（4）W:
Mr. Stone, I wanted to tell you in person that at the end of this month I'll be leaving the company. Well, Jane, we are certainly going to miss you here, but I wish you the best of luck.
What is the woman going to do?
M:
Q:
（5）W: M:
Tim, I hate to tell you this, but we're caught in a budget crunch, and we must lay you off. I'm sorry.
I understand. I've enjoyed my time here. Don't worry about me. I'm confident I can find something else. What is the man's response?
Q:
BDACD
Listening in Task 1
Manager: Adam! Have you any suggestions about how we can avoid bankruptcy? Adam:
Downsizing would certainly reduce our operating costs. You know, lean and mean, the way you have to be in today's market.
Manager: Where do you suggest we start making these staff cuts? Adam:
The logical place to start would be in administration. They're usually overstaffed.
Manager: That's not going to go over very well with our employees. Some of them
have been with the company for years.
Adam:
It's a painful process, but there's no other choice. They'll just have to accept the idea.
Manager: We can give them a fairly decent severance package when they're fired. Adam:
I know. And I think that if we computerize the office, we could reduce office staff by about 20 percent just by eliminating a lot of paperwork.
Manager: OK. If we lay off 20 percent of the administrative staff, will that be
enough to get the company back on its feet? Adam:
Unfortunately not. We'll also need to make some cuts in the service department.
Manager: How can we do that and maintain the level of service that we offer our
customers? Adam:
Well, we'll have to retrain the service staff and streamline our operations, so we won't need as many people to run things smoothly.
Manager: Well, this is tough, but I really don't think we have any other choice.
If we keep losing money like this, we'll have to shut everything down.
BACCD Task 2
Although the scarcity of employment opportunities for college graduates has shown no signs of improving, the shortage does not prevent young employees from job-hopping.
The Chinese young people who graduated from college three years ago have on average changed jobs twice. According to a report by an education consulting agency, 88 percent of these changes were voluntary, with the graduates choosing to resign instead of being fired.
In the Pearl River Delta, one of China's economic centers, less than 20 percent of newly recruited college graduates remained for more than a year in the first company where they had worked.
Entrepreneurs are worried that the job-hopping fever among graduates will destabilize their companies and harm long-term development. To prevent constant job-hopping, some enterprises have actually started withholding their employees' graduation certificates; some even hold back wages. Experts are studying the causes of this trend toward job switching. According to the report, 33 percent of the respondents changed jobs for better career prospects, 25 percent due to low salaries, and 13 percent just wanted to try new professions. Experts also analyzed the deep-rooted reasons for the frequent job changes. Enterprises usually ranked the five most desirable qualities as a sense of responsibility, professional ethics, communication skills, learning ability, and problem-solving ability. But in a university education those five qualities were sometimes listed in the reverse order.
Although employers value highly a sense of responsibility and
professional ethics, many inexperienced graduates made concessions by accepting a temporary position, taking it as a springboard to a better job. Today's young people are usually the only child in the family. Many of them have been brought up by doting parents, and are now bitterly disappointed at the low-paying jobs offered them.
Sometimes firms have disillusioned college graduates by having no long-term development strategies. If there is neither proper planning nor training for employees, they see only a dim future.
FTFTF Task 3
In some cases companies inform their employees in advance that lay-offs are coming. In other cases, they come without warning: You arrive on time for work on a Friday, but you are told not to come next week. Ouch! In either case, you may be able to sense some bad signs in advance. Maybe the company has tried very hard to avoid lay-offs; maybe it has been preparing for the worst for quite some time. If you think about the bad omens carefully, you might know as much as or even more than some of the employees in managerial positions with management responsibilities. For example, if you work in sales, you might know that quotas have not been met. If you work in field engineering, you might notice far fewer customer installations. If your company's competitors, suppliers or customers are laying off employees, it's likely your company will too, especially if economic conditions are affecting your industry. Check the lay-off statistics from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Search the Net and your local newspaper too for articles concerning lay-offs in your industry.
Do things like bad sales always mean that lay-offs are coming to your company? Not necessarily. Companies have seasonal and economic sales dips all the time, and are always looking for ways to improve their performance. So, if you see only one or two bad signs, don't jump to a hasty conclusion. But if you see more, especially along the lines of earnings warnings, budget cuts, hiring freezes, restructuring, and massive lay-offs in your industry, it might just be time to get your résumé up-to-date and start looking for a new job. Also, it might be a good idea to cancel your vacation,
implement money-saving measures, and become more useful on your job. You should prepare in advance if you think you might get the axe soon.
DCBCA Let's talk Task 1
Voice-over:Fraser:
Manager:
Voice-over:Fraser:
Voice-over:John:
Fraser likes John's idea of renting a factory, but he still wants to
supply supermarkets. He's done some research and found a factory on the Isle of Bute that he likes the sound of. Fraser likes the factory, but can they meet his desire for supermarket capacity? Obviously I produce all the products in the kitchen at home, um, and the plan is to, obviously move it into a commercial setting so that we can, um, produce for larger, sort of, retailers. We're probably looking initially maybe, um, between five and, er, ten thousand a month, um... probably growing to, sort of... twenty to thirty thousand within the first six months. That's quite a lot.
Fraser decides against the factory because they can't make his
supermarket quantities. When... when we... when I met... last met John, he thought it would be a good idea for me to, kinda, set up my own factory, and produce the stuff myself, and sell it to just a handful of delis, and then, rack up more delis and, er, grow that way, um... which didn't really appeal to me. It was a bit, kinda, slow and, er... you know I'm happy to kinda jump in at the deep end, as it were, and just go straight for the, kinda, um, the larger retailers.
John's worried. Fraser has not taken his advice. His high-risk strategy
of going straight to the supermarkets could come off, but it's a real gamble. Fraser's a one-man band, and I'm very concerned that he hasn't got the backup and the support to deal with huge supermarkets at this stage in his business development.