大学英语自学教程（下）.pdf

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1、大学英语自学教程（下）Ol-A.What Is a Decision?201-B.Secrets of Success at an Interview 402-A.Black Holes 702-B.Worlds within Worlds 903-A.Euthanasia:For and Against 1103-B.Advantage Unfair 1304-A.Slavery on Our Doorstep 1604-B.Return of The Chain Gang 1805-A.The New Music 2005-B.Different Types of Composers 21

2、06-A.Improving Industrial Efficiency through Robotics 2306-B.Predicting Earthquakes 2507-A.Leisure and Leadership 2707-B.The Time Message 2908-A.Jet Lag:Prevention and Cure 3208-B.Coetrolling Your Concentration 3409-A.Aging in European Countries 3709-B.Children Self-esteem 3910-A.The Campaign for El

3、ection 4210-B.The American Two-party System 4411-A.Sacrificed to Science?4611-B.Lefs Stop Keeping Pets 4912-A.Let Your Mind Wander 5112-B.To Sleep,Perchance to Dream 5513-A.Work,Labor,and Play 5913-B.The Workmans Compensation 6114-A.The Teachers Last Shocking lesson 6414-B.The Seeds of Wrath 6615-A.

4、The Computer and The Poet 6915-B.Changes to Come in U.S.Education 7101-A.What Is a Decision?A decision is a choice made from among alternative courses ofaction that are available.The purpose of making a decision is toestablish and achieve organizational goals and objectives.The reason formaking a de

5、cision is that a problem exists,goals or objectives are wrong,or something is standing in the way of accomplishing them.Thus the decision-making process is fundamental to management.Almost everything a manager does involves decisions,indeed,somesuggest that the management process is decision making.

6、Althoughmanagers cannot predict the future,many of their decisions require thatthey consider possible future events.Often managers must make a bestguess at what the future will be and try to leave as little as possible tochance,hut since uncertainty is always there,risk accompaniesdecisions.Sometime

7、s the consequences of a poor decision are slight;atother times they are serious.Choice is the opportunity to select among alternatives.If there is nochoice,there is no decision to be made.Decision making is the processof choosing,and many decisions have a broad range of choice.Forexample,a student m

8、ay be able to choose among a number of differentcourses in order to implement the decision to obtain a college degree.2For managers,every decision has constraints based on policies,procedures,laws,precedents,and the like.These constraints exist at alllevels of the organization.Alternatives are the p

9、ossible courses of action from which choicescan be made.If there are no alternatives,there is no choice and,therefore,no decision.If no alternatives are seen,often it means that athorough job of examining the problems has not been done.For example,managers sometimes treat problems in an either/or fa

10、shion;this is theirway of simplifying complex problems.But the tendency to simplifyblinds them to other alternatives.At the managerial level,decision making includes limitingalternatives as well as identifying them,and the range is from highlylimited to practically unlimited.Decision makers must hav

11、e some way of determining which ofseveral alternatives is best that is,which contributes the most to theachievement of organizational goals.An organizational goal is an end ora state of affairs the organization seeks to reach.Because individuals(and organizations)frequently have different ideas abou

12、t how to attainthe goals,the best choice may depend on who makes the decision.Frequently,departments or units within an organization make decisionsthat are good for them individually but that are less than optimal for thelarger organization.Called suboptimization,this is a trade-off thatincreases th

13、e advantages to one unit or function but decreases theadvantages to another unit or function.For example,the marketingmanager may argue effectively for an increased advertising budget.Inthe larger scheme of things,however,increased funding for research toimprove the products might be more beneficial

14、 to the organization.These trade-offs occur because there are many objectives thatorganizations wish to attain simultaneously.Some of these objectivesare more important than others,but the order and degree of importance3often vary from person to person and from department to department.Different man

15、agers define the same problem in different terms.Whenpresented with a common case,sales managers tend to see salesproblems,production managers see production problems,and so on.The ordering and importance of multiple objectives is also based,in part,on the values of the decision maker.Such values ar

16、e personal;they are hard to understand,even by the individual,because they are sodynamic and complex.In many business situations different peoplesvalues about acceptable degrees of risk and profitability causedisagreement about the correctness of decisions.People often assume that a decision is an i

17、solated phenomenon.Butfrom a systems point of view,problems have multiple causes,anddecisions have intended and unintended consequences.An organizationis an ongoing entity,and a decision made today may have consequencesfar into the future.Thus the skilled manager looks toward the futureconsequences

18、of current decisions.01 B.Secrets of Success at an InterviewThe subject of todays talk is interviews.The key words here are preparation and confidence,which willcarry you far.Do your homework first.Find out all you can about the job you are applying for and theorganization you hope to work for.Many

19、of the employers I interviewed made the same criticism ofcandidates.They have no idea what the day to day work of the jobbrings about.They have vague notions of furthering the companys4prospects5 or of serving the community,but have never taken thetrouble to find out the actual tasks they will be re

20、quired to do.”Do not let this be said of you.It shows an unattractive indifferenceto your employer and to your job.Take the time to put yourself into the interviewers place.He wantssomebody who is hard-working with a pleasant personality and a realinterest in the job.Anything that you find out about

21、 the prospective employer can beused to your advantage during the interview to show that you havebothered to master some facts about the people who you hope to workfor.Write down(and remember)the questions you want to ask theinterviewer(s)so that you are not speechless when they invite yourquestions

22、.Make sure that holidays and pay are not the first things youask about.If all your questions have been answered during the interview,reply:In fact,I did have several questions,but you have alreadyanswered themDo not be afraid to ask for clarification of something that has beensaid during the intervi

23、ew if you want to be sure what was implied,butdo be polite.Just before you go to the interview,look again at the originaladvertisement that you answered,any correspondence from yourprospective employer,photocopies of your letter of application orapplication form and your resume.Then you will remembe

24、r what you said and what they want.This isvery important if you have applied for many jobs in a short time as it iseasy to become confused and give an impression of inefficiency.Make sure you know where and when you have to report for theinterview.Go to the building(but not inside the office)a day o

25、r twobefore,if necessary,to find out how long the journey takes and where5exactly the place is.Aim to arrive five or ten minutes early for the actual interview,thenyou will have a little time in hand and you will not panic if you aredelayed.You start at a disadvantage if you arrive worried and tenmi

26、nutes late.Dress in clean,neat,conservative clothes.Now is NOT the time toexperiment with the punk look or(girls)to wear low-cut dresses withminiskirts.Make sure that your shoes,hands and hair(and teeth)areclean and neat.Have the letter inviting you for an interview ready to show in casethere is any

27、 difficulty in communication.You may find yourself facing one interviewer or a panel.The latteris far more intimidating,but do not let it worry you too much.Theinterviewer will probably have a table in front of him/her.Do not putyour things or arms on it.If you have a bag or a case,put it on the flo

28、or beside your chair.Donot clutch it nervously or,worse still,drop it,spilling everything.Shake hands if the interviewer offers his hand first.There is littlelikelihood that a panel of five wants to go though the process of allshaking hands with you in turn.So you do not be upset if no one offers.Sh

29、ake hands firmly a weak hand suggests a weak personality,and a crushing grip is obviously painful.Do not drop the hand as soonas yours has touched it as this will seem to show you do not like theother person.Speak politely and naturally even if you are feeling shy.Thinkbefore you answer any question

30、s.If you cannot understand,ask:Would you mind rephrasing thequestion,please?The question will then be repeated in different words.If you are not definitely accepted or turned down on the spot,ask:When may I expect to hear the results of this interview?6If you do receive a letter offering you the job

31、,you must reply byletter(keep a photocopy)as soon as possible.Good luck!02-A.Black HolesWhat is a black hole?Well,its difficult to answer this question,since the terms we would normally use to describe a scientificphenomenon are inadequate here.Astronomers and scientists think thata black hole is a

32、region of space(not a thing)into which matter hasfallen and from which nothing can escape?not even light.So we cantsee a black hole.A black hole exerts a strong gravitational pull and yet ithas no matter.It is only space-or so we think.How can this happen?The theory is that some stars explode when t

33、heir density increasesto a particular point;they collapse and sometimes a supernova occurs.From earth,a supernova looks like a very bright light in the sky whichshines even in the daytime.Supernovae were reported by astronomers inthe seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.Some people think that theSta

34、r of Bethlehem could have been a supernova.The collapse of a starmay produce a White Dwarf or a neutron star a star,whose matter isso dense that it continually shrinks by the force of its own gravity.But ifthe star is very large(much bigger than our sun)this process ofshrinking may be so intense tha

35、t a black hole results.Imagine the earthreduced to the size of a marble,but still having the same mass and astronger gravitational pull,and you have some idea of the force of ablack hole.Any matter near the black hole is sucked in.It is impossibleto say what happens inside a black hole.Scientists ha

36、ve called theboundary area around the hole the event horizon.We know nothing7about events which happen once objects pass this boundary.But intheory,matter must behave very differently inside the hole.For example,if a man fell into a black hole,he would think that hereached the center of it very quic

37、kly.However an observer at the eventhorizon would think that the man never reached the center at all.Ourspace and time laws dont seem to apply to objects in the area of a blackhole.Einsteins relativity theory is the only one which can explain suchphenomena.Einstein claimed that matter and energy are

38、 interchangeable,so that there is no absolute time and space.There are no constants atall,and measurements of time and space depend on the position of theobserver.They are relative.We do not yet fully understand theimplications of the relativity theory;but it is interesting that Einsteinstheory prov

39、ided a basis for the idea of black holes before astronomersstarted to find some evidence for their existence.It is only recently thatastronomers have begun specific research into black holes.In August1977,a satellite was launched to gather data about the 10 million blackholes which are thought to be

40、 in the Milky Way.And astronomers areplanning a new observatory to study the individual exploding starsbelieved to be black holes,The most convincing evidence of black holes comes frown researchinto binary star systems.Binary stars,as their name suggests,are twinstars whose position in space affects

41、 each other.In some binary systems,astronomers have shown that there is an invisible companion star,apartner to the one which we can see in the sky.Matter from the onewhich we can see is being pulled towards the companion star.Could thisinvisible star,which exerts such a great force,be a black hole?

42、Astronomers have evidence of a few other stars too,which might haveblack holes as companions.The story of black holes is just beginning.Speculations about them,are endless.There might be a massive black hole at the center of our8galaxy swallowing up stars at a very rapid rate.Mankind may one daymeet

43、 this fate.On the other hand,scientists have suggested that veryadvanced technology could one day make use of the energy of blackholes for mankind.These speculations sound like science fiction.Butthe theory of black holes in space is accepted by many serious scientistsand astronomers.They show us a

44、world which operates in a totallydifferent way from our own and they question our most basic experienceof space and time.02-B.Worlds within WorldsFirst of all let us consider the earth(that is to say,the world)as aplanet revolving round the sun.The earth is one of nine planets whichmove in orbit rou

45、nd the sun.These nine planets,together with the sun,make up what is called our solar system.How this wonderful systemstarted and what kept it working with such wonderful accuracy is largelya mystery but astronomers tell us that it is only one of millions ofsimilar systems in space,and one of the sma

46、llest.The stars which we see glittering in the sky on a dark and cloudlessnight are almost certainly the suns of other solar systems more or lesslike our own,but they are so far away in space that it is unlikely that weshall ever get to know very much about them.About our own solarsystem,however,we

47、are learning more every day.Before the American and Russian astronauts made their thrillingjourneys into outer space it was difficult for us to realise what our earthlooked like from hundreds of thousands of miles away,but thephotographs which the astronauts were able to take show us the earth in9sp

48、ace looking not very different from what the moon looks like when welook at it from the earth.The earth is,however,very different from themoon,which the American astronauts have found to be without life orvegetation,whereas our earth is very much alive in every respect.Themoon,by the way,is called a

49、 satellite because it goes round our earth aswell as round the sun.In other words,it goes round the sun with ourearth.The surface of our earth is covered by masses of land and largerareas of water.Let us consider the water areas first.The total water areais about three times as large as the land are

50、a.The very large separateareas of water are called oceans and the lesser areas are called seas.In most of the oceans and seas some of the water is found to beflowing in a particular direction that is to say,from one part towardsanother part of the ocean or sea concerned.The water which is flowingin