Psychologists take contrastive views of how external rewards, from 1 praise to cold cash, affect motivation and creativity. Behaviorists, 2 research the relation 3 actions and their consequences argue that rewards can improve performance at work and school. Cognitive researchers, who study various aspects of mental life, maintain 4 rewards often destroy creativity 5 encouraging dependence 6 approval and gifts from others.
The latter view has gained many supporters, especially 7 educators. But the careful use of small monetary rewards sparks 8 in grade-school children, suggesting 9 properly presented inducements indeed aid inventiveness, 10 to a study in the June Journal of Personality and Social Psychology.
"If kids know they"re working for a 11 and can focus 12 a relatively challenging task, they show the most creativity", says Robert Eisenberger of the University of Delaware in Newark. "But it"s easy to kill creativity by giving rewards for 13 performance or crea- ting too 14 anticipation for rewards."
A teacher 15 continually draws attention to rewards or who hands 16 high grades for ordinary achievement ends up 17 discouraged students, Eisenberger holds. 18 an example of the latter point, he notes growing efforts at major universities to tighten grading standards and restore failing 19 .
In earlier grades, the use of so-called token economies, in 20 students handle challenging problems and receive performance-based points toward valued rewards, shows promise in raising effort and creativity, the Delaware psychologist claims.

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Opinion polls are now beginning to show that, whoever is to blame and whatever happens from now on, high unemployment is probably here to stay. This means we shall have to make ways of sharing the available employment more widely.
But we need to go further. We must ask some primary questions about the future of work. Would we continue to treat employment as the norm? Would we not rather encourage many other ways for self-respecting people to work? Should we not create conditions in which many of us can work for ourselves, rather than for an employer? Should we not aim to revive the household and the neighborhood, as well as the factory and the office, as centers of production and work?
The industrial age has been the only period of human history in which most people"s work has taken the form of jobs. The industrial age may now be coming to an end, and some of the changes in work patterns which it brought may have to be reversed. This seems a daunting thought. But, in fact, it could provide the prospect of a better future for work. Universal employment, as its history shows, has not meant economic freedom.
Employment became widespread when the enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries made many people depend ent on paid work by depriving them of the use of the land, and thus of the means to provide a living for themselves. Then the factory system destroyed the cottage industries and removed work from people"s homes. Later, as transportation improved, first by rail and then by road, people commuted longer distances to their places of employment until, eventually, many people"s work lost all connection with their home lives and the place in which they lived.
Meanwhile, employment put women at a disadvantage. In pre-industrial time, men and women had shared the productive work of the household and village community. Now it became customary for the husband to go out to paid employment, leaving the unpaid work of the home and family to his wife. Tax and benefit regulations still as some this norm today and restrict more flexible sharing of work roles between the sexes.
It was not only women whose work status suffered. As employment became the dominant form of work, young people and old people were excluded—a problem now, as more teenagers become frustrated at school and more retired people want to live active lives.
All this may now have to change. The time has certainly come to switch some effort and resources away from the idealist goal of creating jobs for all, to the urgent practical task of helping many people to manage without full time jobs.

1. 
Research carried out in the recent opinion polls shows that ______.

A available employment should be restricted to a small percentage of the population

B new jobs must be created in order to rectify high unemployment figures

C available employment must be more widely distributed among the unemployed

D the nowaday high unemployment figures are a truth of life

2. 
The arrival of the industrial age in our historical evolution meant that ______.

A universal employment virtually guaranteed prosperity

B economic freedom came within everyone"s control

C patterns of work were fundamentally changed

D people"s attitudes to work had to be reversed

3. 
The enclosures of the 17th and 18th centuries meant that ______.

A people were no longer legally entitled to own land

B people were driven to look elsewhere for means of supporting themselves

C people were not adequately compensated for the loss of their land

D people were badly paid for the work they managed to find

4. 
The effects of almost universal employment were overwhelming in that ______.

A the household and village community disappeared completely

B men now travelled enormous distances to their places of work

C young and old people became superfluous components of society

D the work status of those not in paid employment suffered

5. 
The article concludes that ______.

A the creation of jobs for all is an impossibility

B our efforts and resources in terms of tackling unemployment are insufficient

C people should begin supporting themselves by learning a practical skill

D we should help those whose jobs are only part-time

Managers spend a great deal of their time in meetings. According to Henry Mintzberg, in his book, The Nature of Managerial Work, managers in large organizations spend only 22% of their time on meetings. So what are the managers doing in those meetings?
There have conventionally been two answers. The first is the academic version: Managers are coordinating and controlling, making decisions, solving problems and planning. This interpretation has been largely discredited because it ignores the social and political forces at work in meetings.
The second version claims that meetings provide little more than strategic sites for corporate gladiators to perform before the organizational emperors. This perspective is far more attractive, and has given rise to a large, and often humorous, body of literature on gamesmanship and posturing in meetings.
It is, of course, true that meeting rooms serve as shop windows for managerial talent, but this is far from the truth as a whole. The suggestion that meetings are actually battle grounds is misleading since the raison d"etre of meetings has far more to do with comfort than conflict. Meetings are actually vital props, both for the participants and the organization as a whole.
For the organization, meetings, represent recording devices. The minutes of meetings catalogue the change of the organization, at all levels, in a more systematic way than do the assorted memos and directives which are scattered about the company. They enshrine the minutes of corporate history, they itemize proposed actions and outcomes in a way which makes one look like the natural culmination of the other.
The whole tenor of the minutes is one of total premeditation and implied continuity. They are a sanitized version of reality which suggests a reassuring level of control over events. What is more, the minutes record the debating of certain issues in an official and democratic forum, so that those not involved in the process can be assured that the decision was not taken lightly.
As Dong Bennett, an administrative and financial manager with Allied Breweries, explains: "Time and effort are seen to have been invested in scrutinizing a certain course of action."
Key individuals are also seen to have put their names behind that particular course of action. The decision can therefore proceed with the full weight of the organization behind it, even if it actually went through "on the nod". At the same time, the burden of responsibility is spread, so that no individual takes the blame.
Thus, the public nature of formal meetings confers a degree of legitimacy on what happens in them. Having a view pass unchallenged at a meeting can be taken to indicate consensus.
However, meetings also serve as an alibi for action, as demonstrated by one manager who explained to his subordinates: "I did what I could to prevent it—I had our objections minutes in two meetings." The proof of conspicuous effort was there in black and white.
By merely attending meetings, managers buttress their status, while non-attendance can carry with it a certain stigma. Whether individual managers intend to make a contribution or not, it is satisfying to be considered one of those whose views matter. Ostracism, for senior managers, is not being invited to meetings.
As one cynic observed, meetings are comfortingly tangible: "Who on the shop floor really believes that managers are working when they tour the works? But assemble them behind closed doors and call it a meeting and everyone will take it for granted that they are hard at work." Managers are being seen to earn their corn.
Meetings provide managers with another form of comfort too—that of formality. Meetings follow a fixed format: Exchanges are ritualized, the participants are probably known in advance, there is often a written agenda, and there is a chance to prepare. Little wonder then, that they come as welcome relief from the upheaval and uncertainty of life outside the meeting room.
Managers can draw further comfort from the realization that their peers are every bit as bemused and fallible as themselves. Meetings provide constant reminders that they share the same problems, preoccupations and anxieties, that they are all in the same boat. And for those who may be slightly adrift, meetings are ideal occasions for gently pulling them round.
As Steve Styles, the process control manager (life services) at Legal & General, puts it: "The mere presence of others in meetings adds weight to teasing or censure and helps you to "round up the strays"." Such gatherings therefore provide solace and direction for the management team—a security blanket for managers.
Meetings do serve a multitude of means as well as ends. They relieve managerial stress and facilitate consensus. For the organization, they have a safety-net-cum-rubber-stamping function without which decisions could not proceed, much less gather momentum. In short, meetings are fundamental to the well-being of managers and organizations alike.

1. 
Why are the minutes of meetings important foe a company?

A They provide a clear history of the firm and its evolution.

B They concentrate scattered memos and directives in One synthetic document.

C They reflect decision-making and control over company life.

D They record any individual disagreements with company decisions.

2. 
Why do managers consider it important to be invited to meetings?

A They can impress their superiors.

B All the important company decisions are made at meetings.

C It makes them feel that their opinions are of importance to others.

D They can share problems and anxieties.

3. 
According to shop-floor workers, where do managers really work hard?

A At their desks.

B In meetings.

C On visits to company production areas.

D On business trips.

4. 
Why are meetings comforting for the managers who participate in them?

A They can show off their talent.

B They make them feel they belong to a team.

C They are a welcome break from daily routine.

D They are a useful alibi for inaction.

5. 
What, according to the writer, are the essential functions of meetings?

A Planning and controlling company activities.

B Reassuring managers and conferring legitimacy on decisions.

C Asserting authority and judging one"s peers.

D Sharing problems and censuring mistakes.

The sources of anti-Christian feeling were many and complex. On the more intangible side, there was a general pique against the unwanted intrusion of the Western countries; there was an understandable tendency to seek an external scapegoat for internal disorders only tangentially attributable to the West and perhaps most important, there was a virile tradition of ethnocentricism, vented long before against Indian Buddhism, which, since the seventeenth century, focused on Western Christianity. Accordingly, even before the missionary movement really got under way in the mid-nineteenth century, it was already at a disadvantage. After 1860, as missionary activity in the hinterland expanded, it quickly became apparent that in addition to the intangibles, numerous tangible grounds for Chinese hostility abounded.
In part, the very presence of the missionary evoked attack. They were, after all, the first foreigners to leave the treaty ports and venture into the interior, and for a long time they were virtually the only foreigners whose quotidian labors carried them to the farthest reaches of the Chinese empire. For many of the indigenous population, therefore, the missionary stood as a uniquely visible symbol against which opposition to foreign intrusion could be vented.
in part, too, the missionary was attacked because the manner in which he made his presence felt after 1860 seemed almost calculated to offend. By indignantly waging battle against the notion that China was the sole fountainhead of civilization and, more particularly, by his assault on many facets of Chinese culture, the missionary directly undermined the cultural hegemony of the gentry class. Also, in countless ways, he posed a threat to the gentry"s traditional monopoly of social leadership. Missionaries, particularly Catholics, frequently assumed the garb of the Confucian literati. They were the only persons at the local level, aside from the gentry, who were permitted to communicate with the authorities as social equals. And they enjoyed an extraterritorial status in the interior that gave them greater immunity to Chinese law than had ever been possessed by the gentry.
Although it was the avowed policy of the Chinese government after 1860 that the new treaties were to be strictly adhered to, in practice implementation depended on the wholehearted accord of provincial authorities. There is abundant evidence that cooperation was dilatory. At the root of this lay the interactive nature of ruler and ruled.
In a severely understaffed bureaucracy that ruled as much by suasion as by might, the official, almost always a stranger in the locality of his service, depended on the active cooperation of the local gentry class. Energetic attempts to implement treaty provisions concerning missionary activities, in direct defiance of gentry sentiment, ran the risk of alienating this class and destroying future effectiveness.

1. 
In a vague way, anti-Christian feeling stemmed from ______.

A the mere presence of invaders

B a generalized unfocused feeling

C the introduction to the West

D none of the above

2. 
The author would agree that ______.

A many problems in China came from internal disorders due to Western influence

B many problems in China came from China itself and were unrelated to the West

C scapegoats perform a necessary function and there should be more of them

D all of the above are true

3. 
Which of the following statements would the author agree?

A Ethnocentricism is a manly tradition.

B The disdain toward Christianity was prefigured by a disdain toward Buddhism.

C Although Christianity was not well received in China, Buddhism was.

D The author would agree with A and C.

4. 
Missionaries ______.

A often dressed the same way as Chinese scholars did

B were free of the legal constraints that bound the local indigenous population

C had greater access to authority than Chinese peasants

D may he described by all of the above

5. 
Provincial authorities ______.

A cooperated fully with the central government"s policy

B were alive to local feelings

C were obliged to determine whether local sentiment tolerated implementation

D may be described by B and C

The final act of a controversy over GM crops that sets America against Europe unfolds today in Geneva. The World Trade Organisation will hear the closing arguments in a case where the public authority of both the European commission and the WTO is at stake.
1
Throughout the European Union there has been extensive concern about GM crops. Among the public"s fears is the potential for long-term harm to the environment—for example through the increased use of herbicides and the gene flow to wild species—and to human health, should new allergens appear. In a wider context of uncertainties about the future of agriculture and of a pervasive lack of confidence in official approaches to the handling of technological risk, consumer rejection of GM has been widespread.
2
The EU"s initial submissions to the WTO dispute panel argued that its approach was necessarily "prudent and precautionary". It emphasised that the US, Canada and Argentina were challenging the right of countries to establish levels of protection from the risks of GM appropriate to their circumstances—and that the risks and uncertainties were complex and serious. The outcome of the case would be of enormous significance worldwide.
3
Significantly, the commission has also shifted its defence in the WTO case in a way that suggests a direct link with this new tactic on GM approvals. The commission is unwilling to publish its recent submissions to the dispute panel (despite requests from Friends of the Earth under freedom of information rules), but it is clear from the US"s response, which has been made public, that the commission now wants the dispute to be ruled "moot" because GM approvals have started. In other words, it has caved in to US pressure and is rearranging the pieces.
4
The GM dispute has been unfolding at a time when the future of the EU is a fraught political question in the UK and elsewhere in Europe. Here, referendums on the currency and EU constitution are looming. A key Euro-sceptic weapon is to whip up fear of a remote unaccountable bureaucracy. When the commission acts, as in this case, in a fashion so strongly at odds with the EU"s citizens and their political representatives, the result can only be further cynicism and hostility.
5
It is not only Europe"s institutions that are being tested by the GM dispute. The already tattered credibility of the WTO itself is also at stake.
On both sides of the Atlantic, the US challenge to Europe"s initial stance has attracted exceptional interest from civil society groups—to the point where several international coalitions have submitted amicus curiae briefs directly to the panel. All these point to the need for the WTO to rely on more enlightened approaches to risk assessment, respecting the different cultural and environmental circumstances of individual countries.
A. The commission is playing a dangerous game. Member states and their populations are divided even on whether the two varieties of GM maize recently approved satisfy the EU"s own regulatory criteria. However, the commission appears to have decided that satisfying the US is more important than respecting the continuing concern among the people and governments of member states. It is a course of action that could have reverberations for the European project as a whole.
B. Insistence on a one-size-fits-all approach tailored to US norms—to which Europe now risks deferring—is undermining the WTO"s authority. If successive crises of the GM kind are to be avoided, the WTO needs to change—and fast.
C. In response to these worries, the EU revised its regulatory framework to include wider issues such as traceability, labelling and impacts on farmland wildlife. This process is still under way, with countries developing national plans on how, if GM crops are grown, to limit contamination of non-GM crops, and how to ascribe liability should harm result.
D. In May 2003 the US, Argentina and Canada, urged on by their industry lobbies, complained to the WTO about Europe"s moratorium on GM approvals, imposed in October 1998. As the biggest producers of GM crops, they felt the European position was damaging their trade interests and argued that it could not be scientifically justified.
E. Last summer, however, while arguments were still being put, the European commission awarded the first marketing approvals since October 1998. The awards—for importing two varieties of GM maize, for food and feed—ended the de facto Europe-wide moratorium, but the commission had to use provisions designed for when the council of ministers is unable to reach agreement. In effect, the bureaucracy stepped in and forced through a particular outcome, despite continuing political disagreement across the EU. This now looks set to become a growing pattern.
F. The new commission, which came into being last November, has a chance to reconsider the matter anew. Beating in mind the broader implications of the case for its own future standing, it should look again at the GM approvals granted by its predecessor.

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Which book...
·places an stress on something that can hardly be learnt at school? 1
·is particularly helpful for those who fear changes? 2
·tells readers it doesn"t follow that those who don"t have good academic achieve-
·ment will not make a fortune? 3
·is not written by a single writer? 4
·tells a very simple story but it contains many messages? 5
·seems not to express ideas straightforward? 6
·is written by the one who also wrote a lot of other works with other writers? 7
·is probably full of facts? 8
·is not only statistical but also interesting? 9
·is not related to finance? 10
A
Change can be a blessing or a curse, depending on your perspective. The message of Who Moved My Cheese? is that all can come to see it as a blessing, if they understand the nature of cheese and the role it plays in their lives. Who Moved My Cheese? is a parable that takes place in a maze. Four beings live in that maze: Sniff and Scurry are mice--nonanalytical and nonjudgmental, they just want cheese and are willing to do whatever it takes to get it; Hem and Haw are "little people", mouse-size humans who have an entirely different relationship with cheese. It"s not just sustenance to them; it"s their self-image. Their lives and belief systems are built around the cheese they"ve found. Most of us reading the story will see the cheese as something related to our livelihoods--our jobs, our career path, the industries we work in--although it can stand for anything, from health to relationships. The point of the story is that we have to be alert to changes in the cheese, and be prepared to go running off in search of new sources of cheese when the cheese we have runs out. Dr. Johnson, co-author of The One Minute Manager and many other books, presents this parable to business, church groups, schools, military orgazinations--any place where you find people who may be nervous about or resist change. And although more analytical and skeptical readers may find the tale a little too simplistic, its beauty is that it sums up all natural history in just 94 pages: Thingy change. They always have changed and always will change. And while there"s no single way to deal with change, the consequence of pretending change won"t happen is always the same: The cheese runs out.
B
Personal-finance author and lecturer Robert Kiyosaki established his unique economic perspective through exposure to a pair of disparate influences: his own highly educated but fiscally unstable father, and the multimillionaire eighth-grade dropout father of his closest friend. The lifelong monetary problems experienced by his "poor dad" (whose weekly paychecks, while respectable, were never quite sufficient to meet family needs) pounded home the counterpoint communicated by his "rich dad" (that "the poor and the middle class work for money", but "the rich have money work for them"). Taking that message to heart, Kiyosaki was able to retire at 47. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, written with consultant and CPA Sharon L. Lechter, lays out the philosophy behind his relationship with money. Although Kiyosaki can take a frustratingly long time to make his points, his book nonetheless compellingly advocates for the type of "financial literacy" that"s never taught in schools. Based on the principle that income-generating assets always provide healthier bottom-line results than even the best of traditional jobs, it explains how those assets might be acquired so that the jobs can eventually be shed.
C
What do you do after you"ve written the NO. 1 best-seller The Millionaire Next Door? Survey 1, 371 more millionaires and write The Millionaire Mind. Dr. Stanley"s extremely timely tone is mixture of entertaining elements. It resembles Regis Philbin"s hit show(and CD-ROM game) Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, only you have to pose real-life questions, instead of quizzing about trivia. Are you gambling, divorce-prone, conspicuously consuming "Income-Statement Affluent" Jacuzzi fool soon to be parted from his or her money, or a frugal, Noyal, resole your shoes and buy your own groceries type like one of Stanley" s "Balance-Sheet Affluent" millionaires? "Cheap dates, "millionaires are 4.9 times likelier to play with their grandkids than shop at Brooks Brothers. "If you asked the average American what it takes to be a millionaire," he writes, "they"d probably quoted a number of predictable factors: inheritance, luck, stock market investments... Topping his list would be a high IQ, high SAT scores and gradepoint average, along with attendance at a top college." No way, says Stanley, backing it up with data he compiled with help from the University of Georgia and Harvard geodemographer Jon Robbin. Robbin may wish he"d majored in socializing at LSU, instead, because the numbers show the average millionaire had a lowly 2.92 GPA, SAT scores between 1100 and 1190, and teachers who told them they were mediocre students but personable people. "Discipline 101 and Tenacity 102" made them wealth. Stanley got straight C"s in English and writing, but he had money-minded drive. He urges you to pattern your life according to Yale professor Robert Sternberg"s Successful Intelligence, because Stanley"s statistics bear out Sternberg"s theories on what makes minds succeed--and it is not IQ.
Besides offering insights into millionaires" pinchpenny ways, pleasing quips("big brain, no bucks" ), and 46 statistical charts with catchy titles, Stanley" s book booms with human-potential pep talk and bristles with anecdotes--for example, about a bus driver who made $ 3 million, a doctor(reporting that his training gave him zero people skills)who lost $ 1.5 million, and a loser scholar in the bottom 10 percent on six GRE tests who grew up to be Martin Luther King Jr. Read it and you"ll feel like a million bucks.

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With the, widespread computers, there is an increase in the number of people making use of Internet. Some people believe that Internet will bring great benefits to people while others think Internet may cause depression.
Write an article about it to clarify your own points of view towards this issue.
You should write no less than 250 words.