Unit 2
Part Ⅳ Short Answer Questions
(15 minutes)
Directions: In this part there is a short passage with five questions or incomplete statements. Read the passage carefully. Then answer the questions or complete the statements in the fewest possible words (not exceeding 10 words).
One summer my wife Chris and I were invited by friends to row down the Colorado River in a boat. Our expedition included many highly successful people — the kind who have staffs to take care of life's daily work. But in the wilder rapids, all of us naturally set aside any pretenses (矫饰) and put out backs into every stroke to keep the boat from tumbling over. At each night's encampment, we all hauled supplies and cleaned dishes. After only two days in the river, people accustomed to being spoiled and indulged had become a team, working together to cope with the unpredictable twists and turns of the river.
I believe that in life — as well as on boat trips — teamwork will make all our journeys successful ones. The rhythms of teamwork have been the rhythms of my life. I played basketball alongside famous players, and the team I now coach, the New York Knicks, has recovered from years of adversity to become a major contender in the 1990s.
I'm persuaded that teamwork is the key to making dreams come true. We all play on a number of teams in our lives—as part of a family, as a citizen, as a member of an agreement, written or unwritten. It contains the values and goals for every team member.
For example, in the late 1970s a General Motors plant in Fremont, Calif, was the scene of constant warfare between labor and management. Distrust ran so high that the labor contract was hundreds of pages of tricky legal terms. GM spent millions trying to keep the facility up to date, but productivity and quality were continually poor. Absenteeism (旷工) was so out of control that the production line couldn't even start up on some mornings. Finally in the early 1980s, GM shut down the plant.
GM became convinced that it had to create new production systems based on teamwork. In the mid-1980s it reopened the Fremont plant with Toyota, starting from scratch (从零开始) with a much simpler and shorter labor contract. It promised that executive salaries would be reduced and jobs performed by outside sellers would be given to employees before any layoffs were considered. Over a hundred job classifications were cut to just two. Instead of doing one boring job over and over, workers agreed to be part of small teams, spending equal time on various tasks.
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