Tiêu đề READING & LISTENING.docx ✅

The English Lab - 68 Nguyen Huu Tho Street Danang - 0868 262829 (Ms Vi - Academic Manager) 100 relationships. A good proportion of business life will always be about building social connections - having dinner or playing sports with clients and colleagues and while computers can deal with administrative tasks, it is still human beings that have to focus on the emotional. The rapid advance of globalisation means that this relationship-building process is becoming ever more demanding. Managers have to put more effort in when dealing with international counterparts, especially when there is not a common language, which is so often the case these days. A recent UK survey showed that chief executives of global organisations now routinely spend three out of every four weeks on international travel. It is in these situations that business cards are doubly useful, as they are a quick way of establishing connections. Cards can also remind you that you have actually met someone in a face to face meeting rather than just searched for them on the internet. Looking through piles of different cards can enhance your memory in ways that simply looking through uniform electronic lists would never do. Janet McIntyre is a leading expert on business cards in today's world. She maintains that as companies become more complex, cards are essential in determining the exact status of every contact you meet in multinational corporations. Janet also explains how exchanging business cards can be an effective way of initiating a conversation because it gives people a ritual to follow when they first meet a new business contact. The business world is obsessed with the idea of creating and inventing new things that will change the way we do everything, and this does lead to progress. But there are lots of things that do not need to be changed and in Janet McIntyre's view, tradition also has an equally valuable role to play. Therefore, the practice of exchanging business cards is likely to continue in the business world. Questions 1-5 - TRUE – FALSE – NOT GIVEN 1. Children's business cards have been banned in some kindergartens. 2. It was the Chinese who first began the practice of using business cards. 3. Designing business cards can be a controversial process for some companies. 4. A famous toy company has boosted their sales by using one type of unusual business card. 5. Some business commentators predict a decline in the use of paper business cards. Questions 6-13 - Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer. How business works Kate Jones's research ● The most important aspect of business is having 6 in others. ● 7. do not have the ability to establish the good relationships essential to business. Business and globalisation Managers must work harder when they don't share the same 8… with their contacts.
The English Lab - 68 Nguyen Huu Tho Street Danang - 0868 262829 (Ms Vi - Academic Manager) 100 A UK survey indicates that 9…… takes up the largest part of business leaders' time. A business person's 10……. of a meeting can be improved by looking at business cards. Janet McIntyre ● Business cards clearly show the 11………of each person in a large company. ● The ritual of swapping business cards is a good way of starting a 12…… at the beginning of a business relationship. ● Janet feels that in the business world, 13… is just as important as innovation. READING PASSAGE 2 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 on pages 6 and 7. Ideal Homes New ideas and some old ones A The traditional kampung houses of Malaysia do not need air-conditioning. Built on stilts and with steep roofs, they have year-round ventilation. The raised structure ensures a cooling breeze comes up through the floorboards, while the high roof acts as a chimney to release hot air. The airtight, concrete boxes of modern city construction, in contrast, are heat traps, says Muhammad Peter Davis of University Putra Malaysia. He has calculated that typical modern Malaysian houses are 5'C hotter than the air outside. The builders of kampung houses "had no knowledge of modern science or engineering but they came up with the perfect design,' says Davis. B This story of ancient architectural sophistication and modern insanity is repeated around the world. In the name of modernism, people have thrown away architecture designed to cope with the environment in which they live and adopted house designs originating from cold, northern environments, where the idea is to keep heat in. C Once, the aim of architectural modernists was to build structures that kept nature out and to replace it with air-conditioning. Now they are learning that they cannot do that effectively. Slowly, they are seeing the benefit of working with nature, rather than against it. In California, they probably use more power for air-conditioning than anywhere else on Earth. According to Arthur Rosenfeld from the University of California, what California needs is white paint. If Los Angeles painted its roofs white, planted trees to shade buildings, and chose lighter-colored paving, it could reduce city temperatures by 3'C and cut the annual air-conditioning bill by SUS 170 million a year. D Modern buildings are greedy in their use of energy. Much is made of the contribution of transportation to global warming, through its emissions of greenhouse gases. But, globally, transportation is responsible for just 22 per cent of carbon dioxide emissions. The building sector is responsible for 31 per cent, mostly the result of heating and air conditioning systems. In developing countries, where demand for electricity for buildings is rising by 5 per cent a year,
The English Lab - 68 Nguyen Huu Tho Street Danang - 0868 262829 (Ms Vi - Academic Manager) 100 the biggest demand is for air-conditioning in modem buildings which are often designed to cope with every different climatic condition. E Before air-conditioning, much of the Arab world kept cool through thoughtful building design. Many buildings were built according to the principles of the wind tower, a tall structure with vertical vents at the top that open in all directions to catch any passing breeze. Typically, these wind-tower buildings were made of local materials such as stone, mud brick, wood and palm-tree fronds, The buildings were inward-looking, which served the dual function of focusing attention on the courtyard, where family members spend time together, and protecting living areas from the rays of the sun. F Throughout the Middle East today, wind towers are often little more than museum piece. But there are exceptions, Jordan has won awards for the architecture of a village on the shores of the Red Sea, which is designed to conserve energy. Made of rough, local stone in a traditional style, it combines the ventilation system of the wind towers for summer coolness with up-to-date heating and floor insulation to protect against the desert cold in winter G Traditional building materials, like traditional building designs, are being rediscovered by those looking for low-energy solutions to the current construction needs. Clay is one such material: As the Dutch housing contractor R van der Ley has argued in promoting a series of clay housing projects in developing countries, clay has many benefits over its industrialized version, brick, Clay blocks cost only half as much as ordinary bricks. Clay also generates work because people can find it, mould it, bake it and work it themselves. Two hundred clay bricks can be made with the fuel oil that makes just one ordinary brick Moreover, clay is an excellent insulator against both cold and heat outside, and can easily be recycled. H But although traditional methods and materials can be revived in appropriate settings, new green, low-energy technologies are needed, especially in urban environments. The thermal insulation of homes in cold countries is an example, In 1983, Sweden adopted a national standard, requiring the country's homes to loge no more than60 kilowatt-hours per square more over the year To meet that standard, windows were double-glazed, and walls and roofs insulated. Every home became a fortress against the cold air outside. Unfortunately, the rest of Europe has not followed the lead I In the United States, Amory Lovins has promoted a range of low-energy technologies: 'superwindow)>', for example, which lets in invisible light but can be 'tuned' to either allow in, or reflect away, infrared solar radiation - the stuff that heats. Buildings with large expanses of window (and big energy bills) can be designed to achieve optimum temperatures. J As well as more efficient use of energy, the world also needs new sources of renewable power. Solar energy is being tried out in the developing world, in villages often far from electricity grids. The world's biggest solar power installation got underway in the Philippines, in 2001, where a project commenced to install solar panels for 400,000 people in 150 villages. Such projects are demonstrating that countries, whether developing or developed, no longer need huge national grids to supply electricity. Every home can do its own thing with the help of a solar panel and a storage battery. K Houses, of course, are more than machines for living in. They are social and psychological spaces, too. Future houses may not look exactly like kampungs or wind towers or