- Câu hỏi 25831:
Read the following article and decide if the statement below is TRUE (A), FALSE (B) or NOT GIVEN (C)
Liverpool city council want to clear the city of fat pigeons. They say that that people are feeding the birds, which makes them fat. The pigeons get bigger because their normal diet would consist of seeds and insects, not high-fat junk food they are eating in the city centre.
The council want people to know that everyone who feeds the pigeons is responsible for the streets being so crowded with these birds. They hope to encourage the birds to move away from the city centre and into parks and open spaces.
Ten robotic birds have been brought into the city centre to scare the pigeons away and visitors are asked not to give the pigeons any food. The mechanical birds - known as 'robops' - will sit on the roofs of buildings. They can be moved around to different locations. They look like a peregrine falcon, which is a bird that kills pigeons. They even make noises and flap their wings to scare the pigeons. They hope that the pigeons will go away before the city becomes the European Capital of Culture in two years.
Statement: Visitors shouldn't feed the pigeons.
- Câu hỏi 25853:
Read the following article and decide if the statement below is TRUE (A), FALSE (B) or NOT GIVEN (C)
Early morning in California, and Elizabeth Safran, a public relations consultant, is dealing with a huge number of e-mails. Everybody in the small company works from home and relies on e-mails and instant messaging to stay in touch. Elizabeth worries about her work-life balance and thinks that ‘technology makes us more productive, but everyone is working all the time – weekends, evenings. It is too much.’
Five o’clock Friday afternoon in the , Paul Renucci, managing director of a systems integration company, switches off his computer. He now works at home and is off to pick up his children. In the past, it would take him two hours to get home from the office.
Ms Safran and Mr Renucci represent different side of a modern problem: the capacities of the latest communications technologies, such as e-mails, texts, messaging and video conferencing, make it difficult to draw the line between work and leisure and raise important questions about the nature of ‘flexible working’- where employees can work where and when they choose.
There are three issues here. First, does the rise of portable, networked devices such as the Blackberry and Palm Treo really damage an individual’s work and life? Second, what is the effect of these devices on traditional workplace relationships? And third, how do individuals manage them?
A Microsoft survey found that where flexibility had increased, so had productivity and employee morale, together with lowered stress levels and staff turnover.
However, individuals can suffer technology-related stress as work moves into their free time and from the complexity of the gadgets they must use, such as mobile phones where manufacturers try to persuade customers upgrade more frequently.
Statement: Technology can be stressful for individuals.
- Câu hỏi 676179:
Read the following article and decide if the statement below is TRUE (A), FALSE (B) or NOT GIVEN (C)
Considering their wedding cost over $20,000 and took a year and a half to organize, you would be surprised to hear that Richard and Victoria Hammond now intend to forget it. Well, almost.
"It was a wonderful wedding, an unbelievable day," says Victoria. "But we have so much we want to do together now, we are both looking to the future." Her husband, banker and amateur race driver Richard, agrees. "Both our minds are now fixed firmly on the future. I'll never forget our wedding ceremony or the reception we had at a cliff-side hotel afterwards, but there's so much we want, so many hopes. Our marriage is so much more important than the wedding."
"At the moment, we are still living with my parents," explains Victoria, "so our first wish is to find our own place. We intend to start looking for a new house with all the modern conveniences in the suburbs in the new year." Both Victoria and husband Richard have a lot of siblings. Do they intend to add to the extended Hammond family? "We plan on having two or three children ourselves," Richard tells me. "Victoria is just wonderful with children and I can get 3 years paternity leave from my work, which is just perfect."
The young couple has just returned from a two-week honeymoon spent in an authentic Scottish castle. Both the newly-weds are big travel lovers and Richard hopes this will continue. "I would like to go travelling as much as possible together. Travelling with someone else is such a sharing experience. I think it's sad to experience all the wonderful places in the world and have no-one else there." Victoria also has another great travel ambition that she might have to do alone. "I have always been fascinated by safari and my real wish is to go on safari. Richard has no interest in wildlife though."
And what about the marriage itself? In a world with such a high divorce rate, how do Richard and Victoria hope to avoid all the problems that beset so many other couples? Richard explains thoughtfully that "our ambition is to always talk to each other. If you stop communicating, what chance do you have?" His wife goes along with that completely. "I hope that we can speak about things, but also not expect everything to be easy. I think many people expect the wedding to be the end of getting to know each other. I think it's the start."
Statement: Victoria wants an old fashioned house.