Speaking

What do you think is the most important activity that helps young children to
develop a sense of responsibility? Use specific examples and details in your
response.

Some people like to listen to music on headphones while they go from one place to
another. Others prefer going from place to place in silence. Which do you prefer?
Explain why.

1: Hey, did you see this letter?

2: Yea, I really hope the university listens to her.

1: Oh, yea?

2: Yea. Well, I think it’d work the way she’s hoping, which would be great because
it’s really a problem on campus right now. It’s a big campus. The academic buildings
are far away from the dorms, so lots of people drive to get around and the roads get
really busy.

1: Hey, but don’t you drive pretty often?

2: Yea, that’s true. I guess I’m part of the problem. The traffic is so bad it’s actually
pretty stressful, but right now I don’t have a better option.
1: So you’d try it?

2: Yea and if lots of people did, the traffic would be way better. Plus, like the letter
says…

1: What?

2: Well, I’m pretty busy with my classes and assignments and part-time job, so I
don’t have enough time to go to the gym or go jogging or anything.

1: Right.
2: But if I use the program like this then it would already be apart of my day. It would
just happen while I was going to and from classes. I wouldn’t have to set aside extra
time for it.

1: Yea, that would be good. You’re right.

Ok, so this has been observed in a certain type of plant: the campion. Plant scientists
have always known that metals like lead, zinc, and copper are often toxic to many
kinds of plants including the campion. If the soil where campion plants are growing
becomes contaminated with metal, say near a mine where metal is being removed
from deep below the ground and becomes mixed in with the soil, then campion
plants can’t typically grow there anymore, but scientists studying these plants found
some of them growing in soil contaminated with metal; copper to be specific. This
was surprising since the campion can’t normally grow in soil contaminated with
metal and what’s more interesting, scientists went ahead and tried to plant some
seeds from the plants that had been growing in the contaminated soil and they
found that those seeds were also able to germinate and grow into new campion
plants even though the soil had copper in it, but when scientists took some regular
campion that hadn’t been growing in contaminated soil and planted seeds from
those regular plants in contaminated soil, the seeds died. They weren’t able to grow
into new plants.

1: Hey Maggie! How’s it going?

2: Not bad, but you know, one of my roommates moved out.

1: Oh, you live in an apartment with some friends, right?

2: Yea, there were four of us, but one left. She decided she’d rather live in a dorm, so
we’re looking for a new roommate to take her place.
1: Cool! Do you have anyone in mind?

2: Yea, there are a few people who’ve seen the room and are interested, so they’re
coming over tonight one at a time to meet and chat with me and my other
roommates, so we can make a decision about who we want to live with us. Our
apartment is pretty small, so we want to make sure we find someone we can all live
and get along with.

1: Oh, that’s smart.

2: Yea, but the thing is that some of my classmates from my geology class are
forming a study group to go over materials for class together. I just got an email from
them and they’re going to have the first meeting tonight at the library.

1: And you’d like to go?

2: I would. I’m a bit confused about the material we’re covering now and I want to
be prepared for tomorrow’s class, but if I go to the study group meeting I won’t be
able to help pick the new roommate.

1: So what are you going to do?

2: Not sure. I guess I could just trust my friend’s judgment and hope they pick a good
roommate. I don’t know how I feel about living with someone if I haven’t met them
though.

1: Makes sense. Is the study group that important?

2: Well, I could just skip it and look over the material on my own, but geology isn’t
my best subject and I could really use help preparing for class. I think it’d be useful.

So, of course, companies are always looking for ways to improve their work
processes, so they can be more successful and one way that companies may try to
improve is to use employee standardization meaning all their employees follow
certain standards, certain rules or procedures, so everything is done the same way
by every employee. Standardization has some advantages. All employees know what
they’re expected to do, which can help a company be more efficient, but it also has
some drawbacks. For one thing, standardization can be bad for employee’s creativity.
It’s intended to improve efficiency. However, it can limit employee’s ability to be
creative, which could actually lower overall job performance. If some employees
have a creative working style and they’re not allowed to use it because they have to
perform their job the same way everyone else does, they may not be able to do as
well. For example, some stores have sales people follow a script. That is, they say the
same thing to every customer and if a sales person in lets say a clothing store
normally uses humor and jokes to convince customers to buy clothes, but now he
has to follow a script, this sales person might actually be less effective in his job;
might not sell as much clothing as before. Standardization can also involve additional
costs for companies. Standardization tends to involve extra spending. In order to
develop standards or rules and then communicate them to all employees and make
sure employees are trained to follow them and companies have to pay employees
for the time it takes them to learn those procedures. So lets go back to the clothing
store. If the store wants its sales people to follow standards by using a specific script
when they talk to customers, managers will first need to spend time developing the
script and then all the sales people will need to spend time learning it. The time it
takes to do those things will result in additional costs for the clothing store.