School leavers are entering the workplace lacking basic skills such as punctuality, manners and the ability to hold conversations, according to employers.
A survey of business leaders found that many believed teenagers struggled to adapt to the most basic entry level jobs because of an inability to perform simple tasks.
According to the study by Barclays(one of the main banks in Britain), more than half of the companies (fifty-five percent) claimed school leavers struggled to manage conversations properly when asked to call customers or suppliers.
More than four-in-ten of those quizzed - forty -three percent - said young people failed to properly understand how long to take for breaks or how often to take them.
The same proportion also warned that teenagers struggled to appreciate when it was inappropriate to use their mobile phone in the workplace.
In total, one -in - five businesses said young people were “not ready” for entry level jobs-low-ranking roles that do not require any previous experience.
The conclusions in a study by Barclays follow a report from the All-Party Parliamentary Group on Social Mobility this month that said schools needed to place a greater emphasis on the “soft skills” that children require in the work place such as toughness, empathy and self-control.
The report recommended giving all pupils a school leaving certificate - in addition to straight exam grades - to mark out their achievements in extra-curricular activities and work experience placements where children are most likely to hone their non-academic skills.
As part of the Barclays study, researchers interviewed 500 personnel chiefs from small and medium-sized businesses about skill levels displayed by school leavers.
Some eleven percent said young people struggled to dress properly or present themselves in the workplace while nine percent said they had problems writing an email.
Kirstie Mackey, head of Barclays LifeSkills, a programme established to help prepare secondary school children for the workplace, said: “What’s missed in careers education has become ever more noticeable.
“Not only are young people struggling to gain the confidence to carry out tasks, but businesses don’t believe they have the skills for entry level roles. This problem needs to be addressed.
1. A school leaving certificate is suggested to ________.| A．show students’ soft skills |
| B．show students’ exam grades |
| C．honor students’ good social skills |
| D．encourage students’ personal achievement |
| A．Small businesses demand lower skill level. |
| B．It was unnecessary to learn how to write emails |
| C．Young employees should be careful about their clothing. |
| D．It was proper to exchange presents with other workers. |
| A．career education | B．businesses’ demand |
| C．young people’s attitude | D．the Barclays LifeSkills program |
| A．Teenagers work hard to perform simple tasks |
| B．School Leavers lack skills needed in workplace |
| C．Employers help students improve basic skills |
| D．Businesses offer more basic entry level job |
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【推荐1】It is fashionable today to criticize Big Business, and there is one issue on which the many critics agree: CEO pay. We hear that CEOs are paid too much (or too much relative to workers) , or that they control others’ pay, or that their pay is insufficiently related to positive outcomes. But the more likely truth is CEO pay is largely caused by intense competition.
It is true that CEO pay has gone up---top ones may make 300 times the pay of typical workers on average, and since the mid-1970s, CEO pay for large publicly traded American corporations has, by varying estimates, gone up by about 500%. The typical CEO of a top American corporation-from the 350 largest such companies-now makes about $18.9 million a year.
While individual cases of overpayment definitely exist, in general, the determinants of CEO pay are not so mysterious and not so trapped in corruption (腐败). In fact, overall CEO compensation for the top companies rises pretty much in line with the value of those companies on the stock market.
The best model for understanding the growth of CEO pay, though, is that of limited CEO talent in a world where business opportunities for the top firms are growing rapidly. The efforts of Americans highest-earning 1 % have been one of the more dynamic elements of the global economy.
It’s not popular to say, but one reason their pay has gone up so much is that CEOs really have upped their game relative to many other workers in the U. S. economy.
Today’s CEO, at least for major American firms, must have many more skills than simply being able to “run the company.” CEOs must have a good sense of financial markets and maybe even how the company should trade in them. They also need better public relations skills than their predecessors, as the costs of even a minor slipup can cause a bad consequence. Then there’s the fact that large American companies are much more globalized than ever before, with supply chains spread across a larger number of countries. To lead in that system requires knowledge that is fairly incredible.
There is yet another trend: virtually all major American companies are becoming tech companies, one way or another. An agribusiness company, for instance, may focus on R&D in highly IT- intensive areas such as genome sequencing (基因组序列). Similarly, it is hard to do a good job running the Walt Disney Company just by picking good movie scripts and courting stars ； you also need to build a firm capable of creating significant CGI (计算机生成图像) products for cartoon movies at the highest levels of technical sophistication and with many frontier innovations along the way.
On top of all of this, major CEOs still have to do the job they have always done- which includes motivating employees, serving as an internal role model, helping to define and extend a corporate culture, understanding the internal accounting, and presenting budgets and business plans to the board. Good CEOs are some of the world’s most powerful creators and have some of the very deepest skills of understanding.
1. Which of the following has contributed to CEO pay rise?| A．The growth in the number of cooperation |
| B．The general pay rise with a better economy |
| C．Increased business opportunities for top firms |
| D．Close cooperation among leading economics |
| A．foster a stronger sense of teamwork |
| B．finance more research and development |
| C．establish closer ties with tech companies |
| D．operate more globalized companies |
| A．operation | B．success |
| C．mistake | D．promotion |
| A．CEOs Are Not Overpaid | B．CEO Pay: Past and Present |
| C．CEOs’ Challenges of Today | D．CEO Traits: Not Easy to Define |
【推荐2】The “junk DNA” may be useful in developing future cancer treatments, according to a new report in the journal Nature Immunology. The discovery was led by Wilmot Cancer Institute investigators and University of Rochester biologists Vera Gorbunova, Ph.D., and Andrei Seluanov, Ph.D..
The DNA elements under research are known as retrotransposons (逆转录转座子). The bad side of them is that if left to run amok, they can give rise to tumors (肿瘤). Researchers, however, discovered that if they are kept in the correct balance and controlled properly, retrotransposons can cause the immune system to destroy cancer.
Much of the Gorbunova and Seluanov lab’s work involves the blind mole rat (鼹鼠), which lives underground and seems unaffected by cancer. In the latest scientific paper, researchers found that the anti-cancer approaches behind retrotransposons are present in human cells, and planned to use the information to find new ways to stop cancer cell growth.
They focus on rats because they are genetically similar to humans and have a diverse range of lifespans (寿命). Gorbunova and Seluanov previously discovered that blind mole rats prevent cancer by activating “concerted cell death,” but the approaches at play were a mystery. Now, the researchers believe retrotransposons may be one key piece to the puzzle. Why? Because they discovered that blind mole rats have evolved to retrotransposons to their advantage to kill cancer cells.
At first the researchers believed the approaches behind retrotransposons were unique to blind mole rats. However, they found the same approaches at work in human tissue cells. The researchers still need to figure out exactly how blind mole rats have achieved the balance between activating and controlling retrotransposons. For now, though, they will focus on the power of selfish genetic elements to be, well, not so selfish.
1. What is one of reasons for rats to be chosen as study topic?| A．They are unaffected by cancer. | B．They have overlong lifespans. |
| C．Their genes are alike to humans. | D．Their retrotransposons are unique. |
| A．Unbelievably. | B．Unreasonably. |
| C．Insensitively. | D．Independently. |
| A．It developed possible treatments for cancer. |
| B．It transplanted retrotransposons into human. |
| C．It succeeded in balancing retrotransposons. |
| D．It removed junk genes from rats effectively. |
| A．Blind Mole Rats Fight against Cancer |
| B．“Junk DNA” is a Double-Edged Sword |
| C．Blind Mole Rats: Close Friends of Humanity |
| D．Selfish Genetic Elements Have Great Power |
【推荐3】Dolphins are much more intelligent than humans previously thought. Scientists have recently discovered that bottle-nosed dolphins can recognise themselves in the mirror—much like you and I can!
When you see a zit (青春痘) on your face, what do you do? Go to the mirror time and again, and wonder what it is still doing there. Well, this is exactly what two male bottle-nosed dolphins, Presley and Tab, do as well. So, these lovable animals are not just sailors, friends, but they are also aware of their bodies-almost like humans!
Presley and Tab stay in a pool with reflective glass walls in the New York Aquarium. Researchers noticed that when Presley and Tab saw their own reflections, unlike most other animals, they did not seem to think that they were looking at another dolphin. Dolphins are very social creatures, and are friendly with humans as well as their own kind. This got the researchers thinking. Perhaps the dolphins recognised their own images? So they decided to find it out.
Using special ink, they made marks on different parts of the dolphins’ bodies, changing the place every week. Every time their bodies were marked, the dolphins made more trips to the mirror than usual. If the ink mark was on their belly (腹部), they would expose their belly to the mirror and look at it for a long time. Imagine the dolphins wondering—“Now where did that mark come from? Is it dangerous? I wonder how long it’s going to stay.”
Till now, only the great apes have displayed this quality of recognising their images in the mirror. All other animals have failed this test. The researchers feel that these findings may increase human sensitivity towards dolphins, which are being hunted and killed in great numbers. Dolphin fins (鳍) are considered as deliciousness in several South-East Asian countries.
1. What is the scientists’ recent finding about dolphins?| A．Dolphins are social creatures friendly with humans. |
| B．Dolphins are not so intelligent as humans. |
| C．Dolphins can make correct use of mirror. |
| D．Dolphins have zits just like humans. |
| A．The competitors of them. | B．Their own reflections. |
| C．Their natural enemies. | D．Others of their kind. |
| A．To look for their partners. |
| B．To show their belly. |
| C．To watch their own beauty. |
| D．To concern for their safety. |
| A．Dolphins—sailors’ friends. |
| B．Dolphins, reaction to the mirror. |
| C．Dolphins are smarter than before. |
| D．Dolphins are cleverer than humans. |
【推荐1】If you had to pick one, who do you think is greater in terms of their contributions to the Western world: British physicist Isaac Newton or Greek philosopher Aristotle?
Chances are that you’d find it hard to make a decision, at least right away.
But somehow, when choosing a major in college, the line between the two areas of study couldn’t be clearer. Science majors － the likes of technology, engineering, math － are considered to be more practical choices because of the wealth of opportunities, while those who choose a liberal arts (文科) major － language, music, philosophy － may have more difficulty finding a job.
But perhaps we should look at liberal arts studies in another way to understand its value. In the BBC’s documentary Civilizations, for example, presenters (主持人) take us to 31 countries on six continents to appreciate human creativity in its tangible(有形的) form, such as Angkor Wat (吴哥窟) in Cambodia, and the Suleymaniye mosque (苏莱曼清真寺) in Turkey.
To Simon Schama, one of the presenters, human civilization isn’t just about technological inventions or meeting basic needs, but about creating things for the purpose of leaving a person’s “mark of their existence for future humans to witness and admire”.
By comparing science and liberal arts, we’re drawing “an artificial (人为的) line” between the two, wrote Loretta Jackson-Hayes, an associate professor of chemistry at Rhodes College in Memphis, US, on the Washington Post website. And to some of the greatest innovators (革新者) in history, this line never existed in the first place.
Leonardo da Vinci, for example, was just as successful a scientist as he was a painter. He was so interested in biology and anatomy (解剖学) that he drew the famous Vitruvian Man, part of his study of the proportions (比例) of the human body. Then there’s Steve Jobs, who, despite being an engineer, was also an artist. He summarized his view on the relationship between science and the arts in 2011: “It’s in Apple’s DNA that technology alone is not enough － it’s technology married with liberal arts, married with the humanities, that yields (提供) us the result that makes our heart sing.”
1. What advantage are science majors believed to have over liberal arts majors?| A．More opportunities for practice. |
| B．Better job prospects. |
| C．More choices to satisfy students’ interests. |
| D．Greater chance for making contributions to society. |
| A．Finding creativity in what ancestors have created. |
| B．Creating a tangible heritage for future generations. |
| C．Getting inspiration for technological inventions. |
| D．Drawing people’s attention to human history. |
| A．Science and liberal arts are divided in a logical way. |
| B．Science and liberal arts are not totally unrelated to each other. |
| C．It makes sense to separate science from liberal arts. |
| D．There is no real difference between science and liberal arts. |
| A．Great innovators must know both science and liberal arts. |
| B．Science plays an important role in advancing liberal arts. |
| C．Liberal arts studies are essential to inventing new things. |
| D．People can achieve great things through both science and liberal arts. |
| A．Contributions to the Western world |
| B．The greatest innovators (革新者) in history |
| C．Liberal arts’ hidden value |
| D．Technological inventions |
【推荐2】Psychological science is full of interesting topics, many of which tell a coherent picture of human nature, but some of which create seemingly contradictory stories. A case in point is the tricky, and misunderstood, overlap between strength-based science and the research on narcissism (自恋).
There is now convincing evidence to show that narcissism is on the rise, especially in our youth. Some researchers say that about 25% of young people showing symptoms of narcissism. The inflated ego of Generation Me is reflected in reality TV, celebrity worship, and out-of-control consumerism.
We are correct to be concerned about this phenomenon, but our fear that all kids are potential narcissists has caused an unhelpful counter-reaction to approaches that seek to make our children and teens feel good about themselves.
In my own research on strength-based parenting, it is common for people to wrongly think this approach to be the cause of narcissism. Their argument seems to be that a child who knows their strengths will automatically view themselves as better than everyone else. It is argued that the self-assurance that comes with identifying and using their positive qualities will make a child selfish and uncaring. Genuine confidence about one’s strengths is categorized as over-confidence; desirable self-knowledge is branded as excessive self-admiration.
Why does this occur? It’s partly because more is known about narcissism than strengths. While strengths psychology has largely stayed within the limit of academic journals, research on narcissism has made its way into the mass media and our daily life. The New York Times noted that narcissism is a favored topic and that people everywhere are diagnosing others with it.
The fear that a strength-based approach will cause narcissism also occurs because of our binary (非此即彼) thinking. We mistakenly believe that one cannot be both confident and humble. We focus on Donald Trump and Kim Kardashian rather than Mahatma Gandhi and Mother Teresa. Without confidence in their strengths, Gandhi and Mother Teresa couldn’t have achieved so much, and yet modesty and selflessness are their qualities.
When we assume that strength-focus is the same as a self-focus, we fail to make the idea clear that people who know their strengths are, actually, more likely to be pro-social and ready to help others.
It’s easy to conclude that every young person is at risk of becoming a narcissist but I’d like to stand up for the thousands of young kids I have worked with who are caring, thoughtful and humble—even when they use their strengths.
1. Why are teenagers’ strengths often considered as narcissism according to Paragraph 5?| A．There is a lack of narcissism in our common sense. |
| B．The general public has less access to strengths psychology. |
| C．Many people are diagnosed with narcissism by doctors. |
| D．Academic journals report more on narcissism. |
| A．To say all kids are potential narcissists is overstating (夸大) the case. |
| B．It’s unhelpful for us to make our children feel good about themselves. |
| C．Strength-based parenting leads to narcissism. |
| D．Children who know their strengths tend to be more selfish and uncaring. |
| A．Favorable. | B．Disapproving. | C．Neutral. | D．Doubtful. |
| A．Teens’ Psychology Research | B．Teens’ Narcissism Diagnosis |
| C．Teens’ Strength-based Approach | D．Teens’ Confidence Misunderstood |
【推荐3】The need for clarity extends beyond how we communicate science to how we evaluate it. Who can really define stock phrases such as ‘a significant contribution to research’? Or understand what ‘high impact’ or ‘world-class’ mean? Scientists demand that institutions should be clear about their criteria and consider all scholarly outputs—preprints, code, data, peer review, teaching, mentoring and so on.
My view about the practices in research assessment is that most assessment guidelines permit sliding standards: instead of clearly defined terms, they give us feel-good slogans that lack any fixed meaning. Facing the problem will get us much of the way towards a solution.
Broad language increases room for misunderstanding. ‘High impact’ can be code for where research is published. Or it can mean the effect that research has had on its field, or on society locally or globally—often very different things. Yet confusion is the least of the problems. Words such as ‘world-class’ and ‘excellent’ allow assessors to vary comparisons depending on whose work they are assessing. Academia(学术界) cannot be a fair and reasonable system if standards change depending on whom we are evaluating. Unconscious bias(偏见) associated with factors such as a researcher’s gender, ethnic origin and social background helps the academic injustice continue. It was only with double-blind review of research proposals that women finally got fair access to the Hubble Space Telescope.
Many strategies exist to improve fairness in academia, but conceptual clarity is paramount. Being clear about how specific qualities are valued leads assessors to think critically about whether those qualities are truly being considered. Achieving that conceptual clarity requires discussion with faculties, staff and students: hours and hours of it. The University Medical Center Utrecht in the Netherlands, for example, held a series of conversations, each involving 20-60 researchers, and then spent another year revising its research assessment policies to recognize social impacts.
Frank conversations about what is valued in a particular context, or at a specific institution, are an essential first step in developing concrete recommendations. Although ambiguous(模棱两可的) terms, for instance ‘world-class’ and ‘significant’, are a barrier when performing assessments, university administrators have said that they rely on flexible language to make room to reward a variety of contributions. So it makes sense that more specific language in review and promotion must be able to accommodate varied outputs, outcomes and impacts of scholarly work.
Setting specific standards will be tough. It will be inviting to fall back on the misleading standards such as impact factors, or on ambiguous terms that can be agreed to by everyone but applied wisely by no one. It is too early to know what those standards will be or how much they will vary, but the right discussions are starting to happen. They must continue.
1. Regarding the current practices in research assessment, the author is ________.| A．supportive | B．puzzled |
| C．unconcerned | D．disapproving |
| A．Bias on assessors can cause inequality. | B．Frank conversations harm scholarly work. |
| C．Specific qualities need to be clearly stated. | D．Broad language ensures academic fairness. |
| A．primary. | B．recognized. |
| C．optional. | D．accomplished. |
| A．Fix research assessment. Change slogans for clear standards. |
| B．Fix research assessment. Change evaluations for conversations. |
| C．Define research assessment. Change simplicity for specification. |
| D．Define research assessment. Change broad language for flexible one. |
