2006年下半年商务英语BEC中级阅读指导连载6

PART TWO
Questions 8-12
 Read this text on Dave’s dream.
 Choose the best sentence from the Opposite page 68 to fill each of the gaps.

For each gap 8-12, mark one letter A - I on your Answer Sheet.
 Do not mark any letter twice.

Icon Acoustics: Bypassing Tradition
Like most entrepreneurs, Dave Fokos dreams a lot. He imagines customers eagerly phoning Icon Acoustics in Billerica, Massachusetts, to order his latest, custom-made stereo peakers ____example____

Like most entrepreneurs, Dave has taken a long time to develop his dream. ____(8)____ Dave discovered that he had a strong interest in studio engineering, He took independent-study courses in this area and by graduation had designed and built a pair of marketable stereo speakers. Following graduation, Dave pursued his interest in audio engineering. He landed a job as a loudspeaker designer with Conrad-Johnson, a high-end audio-equipment manufacturer headquarters in Fairfax, Virginia ____(9)____

Dave identified a market niche that he felt other speaker firms had overlooked ____(10)____These affluent, well-educated customers are genuinely obsessed with their stereo equipment. ‘They’d rather buy a new set of speakers than eat,’ Dave observes.

Dave faced one major problem---how to distribute Icon’s products. He had learned from experience at Conrad-Johnson that most manufacturers distribute their equipment primarily through stereo dealers. Dave did not hold a high opinion of most such dealers; he felt that they too often played hardball with manufacturers, forcing them to accept thin margins. ____(11)____This kept those firms that offered more customized products from gaining access to the market. Perhaps most disturbing, Dave felt that the established dealers often sold not what was best for customers, but whatever they had in inventory that month.

Dave dreamed of offering high-end stereo loudspeakers directly to the audio-obsessed, bypassing the established dealer network. ____(12)____ “My vision for the future is one where all manufacturers sell their products directly to end user. In this way, even the audiophiles in Dead Horse, Alaska, can have access to all that the audio-manufacturing community has to offer.”

Example: I.
A. At the age of 28, Dave set out to turn his dreams into reality.
B. Furthermore, the dealers concentrated on only a handful of well-known producers
C. Who provided mass-produced models.
D. The firms tend to plow their money in to developing their products and have little left over to market them.
E. Within four years, Dave had designed 13 speaker models and decided to start his own company.
F. To serve the audio-addicts segment, Dave offers only the highest-quality speakers.
G. It all began while majoring in electrical engineering at Cornell.
By going directly to the customers, Dave could avoid the dealer markups and offer top-quality products and service at reasonable price.
H. This niche consisted of “audio-addicts”----people who love to listen to music and appreciate first-rate stereo equipment.
I. He sees sales climbing , cash flowing, and hundreds of happy workers
Striving to produce top-quality products that delight Icon’s customers.

答案：Questions 8 - 12: F, D, H, B, G

试题 9

PART TWO
Questions 8 - 12
 Read this advertisement about business book reviews.
 Choose the best sentence from the opposite page to fill each of the gaps.
 For each gap 8 - 12, mark one letter A - I on your Answer Sheet.
 Do not mark any letter twice.

Special Introductory Offer!
Gain a working knowledge of the top
Business books – rapidly and easily
Now you can read the best business books - in just 15 minutes each!
It’s the executive dilemma of the Nineties: information overload. ____(example).____ There should be a simpler way to keep track of the latest ideas. And there is.
A systematic solution:
Suppose you had an assistant who screened and selected only the quality books for you. ____ (8)____ . So you could obtain a working knowledge of the book’s contents in a fraction of the time. Now you can have that assistant with Executive Book Summaries. Every month, you receive quick-reading, time-saving summaries of the best new business books. ____(9)____ . This means that rather than taking five to ten hours to read, it takes just 15 minutes!
How you’ll benefit.
Executive Book Summaries, designed for the busy executive, are a solution to the growing management problem of too much to read and too little lime to do it.
 Improve your business confidence.
You gain a real understanding of the key points of the best new business books.
 Learn more, remember more.
We’ve taken account of extensive research into the memory functions of the human brain ____(10)____ .
 Get ideas you can use.
____(11)____ . In a summary, these ideas are more accessible and ‘actionable’.
 Cut hundreds of hours off your reading load.
How often have you opened a new book with great expectations - only to find it a huge disappointment? ____(12)____
The books we summarise cover just about every subject you need to know, from management techniques to guidance on your career.

A) These introductory texts are the most important books and using them can pay big dividends.
B) Discover practical tips and techniques you can apply without delay.
C) In order to avoid this problem, we select for you only the truly worthwhile titles and reject the rest.
D) According to studies published in psychology journals, you retain the content of a summary better than a book.
E) He or she would take the most important ideas from each one, and compile them into a neat executive summary.
F) With the breadth and depth of knowledge gained from books, it is less likely that you’ll be caught off guard.
G) Each contains all the key points in the original book, but instead of 200 to 500 pages there are only eight pages.
H) There’s a sample of the superb business titles that we summarise for you.
I) With all the reading you have to do in the normal course of your work, you find it impossible to keep up with all the new business books.

答案：8.E 9.G 10.D 11.B 12.C