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. Which of the following is TRUE of the job market
A. Employees are in face of fierce competition.
B. Salaries of engineering grads are lower than the average.
C. Starting salaries have been increased this year.
D. There might be another hiring surge next year.
TEXT B In business, if not politics, the world has quietened down a bit: the number of spectacular bankruptcies, indictments, scandals, and implosions is not as high as it was. Although executives still have to face a global slowdown, the uncertain effects of the war in the Middle East, and the still fresh confusion over bird flu, they might now be excused a deep breath and a look at aspects of their businesses that may have been neglected in the scramble to stay on top of new accounting laws and restated earnings. One area to start catching up on is knowledge. This is true both personally, as executives work out whether or not they are staying on top of internal or external developments, but also at die level of companies. A survey of knowledge management, Knowledge Unplugged, published in 2005 by McKinsey, found that the best-performing companies were far more likely than the worst-performing ones to use creative techniques for acquiring, processing and distributing knowledge--everything from emphasizing team work in product development to holding "idea contests" and trying to avoid boring daily routines. But creating an atmosphere in which knowledge can be shared can be almost as challenging as obtaining it in the first place. This is the potential prisoner’s dilemma of knowledge: the more valued it becomes, the less incentive employees have to share it with one another, at; the risk of losing the competitive advantage of what they know--or, worse, seeing another profit at their expense. This proves to be even truer at the company level. While firms might turn to external partners to enhance their knowledge base, the sharing will be incomplete without mutual trust. Since "knowledge" is such a vague term, it helps to have specific goals in mind when looking to gain more of it. Are you looking for information about your company, or industry in particular, Despite the general slowdown in executive education, there are still a number of courses devoted specifically to helping managers in given industries--technology, for example, or health care. Are you more concerned with acquiring more knowledge, or putting it to better use Do you need to move quickly, or is this a subject that needs to be explored in greater depth And bear in mind that styles of learning vary. Some people will profit most from informal networking; some enjoy learning in a classroom; others will be able to take advantage of the company intranet. Be flexible in the pursuit of knowledge; it is better to set performance targets, concentrate on meeting them, and allow individuals and their teams to explore their own solutions Sometimes the best way to generate knowledge is simply a bit of brainstorming. The edition of Executive Education Outlook looks at the options available to executives in gaining knowledge, and enhancing what they already have. It includes a look at the state of distance learning--neither the revolution the hype claimed it would be in the late 1990s, nor completely dismissible--as a possible conduit of knowledge, the best place to go for new programmes in knowledge management, and a consideration of the demand for the best sources of knowledge: business school academics. Coming in June, Global Executive will also feature a series of Executive Dialogue interviews with prominent CIOs, further exploring the themes of information and knowledge gathering. Concentrating on knowledge now may be the best way to be prepared for the next challenges facing the business world. According to the passage, distance learning is considered to ______.
A. completely change the way people acquire knowledge.
B. be of little value for people’s acquisition of knowledge.
C. be useful in some aspects for the acquisition of knowledge.
D. have great potential in guiding people to acquire knowledge.
None of them knew the color of the sky. Their eyes glanced level, and were fastened upon the waves that swept toward them. These waves were of the hue of slate, save of the tops, which were 6f foaming white, and all of the men knew the colors of the sea. The horizon narrowed and widened, and dipped and rose, and at all times its edge was jagged with waves that seemed thrust up in points like rocks. Many a man ought to have a bath-tub larger than the boat which here rode upon the sea. These waves were most wrongfully and barbarously abrupt and tail, and each froth-top was a problem in small boat navigation. The cook squatted in the bottom and looked with both eyes at the six inches of gunwale which separated him from the ocean. His sleeves were rolled over his fat forearms, and the two flaps of his unbuttoned vest dangled as he bent to bail out the boat. Often he said: "Gawd! That was a narrow clip." As he re marked it he invariably gazed eastward over the broken sea. The oilier, steering with one of the two oars in the boat, sometimes raised himself suddenly to keep clear of water that swirled in over the stern. It was a thin little oar and it seemed often ready to snap.
TEXT D In 1981 Kenji Urada, a 37-year-old Japanese factory worker, climbed over a safety fence at a Kawasaki plant to carry out some maintenance work on a robot. In his haste, he failed to switch the robot off properly. Unable to sense him, the robot’s powerful hydraulic arm kept on working and accidentally pushed the engineer into a grinding machine. His death made Urada the first recorded victim to die at the hands of a robot. This astounding industrial accident would not have happened in a world in which robot behavior was governed by the Three Laws of Robotics drawn up by Isaac Asimov, a science fiction writer. The laws appeared in 1, Robot, a book of short stories published in 1950 that inspired a Hollywood film. But decades later the laws, designed to prevent robots from harming people either through action or inaction, remain in the realm of fiction. With robots now poised to emerge from their industrial cages and to move into homes and workplaces, roboticists are concerned about the safety implications beyond the factory floor. To address these concerns, leading robot experts have come together to try to find ways to prevent robots from harming people. "Security, safety and sex are the big concerns," says Henrik Christensen, chairman of the European Robotics Network at the Swedish Royal Institute of Technology in Stockholm, and one of the organisers of the new roboethics group. Should robots that are strong enough or heavy enough to crush people be allowed into homes Should robotic sex dolls resembling children be legally allowed These questions may seem esoteric but in the next few years they will become increasingly relevant, says Dr. Christensen. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe’s World Robotics Survey, in 2002 the number of domestic and service robots more than tripled, nearly outstripping their industrial counterparts. Japanese industrial firms are racing to build humanoid robots to act as domestic helpers for the elderly, and South Korea has set a goal that 100% of households should have domestic robots by 2020. In light of all this, it is crucial that we start to think about safety and ethical guidelines now, says Dr. Christensen. So what exactly is being done to protect us from these mechanical menaces "Not enough," says Blay Whitby, an artificial-intelligence expert at the University of Sussex in England. This is hardly surprising given that the field of "safety-critical computing" is barely a decade old, he says. But things are changing, and researchers are increasingly taking an interest in trying to make robots safer. One approach, which sounds simple enough, is to try to program them to avoid contact with people altogether. But this is much harder than it sounds. Getting a robot to navigate across a cluttered room is difficult enough without having to take into account what its various limbs or appendages might bump into along the way. Regulating the behavior of robots is going to become more difficult in the future, since they will increasingly have self-learning mechanisms built into them, says Gianmarco Veruggio, a roboticist at the Institute of Intelligent Systems for Automation in Genoa, Italy. As a result, their behavior will become impossible to predict fully, he says, since they will not be behaving in predefined ways but will learn new behavior as they go. The word "astounding" in the second paragraph is closest in meaning to ______.
A. gullible.
B. awesome.
C. gruesome.
D. stupendous.