mean that the meeting is not important.
Mr Jacobs, managing director of Office Angels, a recruitment firm say it is easy for people to forget their manners in the working environment, which is often very informal and very busy. Workers can forget proper etiquette such as introducing people at meetings, and this is often bad for working relationships.
Psychologist Dr Colin Gill believes that people are not as polite as they were twenty years ago. He said: ‘Courtesy is no longer something that is so much respected in our society.’ People think it is ‘stuffy to be polite or formal.’
Now some organisations are actually investing money in training their junior managers to be polite. Office Angels is encouraging people to arrive on time for meetings, turn off mobile phones and avoid bad manners at work is such a simple thing to do,’ Mr Jacobs says, ‘ and it can have a dramatic impact on improving your working environment and your relationships with others.’
The aim of the texts is to …………………………………….
A. reflect the fact of officer’s bad manners at work with illustrations
B. reflect the fact of officer’s good manners at work with illustrations
Listen to six short conversations. How does the second person reply in each situation? Predict the meanings of their replies by choose the correct description in italics.
1. John points out a mistake. Jane ...... for it.(apologizes/doesn't apologise)
2. Jack invites Barbara to dinner. Barbara ...... the invitation. (accepts/refuses)
3. John introduces Caroline Day to Barbara. Barbara ...... her. (knows/ doesn’t know)
4. Jack asks if he is allowed to park in front of the office. Jane says that he ....... (can/can't)
5. Barbara gives Jane a gift. Jane ...... it. (likes/doesn’t like)
6. Jack helped John to arrange his travel. It ...... a problem for Jack. (was/wasn't)
A Sea Turtles are some of the oldest species in the world. The earliest sea turtles appeared over 200 million years ago. Today, however, sea turtle are in trouble. Their populations are getting smaller due to human activities and climate change.
B In Australia, conservationists are studying the effects of climate change on sea turtles. They believe global warming may affect sea turtles in several ways. First, warming temperatures lead to rising sea levels. As sea levels rise, beach areas become flooded. Sea turtles lay their eggs in the beach sand. Flooding can destroy sea turtle nests and the eggs inside them.
C Global warming also raises the temperature of sand around a sea turtle’s nest. The temperature of the nest affects the sex of the turtle’s eggs. Warmer temperatures (above 84 degrees Fahrenheit, or 29 degrees Celsius) produce mostly females. Cooler temperatures produce more males. So, as global temperature rise, more female babies will be born. Scientists predict that in 50 years almost all sea turtle babies in northern Australia will be female.
D To survive these changes, sea turtles will need to adapt. But adapting is difficult because the environmental changes are happening quickly. In addition, sea turtles are more at risk from other dangers, especially ones related to human activities. For example, some populations are getting smaller because of predators brought in by humans. As conservationist Mariana Fuentes says, ‘We can’t be sure if sea turtles will adapt on their own.’ They may need our help to survive.
E One of Fuentes’s projects is at Turtle Camp, a beach in northern Australia. Here, Fuentes helps to protect turtles that are laying eggs. She works with a team of rangers and researchers. Together, they prevent predators such as wild pigs and dogs from eating the turtles’ eggs. Without the rangers’ help, the turtles were losing up to 90% of their eggs. Now there are fewer predators, so the turtles can safely lay their eggs.
F In the next few decades, sea turtles will face some tough challenges. With human help, says Fuentes, they will have a better chance to adapt and survive.
Complete the notes with details from the reading.
Sea turtles have been around for more than ...... years.
The number of sea turtles is getting smaller due to ...... and .......
Sea turtles lay their eggs in nests in the .......
Predators such as ...... and ...... are dangerous for sea turtles.
Before Fuentes and her helpers started Turtle Camp, sea turtles were losing almost ......percent of their eggs.
During the Olympic Games, people from all over the world come together in the peace and friendship. Some of these people complete for medals. Several million people attend the games, and millions of other people watch them on television.
Why do we have the Olympic Games? How did they begin? The first Olympic Games that we have records of were in Greece in 776 B.C. The games lasted one day. The only event in the first thirteen Olympic Games was a race. Men ran the length or the stadium (about 192 meters). Then, longer running races were added. Through the years, a few other kinds of events, like the long jump, were also added. During this time, the games were for men only, and women could not even watch them. In the year 393, a Roman emperor ended the Olympic Game because the quality of the games became very low. The Olympics did not take place again for 1500 years!
In 1984, Pierre de Coubertin of France helped from the International Olympic Committee, and the modern Olympic Games began. In1896, the games were held again in Athens, Greece. The Greeks built a new stadium for the competition. Three hundred and eleven athletes from thirteen countries competed in many events. The winners became national heroes.
After 1896, the games were held every four years during the summer in different cities around the world. In 1900, the Olympics were in Paris, France, and women competed for the first time. In 1908, in London, England, the first gold medals were given to winning athletes. Before that time, the winners received only silver and bronze medals. The Olympic flag was first introduced in 1920 in Antwerp, Belgium. The flag has five rings on it. The rings represent the continents of Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe, and North and South American. Each ring is a different color – blue, yellow, black, green, or red – because the flag of each of the countries that compete in the games has at least one of these colors in it.
The Olympic Winter games began in 1924 in Chamonix, France. Athletes competed in winter events such as skiing, ice skating, and ice hockey. Today, the Winter Games take places every four years. The Summer Games also take place every four years, but not in the same year as the winter events. Both the Summer Games and the Winter Games must have at least fifteen events, and they cannot last more than sixteen days.
Until recently, Olympic competitors could not be professional athletes. All of the athletes in the Olympic Games were amateurs. Today, however, many of the Olympic athletes are professional who play their sports for money during the year. Some people disagree with this idea. They believe that the Olympic game are for amateur athletes, not paid professionals. Other people think that any one can play in the Olympic Games. No matter who the athletes are, millions of people throughout the world enjoy watching the greatest athletic competitions, the Summer Game and the Winter Games of the Olympics.
X (the three main ideas of the Reading) or O (not the three main ideas of the Reading
...... 1. The Olympic Games began in Greece with only one event.
...... 2. The winter Games and the Summer Games each have at least fifteen events.
...... 3. The Olympics have changed a lot since they began.
...... 4. Skiing is a winter event.
...... 5. The Olympic Games bring people together in peace.
The Thousand and one nights is probably one of the most famous books in the world. It is a collection of stories first told by travelers from Persia, Arabia, India and China between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. In later years professional storytellers also told the stories in coffee houses in Turkey, Egypt and many other countries. The Thousand and one nights contains well-known stories like Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, so people often think they are just for children – but they were originally for adults.
Shahrazad’s story
There was once an Indian King called Shahriyar. One day King Shahriyar found his wife with another man so he killed her and her lover. After that the King married a different woman everyday and killed her the next morning before she could stop loving him. This continued for three years.
Shahrazad was the clever and beautiful daughter of the King’s adviser. When her father told her what was happening, she decided to marry the King. Shahrazad’s father tried to stop her because he knew she was going to die. But Shahrazad had a plan to save herself and all the women in the kingdom. The King and Shahrazad got married a few days later.
After the wedding, while the King was drinking with his friends, Shahrazad went to find her sister. ‘I need your help,’ said Shahrazad. ‘Come to the palace this evening and ask me to tell you a story’.
So that night, Shahrazad was getting ready for bed when her sister came to visit her. She began telling her sister a story called The Fisherman and the Genie. While she was telling the story, the King came into the room. He started listening to her story too, and became more and more interested.
Shahrazad continued telling the story all night, but she stopped just before the end and said, ‘The morning’s here, husband. Am I going to die now?’. ‘No, no’, said the King. ‘Tell me the end of the story’. ‘I’ll tell you this evening, but not before’, said Shahrazad with a smile.
That night Shahrazad finished the story – and then immediately began another. This continued night after night. The King never heard the end of a story until the next evening. He couldn’t kill his wife because he always wanted to know how each story ended.
As time passed, the King fell in love with Shahrazad. He knew he could never kill her because he couldn’t live without her and her stories. To show Shahrazad he really loved her, the King married her again. The stories Shahrazad told the King became the stories of The Thousand and one nights.
Are these following sentences true (T) or false (F)
...... The King killed his first wife.
...... He was married to his next wife for three years.
...... Shahrazad worked for the King.
...... Shahrazad’s father didn’t want her to marry the King.
The Thousand and one nights is probably one of the most famous books in the world. It is a collection of stories first told by travelers from Persia, Arabia, India and China between the ninth and thirteenth centuries. In later years professional storytellers also told the stories in coffee houses in Turkey, Egypt and many other countries. The Thousand and one nights contains well-known stories like Aladdin and Ali Baba and the Forty Thieves, so people often think they are just for children – but they were originally for adults.
Shahrazad’s story
There was once an Indian King called Shahriyar. One day King Shahriyar found his wife with another man so he killed her and her lover. After that the King married a different woman everyday and killed her the next morning before she could stop loving him. This continued for three years.
Shahrazad was the clever and beautiful daughter of the King’s adviser. When her father told her what was happening, she decided to marry the King. Shahrazad’s father tried to stop her because he knew she was going to die. But Shahrazad had a plan to save herself and all the women in the kingdom. The King and Shahrazad got married a few days later.
After the wedding, while the King was drinking with his friends, Shahrazad went to find her sister. ‘I need your help,’ said Shahrazad. ‘Come to the palace this evening and ask me to tell you a story’.
So that night, Shahrazad was getting ready for bed when her sister came to visit her. She began telling her sister a story called The Fisherman and the Genie. While she was telling the story, the King came into the room. He started listening to her story too, and became more and more interested.
Shahrazad continued telling the story all night, but she stopped just before the end and said, ‘The morning’s here, husband. Am I going to die now?’. ‘No, no’, said the King. ‘Tell me the end of the story’. ‘I’ll tell you this evening, but not before’, said Shahrazad with a smile.
That night Shahrazad finished the story – and then immediately began another. This continued night after night. The King never heard the end of a story until the next evening. He couldn’t kill his wife because he always wanted to know how each story ended.
As time passed, the King fell in love with Shahrazad. He knew he could never kill her because he couldn’t live without her and her stories. To show Shahrazad he really loved her, the King married her again. The stories Shahrazad told the King became the stories of The Thousand and one nights.
