剑桥商务英语中级口语-7及答案解析.doc

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1、剑桥商务英语中级口语-7 及答案解析(总分：100.00，做题时间：90 分钟)一、SPEAKING(总题数：1，分数：100.00)Getting the Attention You NeedThe Psychobiology of AttentionSeeing attention purely through an economic lens distorts its reality somewhat. Economics, after all, assumes that rational make deliberate investment choices to optimize th

2、eir returns. In reality, much of what determines where people invest their attention is below the level of pure reason. Indeed, our research suggests that one of the most important factors for gaining and sustaining attention is engaging peoples emotions.Allow us to predict one specific behavior, ba

3、sed on the psychobiology of attention: no matter what business activity you are involved insitting in meeting, making a decision, or reading The Wall Street Journalyou would stop that activity immediately if a snake slithered into the room. Over millennia of focusing on life-and-death issues, our ne

4、rvous systems have evolved to pay attention to some things more than others. Aspiring attention manages should be at least as attuned to the psychobiology of attention managers should be at least as attuned to the psychobiology of attention as they are to its economics. There are four linked lessons

5、 from psychobiology.People are hardwired to fight for survival; use that to your benefit.All primates are biologically programmed not simply to fear snakes but to pay close attention to them. Web designers and business managers alike can use that natural reaction to get and hold onto peoples attenti

6、on.Online grocery shopping in Brazil illustrates the point. Brazilians became so accustomed to hyperinflation over the years that when they got a paycheck, theyd immediately buy vast quantities of groceries. Who knew how much the check would be worth in one day, let alone after a whole month.? Even

7、though inflation has been tamed, Brazilians still buy groceries in huge quantities. Online retailers there have noted this survival reaction and have exploited it. By far, the largest e-commerce category in Brazil is grocery sales: they constitute 39% of total e-commerce in Brazil versus 3.4% in the

8、 US.In organizations, the psychobiology of survival is obvious in the strategies managers use to get and keep workforce attention. The threat of corporate demiseand the consequent loss of jobs and livelihoodsfocuses attention on the need to change. But that attention must be managed carefully, lest

9、people become paralyzed by fear rather than attentive to it. Employees find new jobs, or they hunker down and get ready to change. Either way, you can be sure they are paying attention. When Japanese automakers threatened to drive Ford out of business in the early 1980s, senior managers and employee

10、s were motivated to pay attention to quality and efficiency in a way they never had before. Suddenly product and process design became high priorities. By the end of that decade, an MIT study rated Ford facilities as the highest-quality plants in the world.In short, scaring your employees is a great

11、 way to get their attention. But make sure the threat is genuine, and dont use this tactic too often. If you do, your employees will stop believing that the threat is real.People are naturally competitive; use that to your benefit, as well. Competitive urges are part instinct, part cultural conditio

12、ning, and eminently exploitable. Sports and investment Web sites play to those urges indirectly by providing the latest scores, stock prices, and predictions. And some of the stickiest Web sites involve outright competition. For instance, at Lycoss G, participants compete against thousands of other

13、players who are simultaneously logged on to the Web site. Players return to the site again and again to have fun, to beat their neighbors at backgammon, and to win prizes. Even though the prizes are smalltypically 1 to 5Lycoss executives think theyre on e key to the sites success.Competition can als

14、o focus people on a business goal. Theres no question, for instance, that the Malcolm Baldrige Award has helped employees at quality-minded organizations keep their eyes on the prize. The concept can be taken too far if internal competitionto be the unit that creates most value, for instancebegins t

15、o produce divisiveness. But the chances are good that a bit of rivalry will make the work more compelling to everyone.Smart leaders find ways to keep employees laser focused on their business competitors, too. During a period of economic doldrums for Motorola during the mid-1990s, executives in one

16、cellular-phone division were encouraged to carry a pager that periodically announced stock prices for Motorola, Ericsson, ATT, and Nokia. Every time a competitors stock price jumped significantly, pagers would beep of vibrate and everyone in the room would know they were in a tough battleand that th

17、e stock market was giving Motorolas competitors a lot of credit. At the time, the pagers didnt go off much for Motorola stock increases. But partly because of employees competitiveness, Motorola experienced rapid shareholder increases the next two years.Dont let distractions keep people away from yo

18、ur core message. If you want to catch a raccoon, show him a shiny object to distract him. People, like raccoons, are infinitely distractible, and thats the biggest problem in this age of attention deficit.On the Web, distractibility cuts both ways: banner advertising, for example, is the number one

19、source of revenue, and its also the number one distraction for users. One of the most popular banner ads of 1999 featured an animated monkey quickly bounding across the top of the screen. If you “punched the monkey“ by clicking on it, you were whisked to gambling site. Many people found the manic mo

20、nkey an irresistible target. Great news for the gambling sitebut mixed news for the sites running that ad.In most organizations, the worst distraction is one we mentioned previouslythe multiple internal programs that compete for employees attention. But theyre hardly the only distraction. For exampl

21、e, when the Chemical and manufacturers Hanover banks agreed to merge several years ago, employees at both banks were justifiably concerned about their futures. Bruce Hasenyager, an IT executive at Chemical, noticed that productivity was slumping because employees were gossiping and exchanging rumors

22、. He created “Rumor Mill“, a discussion database that allowed any IT employee to describe a rumor that he or she had heard about the merger. Hasenyager promised that he would address any rumor about which he had information. While some executives were uncomfortable with the discussion, Hasenyager be

23、lieved that deflating all the speculation made it easier for employees to get back to work.Other companies attack distractions by offering to help employees with their personal chores. For example, concierge services are available to stand in line at the registry of motor vehicles or to pick up dry

24、cleaning so that overextended employees can focus on their work.People want to feel engaged, so help make that happen. If you can get people to invest something of their own, theyre going to be more committed than if they feel like observers. Thats the main force behind the stickiness of investment

25、sites like Fidelitys and Schwabs, event-tracking sites like When. com. and any site that makes heavy use of on-line discussion. Cocreation pulls people in. It makes people feel like they count, and it makes it harder for them to disengage. Personalization and customization are forms of co-creation b

26、ecause they require the site user to invest some time to report their preferences for the type of service theyll receive. A perfect example is MyYahoo!. com, which allows a sports fan to position sports news at the top of his or her personalized home page, or a homesick expatriate to highlight all t

27、he news from Ohioand requires both of them to share information and invest time with the website up front.A is often cited as another champion of co-creation, since it relies on reader-submitted reviews to provide other site visitors with rich content. The success of the tactic may actually have mor

28、e to do with the flattery and recognition that the user doing the posting receives than on the content itself. Amazon also relies on personalization techniques to get users attention, beginning with the cheery “Hello John Smith!“ that greets returning customers by recommending books or other items b

29、ased on past purchases.Personalization requires relatively sophisticated technology and a labor-intensive approach to content, which is why more websites dont do it. Yet our research suggests that when people have too much information to process, personalization is one of the most important factors

30、in their choice to attend to one piece of information over another. (See “What Kind of Message Gets Attention?“ at the end of this article.)Co-creation works inside businesses, too. Employees who have helped to make something happed stay invested, and they stay interested. One of the best examples w

31、eve discovered is Texas Instruments, whose CEO made it a top priority in 1994 for the company to define its new vision and strategic plan. To ensure that the plan got the attention it deserved, he put not only his strategic leadership team on the hook for it, but also a broader group of vice preside

32、nts, senior vice presidents, and other employees. And the process didnt end there. Once an initial draft was produced, more than 200 other TI executives were invited to participate in shaping it. Senior managers could have just herded this second tier of employees into a large room and asked for com

33、ments, but they didnt. Instead, they orchestrated a series of five-day events for groups of 25 to 30 managers and revealed the draft strategic vision only after two full days of exploring competitive dynamics and explaining the process that resulted in the vision proposal. At that point, participant

34、s had the knowledge base and the confidence to offer thoughtful criticisms and recommendations, which were readily incorporated into the final product.One TI executive reported that this inclusive process had multiple benefits. It helped keep the strategic vision alive when the CEO died unexpectedly

35、: “Two or three hundred of us had worked on this. We didnt want to just move forward with itwe wanted to pick up the pace.“ The process also helped TI gain consensus quickly on the divestiture of a financially successful business unit that didnt fit the strategy. Even the heads of the unit in questi

36、on, whod been among the original strategists, agreed with the divestiture.Personalization can also be a powerful tool for getting and holding employees attention. At one company, the CEO recently sent each employee a letter at home stating how much revenues needed to increase in the last quarter to

37、meet a growth goaland exactly how much bigger the individuals bonus would be if that goal was reached. Previously, only the top people would have received a letter of that kind; it used to be considered too expensive to personalize a mass mailing. Employees overwhelmingly agreed that the letters had

38、 focused them mightily on their tasksand the goals were met.Technologies and AttentionTechnologies offer extraordinarily rich ways to capture peoples attention. This has been true throughout human history: the Protestant Reformation wouldnt have happened without the distribution of Bibles, for examp

39、le, and the French and American revolutions wouldnt have happened without newspapers. The invention of the printing press made both media possible.Today, businesses use dozens of technologies and media to attract attention. Burson-Marsteller, a global communications firm, prepares both internal and

40、external communications campaigns for its clients. PR has traditionally focused on broadcasting messages outside the company using a variety of media. But now multimedia technologies are being employed to communicate both internal and external messages.Burson has one client, a financial services fir

41、m, whose managers concluded that if they wanted to get the attention of analysts, bankers, and traders, e-mail was not enough; communications had to be face to face. The company now uses a combination of worldwide satellite broadcasts and streaming video Webcasts, sometimes with simultaneous transla

42、tion of the audio stream into multiple languages. The same broadcast may be viewed by investment analysts and employees.Many companies now use worldwide videoconferences to distribute important messages to those who werent closely involved in creating them. Sometimes the broadcasts are augmented wit

43、h anonymous web chat rooms, in which the participants can say what they really think about their leaders messagesand such candid feedback tends to get the leaders attention in return. In another example, Hewlett-Packard issues audiocassettes about new initiatives and programs for employees to listen

44、 to while theyre commuting. Despite all these potential improvements to communication, we have two cautionary notes about technology and attention.Dont let technology get in the way. Something tat appears to be a great attention-getting technology can be worse than useless if its supported by an ins

45、ufficient worse than useless if its supported by an insufficient infrastructure. Web users outside the United States often talk about whether the country is “awake yet“ before logging on, because heavy Internet usage during US daytime hours slows down so many sites. Multiple formats and complex tech

46、nologies for playing sound and video over the Web may draw attention to a site, but they may destroy its capacity to sustain attention.Similar problems crop up at traditional companies. Managers promoting a new venture or initiative often dont realize that, even as they are asking people to behave i

47、n a new way, they are making it difficult for that to happen. For instance, different e-mail systems and incompatible releases of crucial software programs make it nearly impossible for workers to get up to speed with a new initiative. One German multinational we worked with had launched a knowledge

48、 management project designed to let employees and customers share information seamlessly. This initiative was central to the companys larger goalto change from a company that sold products into one that sold knowledge-based services. The problem was there were two competing versions of the software

49、the company was using for knowledge management. One, in German, was based in Germany. The other, in English, was global. Neither flourished, partly because nobody could figure out which version of the software to use.Dont get into a technology arms race. The standard for what gets attention is always being raised; what was dazzling yesterday is boring today. On the Web, for example, it used to be de rigueur to divide the page into browsable sections, or frames, even though the frames were confusing and slo