SECTION B INTERVIEW
Directions: In this section you will hear everything ONCE ONLY. Listen carefully and then answer the questions that follow. Questions 1 to 5 are based on an interview. At the end of the interview you will be given 10 seconds to answer each of the following five questions.
Now listen to the interview.
听力原文: The first era in American urban history extended from the early 17th century to about 1840.Throughout those years, the total urban population remained small and so were the cities. At the first federal census in 1790, city dwellers made up nearly 5. 1% of the total population and only 2 places had more than 25,000 inhabitants. Fifty years later, only 10.8% of the nation's population fell into the urban category and only one city — New York — contained more than 50,000 people. Largely because of the unsophisticated modes of transportation, even the more popular places in the early 19th century remained small enough that people easily walked from one end of the city to the other in those days.
Though small by modern standards, these walking cities, as it were, performed a variety of functions in those days. One was economic. Throughout the pre-modern era, this part of the urban life remained so overwhelmingly commercial that almost every city owed its development to trade. Yet city dwellers concerned themselves not only with promoting agricultural activities in their rural areas. They also collected and processed goods from these areas and then distributed them to other cities. From the beginning then and increasingly in the 18th and early 19th centuries, cities served as centres of both commerce and simple manufacturing.
Apart from the economic functions, the early cities also had important non-economic functions to play. Since libraries, museums, schools, and colleges were built and needed people to go there to visit or to study, cities and the larger early towns, with their concentrations of population, tended to serve as centres of educational activities and the points from which information was spread to the countryside. In addition, the towns with people of different occupational, ethnic, racial and religious affiliations became focuses of formal and informal organizations, which were set up to foster the security and to promote the interests and influence of each group. In these days, the pre-industrial city in America functioned as a complex and varied organising element in American life, not as a simple, homogeneous and static unit.
The vitality of these early cities was reinforced by the nature of their location and by the process of town spreading. Throughout the pre-industrial period of American history, the cities occupied sites on the eastern portion of the then largely undeveloped continent and the settlement of countryside generally followed the expansion of the towns in that region. The various interest groups in each city tended to compete with their counterparts in other cities for economic, social and political control, first of nearby and later of more distant and larger areas. And always there remained the undeveloped regions to be developed through the establishment of new towns by individuals and groups.
These individuals and groups sought economic opportunities or looked for a better social, political or religious atmosphere. In this sense, the city still helped the development of the successions of urban frontiers. Well, this kind of circumstance made Americans one of the most political and self-conscious city-building peoples of their time. It did not result in a steadily urbanizing society in the sense that decade by decade an even larger proportion of population lived in cities. In 1690, an estimated 9—10% of American colonists lived in urban settlements. A century later, that is, the end of the 18th century, though 24 places had 2, 500 persons or more, city dwellers accounted for only
A. the urban pupulation was stable.
B. few people lived in cities.
C. transport was backward.
D. it was originally planned.
1 Do you ever feel as though you spend all your time in meetings?
2 Henry Mintzberg, in his book The Nature of Managerial Work, found that in large organizations managers spent 22 per cent of their time at their desk, 6 per cent on the telephone, 3 per cent on other activities, but a whopping 69 per cent in meetings.
3 There is a widely-held but mistaken belief that meetings are for "solving problems"and "making decisions". For a start, the number of people attending a meeting tends to be inversely roportional to their collective ability to reach conclusions and make decisions. And these are the least important elements.
4 Instead hours are devoted to side issues, playing elaborate games with one another. It seems, therefore, that meetings serve some purpose other than just making decisions.
5 All meetings have one thing in common: role-playing. The most formal role is that of chairman. He sets the agenda, and a good chairman will keep the meeting running on time and to the point. Sadly, the other, informal, role-players are often able to gain the upper hand. Chief is the "constant talker", who just loves to hear his or her own voice.
6 Then there are the "can't do" types who want to maintain the status quo. Since they have often been in the organization for a long time, they frequently quote historical experience as an excuse to block change: "It won't work, we tried that last year and it was a disaster. "A more subtle version of the "can't do" type, the "yes, but... ," has emerged recently. They have learnt about the need to sound positive, but they still can't bear to have things changed.
7 Another whole sub-set of characters are people who love meetings and want them to continue until 5: 30 p.m. or beyond. Irrelevant issues are their speciality. They need to call or attend meetings, either to avoid work, or to justify their lack of performance, or simply because they do not have enough to do.
8 Then there are the "counter-dependents", those who usually disagree with everything that is said, particularly if it comes from the chairman or through consensus from the group. These people need to fight authority in whatever form.
9 Meetings can also provide attenders with a sense of identification of their status and power. In this case, managers arrange meetings as a means of communicating to others the boundaries of their exclusive club: who is "in", and who is not.
10 Because so many meetings end in confusion and without a decision, another game is played at the end of meetings, called reaching a false consensus. Since it is important for the chairman to appear successful in problem-solving and making a decision, the group reaches a false consensus. Everyone is happy, having spent their time productively. The reality is that the decision is so ambiguous that it is never acted upon, or, if it is, there is continuing conflict, for Which another meeting is necessary.
11 In the end, meetings provide the opportunity for social intercourse, to engage in battle in front of our bosses, to avoid unpleasant or unsatisfying work, to highlight our social status and identity. They are, in fact, a necessary though not necessarily productive psychological sideshow. Perhaps it is our civilized way of moderating, if not preventing, change.
On role-playing, the passage seems to indicate that chairman
A. talks as much as participants.
B. is usually a "constant talker".
C. prefers to take the role of an observer.
D. is frequently outshone by participants.