商务英语高级真题集听力原文

My name is Jack Lester and I’m here to talk about the company I originally founded in nineteen seventy-two, Hinde Instruments. Today, the company, with factories in Nevada and Texas and its headquarters in California, is one of the world’s largest manufacturers of telescopes. Sales have grown at a rate of thirty-six per cent for the last ten years and in two thousand and two, reached one hundred and twenty-six million dollars. But this hasn’t always been the case. In fact, in nineteen ninety-one, the threat of bankruptcy was hanging over the company.

I’ve always been an amateur astronomer and started building my own telescopes when I was ten. After working as an engineer at WAC, it seemed quite natural to start my own telescope company, Hinde Instruments. To start with, the company imported telescopes and sold them by mail order, but by nineteen seventy-seven, the company was making its own telescopes. Almost overnight, we took a huge portion of the market, amateur astronomers being keen to buy our telescopes because of the features they offered. By nineteen eighty-three, sales reached two million dollars.

In nineteen eighty-six, I sold the company for six point five million dollars to the Amtex Group, staying on as President. From the start, I disagreed with the new owners, and things did not go well. Then the sky fell in. In February nineteen ninety- one, the bank called in the company’s loans. There was no cash at the time. In fact, the company’s balance sheet gave a net worth of minus two point five million dollars for nineteen ninety-one, the company having lost that much the previous year on sales of eleven point five million dollars.

I made a personal loan to the company of sixty- five thousand dollars to stave off the bank for one week so I could start to negotiate with three senior managers at Hinde interested in buying the company. It worked, and Amtex agreed to sell us one hundred per cent of the company’s stock, along with all its liabilities, for one thousand dollars. As the key investor, I purchased fifty-one per cent of the company for five hundred and ten dollars.

剑桥商务英语高级真题集听力原文2

This is the Business English Certificate Higher 4, Listening Test 2

Part One. Questions 1 to 12

You will hear a speaker giving a group of managers advice on how to run a project.

As you listen, for questions 1 to 12, complete the notes, using up to three words or a number.

After you have listened once, replay the recording.

You now have 45 seconds to read through the notes.

[pause]

Now listen, and complete the notes.

[pause]

Woman: Um, OK, er, can I have your attention, please? Thanks. Now, er, people ask me ‘how do I know if a project is good and, if so, how do I then keep it on track?’ Well, there are no magic formulas, but I do have a few tips for choosing and managing projects that I’d like to share with you today.

First of all, choose carefully! Your project needs to be large enough to be worthwhile and one in which your basic skills will enable you to succeed. This means sifting through proposals very carefully, and so it’s essential that you allocate enough hours to the selection process. When you’ve done that, you need to work out how long the project will take. It’s pretty tough to maintain a project’s freshness and flexibility, so you don’t want it running on too long - therefore, you need to set a sensible, manageable timescale.

When you start, you need to think about how your project will be better than the last one, and this means you should constantly keep the customer’s circumstances in mind and think about what they want. Employees will be enthusiastic about the project if you emphasise how important it is. So you should aim to convince them of how crucial teamwork is, and if you can do that, you’re more likely to get the best results. Also, good managers have a constantly updated picture of the project performance, and to achieve this, you need to be efficient at record-keeping.

As the project gets going, you should always keep employees informed and involved in what’s going on, so that they understand any constraints. At the same time, this will help them to appreciate the progress being made. And try meeting across boundaries. In well-managed projects, you’ll find that any meetings that are held are not exclusive to the project workers, but include people from different disciplines who work in the same organisation. These ‘outsiders’ may come up with fresh approaches, which can speed up the whole project.

Now, encountering problems is almost inevitable; you need to recognise that and deal with them. To do this successfully, you need to share information about anything which is not going well. This will allow you to make decisions quickly and minimise any big changes. These may come as a result of the customer altering their requirements. It’s vital to be able to adjust to these developments, so make an attempt to be as flexible as you can in your dealings with them.

The prospect of success rises when those involved are consciously trying to do better than any other businesses or even past practices within their own company, so it’s important to breed competitiveness - the more the better if you want to get the best result.

And finally, don’t forget that companies that appear to be doing well all the time owe their success, in part, to a willingness to diversify when the market moves or alters, or as they recognise where they can make a better contribution. And, when you’re contemplating a risky project, make sure you employ people who have several skills. This means they could be transferred if the original project doesn’t succeed.

Well, er, I hope that’s helped. Urn, now, if anybody has any questions...

剑桥商务英语高级真题集听力原文3

This is the Business English Certificate Higher 4, Listening Test 3.

Part One. Questions 1 to 12

You will hear an adviser giving a talk to a group of purchasing managers about how to make good use of visits to trade fairs.

As you listen, for questions 1 to 12, complete the notes using up to three words or a number.

After you have listened once, replay the recording.

You now have 45 seconds to read through the questions.

[pause]

Now listen, and complete the notes

[pause]

Woman: Good afternoon. My short talk today is about trade fairs: not how to exhibit at them, but how to take best advantage of being a customer - a visitor to the fair. How can you make your visit really cost- and time-efficient?

Firstly, an issue which is often overlooked is pre-exhibition preparation. It may be that the fair won’t be helpful, so find out as much as you can before you consider booking. As soon as you know it’s taking place, send off for the publicity folder, for which there is no charge. It contains information which can save you time and money. One particular thing I always advise clients to do is to look over the exhibitor list with great care and talk to line managers and colleagues about it. This will give you the best insight into whether this particular fair is right for your company. If it is, sign up for it.

Then, if you think the fair is for you, do take time to look into hotel arrangements. My advice is that you should try to choose a hotel yourself from the internet rather than selecting one from the trade fair’s recommended list. Trade fairs and exhibitions tend to use large chains because they’re easier to deal with, rather than ones with the most suitable facilities.

In due course, you will receive an enormous amount of trade-fair information - a lot of it you can throw away immediately. But not everything - the hand-outs to hang onto are the finalised list of visitors, and it’s also worth keeping the floor plan. Organisers seldom remember to supply extra copies, and you’ll be stuck if you don’t have one.

Then take a little care with your packing - don’t forget to take a large note-pad (fairs tend to supply tiny ones these days, and your jottings can get lost on small scraps of paper) and, whatever you do, don’t forget to take a good supply of business cards. There’s surely nothing more embarrassing than not being able to produce one on request. One other thing that I pack is a small pile of my own company brochures - not too many, they’d be too heavy - but to give out to selected personnel. Obviously you’re there with a view to buying, but an exchange of information helps everyone.

So now you’ve arrived and you’re standing in the exhibition hall with its bewildering array of people and exhibits. Where do you start? Well, my advice is to ignore the people at reception and go straight to the press office. They’ll be a good source of information about the really important events of the day and what the interesting new products and services are. After this, it’s worth taking advantage of what’s sometimes called ‘the Fast-Track Service’. It can be costly, but it is personalised and independent - an adviser discusses your company profile and directs you to suitable stands.

剑桥商务英语高级真题集听力原文4

Part One. Questions 1 to 12.

You will hear the Chief Executive of a steel company talking to shareholders about the company’s performance over the last year.

As you listen, for questions 1 to 12, complete the notes using up to three words or a number.

After you have listened once, replay the recording.

You now have 45 seconds to read through the notes.

[pause]

Now listen, and complete the notes.

[pause]

Woman: Ladies and gentlemen, it has been, in general, a good year for the company. Although overall profits are down compared with last year, they are, I am pleased to be able to announce, higher than we expected at this time last year: this year’s figure is three hundred and fifty-four million pounds compared with last year’s figure of four hundred and fifty-one million pounds. The Board is recommending a final dividend of seven pence per share, which makes a total dividend for the year of ten p per share, identical to last year.

The profit is mainly thanks to the company’s UK plants, which again put in very strong performances, setting a significant number of production records.

Deliveries to markets outside Europe were twelve per cent up on the previous year, largely due to economic conditions outside our control. Operating costs, we are pleased to report, were two per cent lower than in the previous year, due mainly to reduced employment costs, as the workforce was cut from fifty-two thousand to fifty thousand.

Now to the less good news: there have been difficulties with our export trade over the last year. The main culprit here has been the strong pound, which has reduced profits by approximately five hundred million pounds. Secondly, S. B. Steel, our fifty-one-per-cent-owned German stainless-steel subsidiary, continued to be badly affected by depressed selling prices. Then Huntingdon’s, our twenty-five-per-cent-owned joint venture in the USA, encountered technical problems during the year, which mean that it is unlikely to resume operating at capacity again until late this year.

Now, faced with these problems, your Board has taken a number of measures, which we believe will be effective within a short time-frame: firstly, we have established a target for all our businesses of achieving fifteen-per-cent return on assets. We are streamlining the organisation structures to make them flatter and more responsive to changing needs.

We have also established a team to look at our working practices with the aim of improving productivity. We are creating a considerably more reliable supplier base; and lastly, we are using information technology more creatively.

To turn now to the general outlook in the UK and abroad: the situation is complex. The UK economy is forecast to slow down next year. For the economy as a whole, a recession is not expected but, for the manufacturing sectors, there are predictions of, shall we say, unfavourable conditions.

Globally, however, demand for steel may well strengthen over the next year, because of improving business confidence. In the US, for instance, analysts think that consumer spending will be maintained at high levels. Although we can never be one-hundred-per-cent sure how the markets will develop, we do feel confident that the Middle East offers profitable prospects and we expect some growth opportunities in steel or steel-related businesses in this region.

[pause]

Now listen to the recording again.

[pause]

That is the end of Part One. You now have 20 seconds to check your answers.

[pause]

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