现代大学英语听力2Unit6

Unit 6 Work

Task 1

Laura usually leaves the offices of Quest Productions at about 5 o'clock, but last Monday she left at 5:30. She wanted to get home by 6:30 and she ran to the bus stop but she couldn't get on a bus. There were too many people and not enough buses. Laura was desperate to get home so she decided to go by tube. In the station she went to one of the automatic ticket machines but she didn't have enough change, so she had to join the queue at the ticket window. She bought her ticket and ran to the escalator. Laura went to the platform and waited for the tube. It arrived and the crowd moved forward. Laura was pushed into the train. It was almost full but she was given a seat by a man with a moustache. Laura thanked him and sat down. She started to read her newspaper. In the tunnel the train stopped suddenly and Laura was thrown to the floor together with the man with the moustache. Somebody screamed. The lights went out. It was quarter past 6 on a cold, wet December evening.

Key

A

1. d—b---a---e---c

B

1. a

Task 2

X was a secret agent. He had rented a furnished room in a provincial town not far from the public park and had been there two weeks. He was standing at the window looking out at the dull beds of geraniums, the park gates and the cold, uninviting statue of Queen Victoria that stood across the street from him. It was raining hard and the few people who passed by looked wet and miserable. X was miserable, too. How, he wondered, could anybody think there was anything interesting about the life of a secret agent? He knew it was because people had seen so many television plays about glamorous spies that they thought the life of a secret agent was exciting. They were convinced that every cigarette lighter concealed a secret tape recorder; that a fountain pen held in a certain way would open a locked door, that the touch of a gold ring against the hand of an enemy would make him reveal all his secrets. How wrong they were! He looked round his room. The wallpaper was in the worst possible taste, the pictures horrible, the carpet worn, dirty and faded; and he was cold. This was the third Monday he had come to the window to look out. He prayed it would be the last.

As if in answer to his prayer, a certain meeting he had been sent to investigate was about to take place. He took out his camera. Just beneath the statue two women had stopped to speak. He knew one of them, and it was she who pointed in his

direction. The other woman looked up towards him and in that brief moment he photographed her.

Key

A

1. a

2. b

3. d

4. c

B

1. T

2. T

3. F

C

wondered; television plays; exciting; every cigarette lighter; tape recorder; held in a certain way; the touch of a gold ring against the hand of; reveal; How wrong they were!

Task 3

Harry: Well, Robert, have you made up your mind yet what you want to do when you leave college?

Nora: Oh Harry. Surely he's a bit young to decide on his career. He hasn't even got to college yet.

Harry: Not at all, Nora. It's wisest to decide in good time. Look at me, for example. I really wanted to be a sailor, but now I spend my days sitting at a desk in an office.

Yes, it's silly to train for the wrong job. And after all, Robert will be going to college soon.

Nora: Now if I were a man I'd be a farmer. To see the crops growing—that's my idea of a good life.

Harry: Yes, and to see the money rolling in is more important still.

Robert: Well, that's not the way I look at it, Dad. It's the job I care about, not the money.

Harry: Maybe not; but you'll learn to care about the money too, when you've got a family to keep.

Nora: And of course Peter—well, he's keen to be a racing driver, or else an explorer Robert: Oh, Peter's not old enough to make up his mind about such things. Harry: You haven't answered my question yet, Robert. What would you like to do? Nora: Are you sure you don't want to be a farmer, Robert? Or a market gardener? Robert: No, I'm sorry Mum, but I don't want to at all. I'd rather be a civil engineer. I want to build roads and bridges.

Harry: Not ships? Isn't it better to be a shipbuilding engineer?

Robert: Look here, is it my career we're planning, or yours?

Harry: All right, all right, there's no need to lose your temper But you'd better win that scholarship first.

Key

A

Harry---Sailor Nora---Farmer(if she were a man)

Robert---Civil engineer Peter---Racing driver or explorer

B

1. a

2. b

3. c . b 5. d

Task 4

Here are some of the things a young man or woman should not do when he first asks an editor for a job:

He should not tell the editor that he wants to be a foreign correspondent or a columnist. Very probably the editor does not need either. He wants a reporter who will go to such places as government offices and police stations and write a true story of what is happening there Being a foreign correspondent or a columnist will come later.

A young person should not tell the editor that newspaper work is only the first step on the way to bigger and better jobs, such as those in government. The editor must take a lot of time and trouble teaching someone to be a good newspaperman or woman. He does not like the idea of teaching people who are soon going to leave him to work for someone else.

A young journalist should accept the working hours and free time the editor gives him. As a new journalist, it is very probable that he will work longer hours than others and work on weekends. The editor did the same when he was a young newspaperman with no experience. He expects a journalist to understand how things are on a newspaper.

Key

1. correspondents; columnist; may not need either; to go to places where events take place and write stories about them

2. first; bigger; better; who will soon leave to work for other people

3. working hours; free time; work long hours to begin with

Task 5

Sylvia: We've got a new manager in our department.

Larry: Oh? You hoped to get that job, didn't you?

Sylvia: Yes, I did.

Larry: I'm sorry. That's too bad. Who is it? Who got the job, I mean?

Sylvia: Someone called Drexler. Carl Drexler. He's been with the company only two years. I've been here longer. And I know more about the job, too!

Larry: Hmm. Why do you think they gave it to him and not to you?

Sylvia: Because I'm the wrong sex, of course!

Larry: You mean you didn't get the job because you're a woman?

Sylvia: Yes, that was probably it! It isn't fair.

Larry: What sort of clothes does he wear?

Sylvia: A dark suit. White shirt. A tie. Why?

Larry: Perhaps that had something to do with it.

Sylvia: You mean you think I didn't get the job because I come to work in jeans and a sweater?

Larry: It's possible, isn't ?

Sylvia: Do you really think I should wear different clothes?

Larry: Well...perhaps you should think about it.

Sylvia: Why should I wear a skirt? Or a dress?

Larry: I'm not saying you should. I'm saying you should think about it. That's all! Sylvia: Why should I do that? I'm good at my job! That's the only important thing! Larry: Hmm. Perhaps it should be the only important thing. But it isn't, not in this company.

Key

A

1. acd

2. abe

B

1. she is the wrong sex

2. she wears the wrong clothes

Task 6

Al: Is this the right line to file a claim?

Bob: Yeah. It's the same line for everything. You just stand here and wait.

Al: Oh. Is there always such a long line?

Bob: Every week. Sometimes longer. Is this your first time here?

Al: Yes.

Bob: What happened? Your plant closed down?

Al: No. I'm a car salesman, or, I was a car salesman. But we just aren't selling cars. It's the interest rates. Two years ago, I averaged ten new cars a month. Do you know how many cars I sold last month? One. One car to a lady who had the cash. But the interest rates are up again. The boss let three of us go. How about you?

Bob: I worked at a vacuum cleaner plant with about fifty workers. We put in a good day's work. But the machinery was getting old. As a matter of fact, the whole plant was old. So the management decided to build a new plant. You know where? In Singapore. The workers here made about seven dollars an hour, a couple of people made eight or nine an hour. You know how much they're paying the workers in Singapore? $2.50 an hour! Anyway, all fifty of us got laid off.

Al: How long ago was that?

Bob: They closed down ten months ago.

Al: Any luck finding another job?

Bob: Nothing. I have one, sometimes two, interviews a week. Last week I thought I had something. They liked my experience with machines. But I never heard from

them again.

Al: At least you know something about machines. All I can do is talk.

Bob: Maybe you'll talk yourself into another job. Good luck. I'll see you here next week.

Al: I hope not. I hope I'll have something by then.

Key

Former Jobs When Laid-off Why Laid-off

1st man Car salesman Recently Low sales, due to the increase of interest rates

2nd man Worker at a vacuum 10 months ago Plant moved to Singapore where cleaner plant worker are paid much less

B

1st speaker---bcd 2nd speaker---ae

C

1. F

2. F

Task 7

Interviewer: Do you prefer what you're doing to teaching?

First Man: Yes, one of the things I found a bit frustrating about teaching was rather difficult, especially if you're teaching in England and most of the students know

quite a lot of English before they arrive. They learn a lot of English outside the classroom, in pubs or coffee shops or other places, with the families they're living with. It's very difficult to pin down how much they learn from your actual lesson, whereas in marketing, again there are lots of areas that are grey rather than black or white, but there are quite a few other areas where one can see quite clearly the results of one's efforts.

Interviewer: What did you do after you quit your job in advertising?

Second Man: In fact, I became a journalist and I worked as a freelance. I didn't have a full-time job with any newspaper. I just had to contribute things as they came along and I wrote for magazines, and I did quite a lot of broadcasting for the VOA. Well, this was in a way the opposite of advertising because I enjoyed it a lot but I found it very hard to earn enough money to live on.

Interviewer: And then you decided to be a teacher?

Second Man: Well, and so I thought. Well, I must do something which produces an income that I can be sure of. While I was working as a journalist I had done an article for a magazine about the English language teaching world and in fact I had come to the school where I now teach as a journalist and interviewed a lot of the people. And I thought it seemed a very nice place and I thought that the classes I visited had a very, very nice feeling about them, and so I thought, well, I'll see if they'll have me.

Interviewer: Why do you prefer teaching to advertising?

Second Man: Well, partly because in teaching you work regular hours. In

advertising you just had to stay at the office until the work was finished [I see.] and it could be three o'clock in the morning. [Oh, dear.] Also you were very often made to work at weekends. Often some job would come up that was very important and they said it had to be finished—it had to go into the newspapers next week. Interviewer: So there was a lot more pressure.

Second Man: There was a lot more pressure in advertising. Also, the people I worked with when I was first in advertising were young hopeful people like myself. By the end I was working with a lot of old people who quite honestly were awful. And I kept looking at them and saying, “Am I going to be like that?”And I thought if I am I'd better get out, whereas the English language teachers I saw, who were older people I thought, well, they seemed quite nice. And I wouldn't mind being like that myself.

Key

A

1. F

2. F

3. T

4. F

5. T

6. F

B

1. According to the first speaker, it is frustrating because the teacher cannot see clearly the results of his efforts.

According to the second speaker, English language teaching is a good job, because it guarantees a stable income and regular working hours and means less pressure. He also likes the way elderly teacher are.

Task 8

Matthew: Michael, do you go out to work?

Michael: Not regularly, no. I used to; I used to have a job in a publishing company, but I decided it wasn't really what I wanted to do and that what I wanted to do wouldn't earn me much money, so I gave up working and luckily I had a private income from my family to support me and now I do the things I want to do. Some of them get paid like lecturing and teaching, and others don't.

Matthew: What are the advantages of not having to go to work from nine till five? Michael: Ah... there're two advantages really. One is that if you feel tired you don't have to get up, and the other is that you can spend your time doing things you want to do rather than being forced to do the same thing all the time. Matthew: But surely that's in a sense very self-indulgent and very lucky because most of us have to go out and earn our livings. Do you feel justified in having this privileged position?

Michael: Yes, because I think I use it well. I do things which I think are useful to people and the community and which I am enjoying doing.

Matthew: Chris, what do you think the value of work is?

Chris: Well, I think in our present-day society, for most people, work has very little value at all. Most of us go out to work for about eight to nine hours of our waking day. We do things which are either totally futile and totally useless or have very little justification whatsoever, and for most of us the only reason for working is that we

need to keep ourselves alive, to pay for somewhere to live, to pay to feed our children.

Matthew: But surely people wouldn't know what to do if they didn't have to go to work?

Chris: Well, again this raises the sort of two main aspects of work. Should we think of work only as a sort of bread-winning process, and this is very much the role it has in current society, or should we take a much wider perspective on work and think of all the possible sort of activities that human beings could be doing during the day?

I think the sort of distinction currently is between say, someone who works in a car factory and who produces cars which are just adding to pollution, to over-consumption of vital resources, who is doing something which is very harmful, both to our environment and to, probably society, to contrast his work with someone perhaps like a doctor, who I think in any society could be justified as doing a very valuable job and one which incidentally is satisfying to the person who is doing it.

Matthew: What do you do? Is your job just a bread-winning process or do you get some satisfaction out of doing it?

Chris: Well, in the job I do find that most of the satisfaction is a mental one; it's coming to grips with the problems of my subject and with the problems of teaching in the University. Clearly this is the type of satisfaction that most people doing what we call in England "white-collar" jobs. This is quite different from the sort of craftsman, who is either working with his hands or with his skills on a machine, or

from people perhaps who are using artistic skills, which are of a quite different character. Certainly it's becoming a phenomenon that people who do "white-collar" jobs during the day, who work with their minds to some extent, people who work on computers, people who are office clerks, bank employees, these people have fairly soul-destroying jobs which nevertheless don't involve much physical effort, that they tend to come home and do "do-it-yourself " activities at home. They make cupboards, paint their houses, repair their cars, which somehow provide the sort of physical job satisfaction that they're denied in their working day.

Key

The interview with Michale:

1. No.

2. The work he used to do was not what interested him and what he likes to do cannot earn him enough money to support himself.

3. You do not have to get up it you don’t feel like it. You can spend your time on the things you want to do.

4. He believes he does things which are enjoyable for him and useful to people and the community.

The interview with Chris:

1. Very little value other than supporting oneself and ones family.

2. It is a bread-winning process. The activities in it can be valuable to society.

3. He thinks it harmful to both the environment and the society, for cars add to pollution and consume the scarce resources.

4. He thinks it a valuable job in any society.

5. He is perhaps a university teacher.

6. He regarded his job a “white collar”job, which he does with his mind and receives mental satisfaction from it.

Task 9

Are most workers today feeling bored and dissatisfied with their jobs? It is often claimed that they are. Yet a study conducted by Parade magazine more than 20 years ago showed that people at that time felt the opposite.

Parade asked questions of a representative sampling of adult Americans from coast to coast. The sampling included different sexes, age groups, and occupations.

The interviewees were asked to make a choice from one of the following three to describe their feelings towards their work.

A. Like their jobs.

B. Dislike their jobs.

C. Like their jobs in part.

Results showed that 91 percent of the male interviewees and 84 percent of the females chose A, while only 5 percent men and 12 percent women interviewed chose B. The rest said that they liked their jobs in part and they comprised a very low percentage.

In all the three age groups groups—from 18 to 24, from 25 to 29 and 30 to 39 39—those who liked their jobs made up the majority. 70 percent, 88 percent and 92 percent respectively choose A. Those choosing B accounted for 20 percent, 9 percent and 8 percent of different age groups. And the rest, 6 percent, 3 percent and 0 percent respectively claimed that they only liked their jobs in part.

The difference in responses among people with different occupations is small. Among the whitecollar employees, those choosing A, B and C are 87 percent, 8 percent and 4 percent of the total. And for the blue-collar employees, 91 percent, 5 percent and 3 percent choose A, B and C respectively.

It is interesting to note that there are few differences in attitude between men and women, professionals and factory workers. In each group, the largest number reported that they liked their jobs.

Next, Parade asked, "If there were one thing you could change about your job, what

would it be?" It was expected that many would wish to make their jobs less boring, but very few gave this reply. No major changes were reported. Some wished for "less paperwork"; many would shorten their working hours, but others would like more hours in order to earn more money. No serious complaints were made.

Most people have to work in order to live. But what would happen if someone had enough money to stop working? Parade asked, "If you inherited a million dollars, would you go on working—either at your present job or something you liked better —or would you quit work?" The answers showed that most adults would prefer to work, even if they didn't have to. This is true especially of the younger adults aged 18—24. Of these, nine out of ten said they would go on working, even if they suddenly became millionaires.

Key

A

Interviewees Like their jobs Dislike their jobs Like jobs in part

(percent) (percent) (percent)

Men 91 5 4

Women 84 12 4

Men/Women 18-24 70 20 6

Men/Women 25-29 88 9 3

Men/Women 30-39 92 8 0

White-collar workers 87 8 4

Blue-collar workers 91 5 3

B

1. No major change. For some---less paperwork. Some---less working hours. Others---earn more money.

2. Most adults---would go on working. Esp. young adults (18 to 24)---9 out of 10 would go on working.

Task 10

Officer: Oh, come in, take a seat. I'm the Careers Officer. You're Cathy, aren't you? Mother: That's right. This is Catherine Hunt, and I'm her mother.

Officer: How do you do, Mrs. Hunt? Hello, Catherine.

Cathy: Hello. Pleased to meet you.

Officer: And you'd like some advice about choosing a career?

Mother: Yes, she would. Wouldn't you, Catherine?

Cathy: Yes, please.

Officer: Well, just let me ask a few questions to begin with. How old are you, Catherine?

Mother: She's nineteen. Well, she's almost nineteen. She'll be nineteen next month. Officer: And what qualifications have you got?

Mother: Well, qualifications from school of course. Very good results she got. And

she's got certificates for ballet and for playing the piano.

Officer: Is that what you're interested in, Catherine, dancing and music?

Cathy: Well...

Mother: Ever since she was a little girl she's been very keen on the music and dancing. She ought to be a music teacher or something. She's quite willing to train for a few more years to get the right job, aren't you, Catherine?

Cathy: Well, if it's a good idea.

Mother: There you are, you see. She's a good girl really. A bit lazy and disorganized sometimes, but she's very bright. I'm sure the Careers Officer will have lots of jobs for you.

Officer: Well, I'm afraid it's not as easy as that. There are many young people these days who can't find the kind of jobs they want.

Mother: I told you so, Catherine. I told you you shouldn't wear that dress. You have to look smart to get a job these days.

Officer: I think she looks very nice. Mrs. Hunt, will you come into the other office for a moment and look at some of the information we have there. I'm sure you'd like to see how we can help young people.

Mother: Yes, I'd love to. Mind you, I think Catherine would be a very nice teacher. She could work with young children. She's like that. Or she could be a vet. She's always looking after sick animals.

Officer: I'm afraid there's a lot of competition. You need very good grade to be a vet. This way, Mrs. Hunt. Just wait a minute, Catherine. (The mother exits.)

Officer: There are just one or two more things, Catherine.

Cathy: Do call me Cathy.

Officer: Okay, Cathy. Are you really interested in being a vet?

Cathy: Not really. Anyway, I'm not bright enough. I'm reasonably intelligent, but I'm not brilliant. I'm afraid my mother is a bit over-optimistic.

Officer: Yes, I guessed that. She's a bit overpowering, isn't she, your mum? Cathy: A bit. But she's very kind.

Officer: I'm sure she is. So, you're interested in ballet and music, are you? Cathy: Not really. My mother sent me to lessons when I was six, so I'm quite good, I suppose. But I don't want to do that for the rest of my life, especially music. It's so lonely.

Officer: What do you enjoy doing?

Cathy: Well, I like playing tennis, and swimming. Oh, I went to France with the school choir last year. I really enjoyed that. And I like talking to people. But I suppose you mean real interests—things that would help me to get a job? Officer: No. I'm more interested in what you really want to do. You like talking to people, do you?

Cathy: Oh yes, I really enjoy meeting new people.

Officer: Do you think you would enjoy teaching?

Cathy: No, no, I don't really. I was never very interested in schoolwork, and I'd like to do something different. Anyway, there's a teacher training college very near us. It would be like just going to school again.