1、雅思（阅读）模拟试卷 55及答案与解析 一、 Reading Module (60 minutes) 0 You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1 - 13 which are based on Reading Passage 1 below. IMPLEMENTING THE CYCLE OF SUCCESS: A CASE STUDY Within Australia, Australian Hotels Inc(AHI)operates nine hotels and employs over 2000 permanent full
2、-time staff, 300 permanent part-time employees and 100 casual staff. One of its latest ventures, the Sydney Airport hotel(SAH), opened in March 1995. The hotel is the closest to Sydney Airport and is designed to provide the best available accommodation, food and beverage and meeting facilities in Sy
3、dneys southern suburbs. Similar to many international hotel chains, however, AHI has experienced difficulties in Australia in providing long-term profits for hotel owners, as a result of the countrys high labour-cost structure. In order to develop an economically viable hotel organisation model, AHI
4、 decided to implement some new policies and practices at SAH. The first of the initiatives was an organisational structure with only three levels of managementcompared to the traditional seven. Partly as a result of this change, there are 25 per cent fewer management positions, enabling a significan
5、t saving. This change also has other implications. Communication, both up and down the organisation, has greatly improved. Decision-making has been forced down in many cases to front-line employees. As a result, guest requests are usually met without reference to a supervisor, improving both custome
6、r and employee satisfaction. The hotel also recognised that it would need a different approach to selecting employees who would fit in with its new policies. In its advertisements, the hotel stated a preference for people with some service experience in order to minimise traditional work practices b
7、eing introduced into the hotel. Over 7000 applicants filled in application forms for the 120 jobs initially offered at SAH. The balance of the positions at the hotel(30 management and 40 shift leader positions)were predominantly filled by transfers from other AHI properties. A series of tests and in
8、terviews were conducted with potential employees, which eventually left 280 applicants competing for the 120 advertised positions. After the final interview, potential recruits were divided into three categories. Category A was for applicants exhibiting strong leadership qualities, Category C was fo
9、r applicants perceived to be followers, and Category B was for applicants with both leader and follower qualities. Department heads and shift leaders then composed prospective teams using a combination of people from all three categories. Once suitable teams were formed, offers of employment were ma
10、de to team members. Another major initiative by SAH was to adopt a totally multi-skilled workforce. Although there may be some limitations with highly technical jobs such as cooking or maintenance, wherever possible, employees at SAH are able to work in a wide variety of positions. A multi-skilled w
11、orkforce provides far greater management flexibilyty during peak and quiet times to transfer employees to needed positions. For example, when office staff are away on holidays during quiet periods of the year, employees in either food or beverage or housekeeping departments can temporarily fill in.
12、The most crucial way, however, of improving the labour cost structure at SAH was to find better, more productive ways of providing customer service. SAH management concluded this would first require a process of benchmarking. The prime objective of the benchmarking process was to compare a range of
13、service delivery processes across a range of criteria using teams made up of employees from different departments within the hotel which interacted with each other. This process resulted in performance measures that greatly enhanced SAHs ability to improve productivity and quality. The front office
14、team discovered through this project that a high proportion of AHI Club member reservations were incomplete. As a result, the service provided to these guests was below the sandard promised to them as part of their membership agreement. Reducing the number of incomplete reservations greatly improved
15、 guest perceptions of service. In addition, a program modelled on an earlier project called Take Charge was implemented. Essentially, Take Charge provides an effective feedback loop from both customers and employees. Customer comments, both positive and negative, are recorded by staff. These are col
16、lated regularly to identify opportunities for improvement. Just as importantly, employees are requested to note down their own suggestions for improvement.(AHI has set an expectation that employees will submit at least three suggestions for every one they receive from a customer.)Employee feedback i
17、s reviewed daily and suggestions are implemented within 48 hours, if possible, or a valid reason is given for non-implementation. If suggestions require analysis or data collection, the Take Charge team has 30 days in which to address the issue and come up with recommendations. Although quantitative
18、 evidence of AHIs initiatives at SAH are limited at present, anecdotal evidence clearly suggests that these practices are working. Indeed AHI is progressively rolling out these initiatives in other hotels in Australia, whilst numerous overseas visitors have come to see how the program works. This ar
19、ticle has been adapted and condensed from the article by R.Carter(1996), Implementing the cycle of success: A case study of the Sheraton Pacific Division, Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources, 34(3): 111 -23. Names and other details have been changed and report findings may have been given a diff
20、erent emphasis from the original. We are grateful to the author and Asia Pacific Journal of Human Resources for allowing us to use the material in this way. 1 The high costs of running AHI s hotels are related to their_ （ A） management. （ B） size. （ C） staff. （ D） policies. 2 SAHs new organisational
21、 structure requires_ （ A） 75% of the old management positions. （ B） 25% of the old management positions. （ C） 25% more management positions. （ D） 5% fewer management positions. 3 The SAHs approach to organisational structure required changing practices in_ （ A） industrial relations. （ B） firing staf
22、f. （ C） hiring staff. （ D） marketing. 4 The total number of jobs advertised at the SAH was_ （ A） 70 （ B） 120 （ C） 170 （ D） 280 5 Categories A, B and C were used to select_ （ A） front office staff. （ B） new teams. （ C） department heads. （ D） new managers. 5 Complete the following summary of the last
23、four paragraphs of Reading Passage 1 using ONE OR TWO words from the Rdading Passage for each answer. Write you answers in boxes 6 - 13 on your answer sheet. WHAT THEY DID AT SAH Teams of employees were selected from different hotel departments to participate in a【 R6】 _exercise. The information col
24、lected was used to compare【 R7】 _processes which, in turn, led to the development of【 R8】 _that would be used to increase the hotels capacity to improve【 R9】 _as well as quality. Also, and older program known as【 R10】 _was introduced at SAH. In this program,【 R11】 _is sought from customers and staff
25、. Wherever possible【 R12】_suggestions are implemented within 48 hours. Other suggestions are investigated for their feasibility for a period of up to.【 T13】 _ 6 【 R6】 7 【 R7】 8 【 R8】 9 【 R9】 10 【 R10】 11 【 R11】 12 【 R12】 13 【 R13】 13 The discovery that language can be a barrier to communication is q
26、uickly made by all who travel, study, govern or sell. Whether the activity is tourism, research, government, policing, business, or data dissemination, the lack of a common language can severely impede progress or can halt it altogether. Common language here usually means a foreign language, but the
27、 same point applies in principle to any encounter with unfamiliar dialects or styles within a single language. They dont talk the same language has a major metaphorical meaning alongside its literal one. Although communication problems of this kind must happen thousands of times each day, very few b
28、ecome public knowledge. Publicity comes only when a failure to communicate has major consequences, such as strikes, lost orders, legal problems, or fatal accidents - even, at times, war. One reported instance of communication failure took place in 1970, when several Americans ate a species of poison
29、ous mushroom. No remedy was known, and two of the people died within days. A radio report of the case was heard by a chemist who knew of a treatment that had been successfully used in 1959 and published in 1963. Why had the American doctors not heard of it seven years later? Presumably because the r
30、eport of the treatment had been published only in journals written in European languages other than English. Several comparable cases have been reported. But isolated examples do not give an impression of the size of the problem -something that can come only from studies of the use or avoidance of f
31、oreign-language materials and contacts in different communicative situations. In the English-speaking scientific world, for example, surveys of books and documents consulted in libraries and other information agencies have shown that very little foreign-language material is ever consulted. Library r
32、equests in the field of science and technology showed that only 13 per cent were for foreign language periodicals. Studies of the sources cited in publications lead to a similar conclusion: the use of foreign-language sources is often found to be as low as 10 per cent. The language barrier presents
33、itself in stark form to firms who wish to market their products in other countries. British industry, in particular, has in recent decades often been criticised for its linguistic insularity - for its assumption that foreign buyers will be happy to communicate in English, and that awareness of other
34、 languages is not therefor a priorty. In the 1960s, over two-thirds of British firms dealing with non-English-speaking customers were using English for outgoing correspondence; many had their sales literature only in English; and as many as 40 per cent employed no-one able to communicate in the cust
35、omers languages, A similar problem was identified in other English-speaking countries, notably the USA, Australia and New Zealand. And non-English-speaking countries were by no means exempt - although the widespread use of English as an alternative language made them less open to the charge of insul
36、arity. The criticism and publicity given to this problem since the 1960s seems to have greatly improved the situation. Industrial training schemes have promoted an increase in linguistic and cultural awareness. Many firms now have their own translation services; to take just one example in Britain,
37、Rowntree Mackintosh now publish their documents in six languages(English, French, German, Dutch, Italian and Xhosa). Some firms run part-time language courses in the languages of the countries with which they are most involved; some produce their own technical glossaries, to ensure consistency when
38、material is being translated. It is now much more readily appreciated that marketing efforts can be delayed, damaged, or disrupted by a failure to take account of the linguistic needs of the customer. The changes in awareness have been most marked in English-speaking countries, where the realisation
39、 has gradually dawned that by no means everyone in the world knows English well enough to negotiate in it. This is especially a problem when English is not an official language of public administration, as in most parts of the Far East, Russia, Eastern Europe, the Arab would, Latin America and Frenc
40、h-speaking Africa. Even in cases where foreign customers can speak English quite well, it is often forgotten that they may not be able to understand it to the required level - bearing in mind the regional and social variation which permeates speech and which can cause major problems of listening com
41、prehension. In securing understanding, how we speak to them is just as important, it appears, as how they speak to us . Questions 14-17 Complete each of the following statements(Questions 14 - 17)with words taken from Reading Passage 2. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer. Write your answ
42、ers in boxes 14 - 17 on your answer sheet. 14 Language problems may come to the attention of the public when they have _, such as fatal accidents or social problems. 15 Evidence of the extent of the language barrier has been gained from _of materials used by scientists such as books and periodicals.
43、 16 An example of British linguistic insularity is the use of English for materials such as_. 17 An example of a part of the world where people may have difficulty in negotiating English is_. 18 According to the passage, They dont talk the same language(paragraph 1), can refer to problems in_ （ A） u
44、nderstanding metaphor. （ B） learning foreign languages. （ C） understanding dialect or style. （ D） dealing with technological change. 19 The case of the poisonous mushrooms(paragraph 2)suggests that American doctors_ （ A） should pay more attention to radio reports. （ B） only read medical articles if
45、they are in English. （ C） are sometimes unwilling to try foreign treatments. （ D） do not always communicate effectively with their patients. 20 According to the writer, the linguistic insularity of British businesses_ （ A） later spread to other countries. （ B） had a negative effect on their business
46、. （ C） is not as bad now as it used to be in the past （ D） made non-English-speaking companies turn to other markets. 20 List the FOUR main ways in which British companies have tried to solve the problem of the language barrier since the 1960s. Write NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer. Write y
47、our answers in boxes 21 - 24 on your answer sheet. 25 According to the writer, English-speaking people need to be aware that_ （ A） some foreigners have never met an English-speaking person. （ B） many foreigners have no desire to learn English. （ C） foreign language may pose a greater problem in the
48、future. （ D） English-speaking foreigners may have difficulty understanding English. 26 A suitable title for this passage would be_ （ A） Overcoming the language barrier （ B） How to survive an English-speaking world （ C） Global understanding - the key to personal progress （ D） The need for a common la
49、nguage 26 Reading Passage 3 has seven paragraphs A - G. From the list of headings below choose the most suitable headings for paragraphs B - E. Write the appropriate numbers(i Viii)in boxes 27 - 30 on your answer sheet. NB There are more headings than paragraphs, so you will not use them all. List of Headings i A truly international environment ii Once a port city, always a port city iii Good ports make huge profits iV How the port changes a city
