MATCHING INFORMATION
Choosing words from a list
Some exercises require you to complete sentences or notes using words from a list.
There are generally more words in the list than there are gaps, so you have to read
carefully. Use these tips to help you.
1 Read the text and check what type(s) of word are required to fill each gap - nouns,
verbs, adjectives, numbers, etc.
2 See how many of each type of word there are in the box, and see which fits best in
the gap.
3 Check if you can use a word or phrase more than once.
4 Make sure you spell the words correctly when writing the answers.
Task 1: Complete the text below using words and phrases from the box. There are
more choices than gaps, so you will not need to use all of them.
as an advantage bankruptcies computer creation deposit account
doing well entrepreneurs international job losses failures
redundancy cheque for a change for the best happily managers
struggling suffering managing proliferation large rise
No matter how difficult the business climate is, there is always some good that can come
from tough trading conditions. Although 1.............................
failures are obviously a very
unwelcome sign that a business is not 2.............................. , surprisingly, they can, in the
doing well
long term, sometime work out 3.............................
for the best .If 4.............................
struggling companies are
forced to lose people, the result can be a 5............................. of small companies starting
proliferation
up, as talented 6.............................
entrepreneurs turn an idea into a business, often funded by a
redundancy cheque
7............................. .
Matching names
1 You have to relate information to a number of people, places, categories or theories, etc.
2 Look at the list of names, then scan the text to find them. Underline them in the text.
3 Remember that names may appear in several places in the text.
4 Check the instructions to see if names can be matched with just one or more than one
option.
5 There may be distractors that do not match any name.
Task 2: Read this text and choose the most suitable heading for each paragraph (A-
D),
Bye, bye banknote
The End of Money by David Wolman, reviewed by Jacob Aron
A. Money in all its forms / No money in my pocket / Is money evil?
Cash, dough or moolah - whatever you call it, you can't live without it. Or can you?
Increasingly money is an abstraction residing on a computer drive. How long will it be until
hard currency disappears altogether? In The End of Money, journalist David Wolman sets
out to discover what a cashless world might look like and how we will arrive there. On the
way, he gets distracted by those on the fringes of society. The book opens with Glenn
Guest, a US pastor who believes credit cards and online banking are tools of Satan,
designed to bring about the end of the world. An entertaining notion, but not relevant to
anyone just fed up with carrying a chunk of change.
B. Cash and crime / Loose change / Currencies and copies
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Later, Wolman visits Bernard von NotHaus, creator of the Liberty Dollar currency. Until
2009, it was available electronically, in note form and as coins - though von NotHaus
denied they were coins, which he says only governments can mint. Such semantic
wrangling failed to prevent him being found guilty of-counterfeiting. It's not surprising, as the
Liberty Dollar closely mimics many features of the US dollar, using 'Trust in God' instead of
'In God we Trust' for example. It seems odd to focus on such a strange character when, as
Wolman points out, alternative currencies such as the Brixton Pound in London succeed
without falling foul of the law.
C. The cost of cash / Social consequences / Crime pays
The book is better when focusing on the real implications of moving away from cash: a
particularly good chapter details the mobile-banking revolution in the developing world,
which is allowing countries such as Kenya to leapfrog the need for expensive ATM and
banking infrastructure. Interesting, too, are the arguments for abolishing cash, such as the
fact that making hard currency is a costly business, as much as 1 per cent of annual Gross
Domestic Product for some countries. Cash is used to prop up crime: high-value bills
provide an anonymous way to conduct illicit transactions. UK exchange offices no longer
take € 500 notes after an inquiry found that nine in every ten of them were used by
criminals.
D. Alternative banking systems / Technological money / The future is here
So what might replace cash? Wolman touches on energy as a unit of currency, and
whizzes through virtual currencies like World of Warcraft gold, Facebook credits and
Bitcoin, suggesting conversion software could let people pay using whatever they have to
hand. Ultimately, though, one gets the feeling that the cashless society is already with us, at
least for those that want it. Early in the book, Wolman mentions his attempt to avoid cash
for an entire year, but other than a few awkward moments when splitting restaurant bills or
passing lemonade stands, he rarely refers to it again - perhaps because parting with your
cash is easier than you might expect.
Decide which category (A-E) each of the statements below (1-8) falls into. You may
use any letter more than once.
A a fact or an opinion expressed by David Wolman
B a fact or an opinion expressed by Jacob Aron
C a fact or an opinion expressed by Glenn Guest
D a fact or an opinion expressed Bernard von NotHaus
E a fact or an opinion not expressed in the text
1 Not having cash could reduce costs of government. A
2 No individual has the right to make coins. D
3 No society can manage without money. E
4 Not all alternatives to official currencies are illegal. D
5 Nobody should use credit cards. C
6 No computers are designed to manage our money. D
7 Nobody actually needs to use cash now. B
8 Nothing is more dangerous than carrying cash with you. E
Complete these sentences using no more than TWO WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER
from the text for each answer.
1. One of the questions the book asks is how near is the time when we will live in a society
that is .............................
2. Von NotHaus was unsuccessful in defending himself against the charge of
.............................
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3. In developing countries, people are using technology creatively to avoid the difficulties
and expense involved in establishing a .............................
4. As research in the UK indicates their attraction to those involved in crime, some high-
value notes cannot be accepted in .............................
Matching sentences
This task tests your understanding of the main ideas in a text.
Task 3: You are going to read a text about an important development in the theory of
management. Before you read, discuss what you know about the following.
1 Henry Ford
2 mass production
3 how to motivate workers
4 the need for flexibility at work
5 the relationship between managers and workers
Read the text to check what it says about the topics in the above exercise.
Scientific Management in the workplace
The car and computer manufacturing plants, the work environments we go to every day;
the hospitals we are treated in, and even some of the restaurants we might eat in all
function more efficiently due to the application of methods that come from Scientific
Management. In fact, these methods of working seem so commonplace and so logical to a
citizen of the modem world that it is almost impossible to accept that they were
revolutionary only 100 years ago.
Scientific Management was developed in the first quarter of the 20th century; its father is
commonly accepted to be F.W. Taylor. Taylor recognized labor productivity was largely
inefficient due to a workforce that functioned by "rules of thumb." Taylor carried out studies
to ensure that factual scientific knowledge would replace these traditional "rules of thumb."
The backbone of this activity was his "time-and-motion study." This involved analyzing all
the operations and the motions performed in a factory, and timing them with a stopwatch.
By knowing how long it took to perform each of the elements of each job, he believed it
would be possible to determine a fair day's work.
Work, he contended, was more efficient when broken down into its constituent parts, and
the management, planning, and decision-making functions had been developed elsewhere.
As this implies, Taylor viewed the majority of workers as ill-educated and unfit to make
important decisions about their work.
Taylor's system ensured the most efficient way would be used by all workers, therefore
making the work process standard. Invariably, managers found that maximal efficiency was
achieved by a subdivision of labor. This subdivision entailed breaking the workers' tasks
into smaller and smaller parts. In short, he specified not only what was to be done, but also
how it was to be done and the exact time allowed for doing it.
One theory based on the Scientific Management model is Fordism. This theory refers to
the application of Henry Ford's faith in mass production- in his case, o f cars- and combined
the idea o f the moving assembly line with Taylor's systems of division of labor and piece-
rate payment. With Fordism, jobs are automated or broken down into unskilled or semi-
skilled tasks. The pace of the continuous-flow assembly line dictated work. But Ford's
theory retained the faults of Taylor's. Autocratic management ensured a high division of
labor in order to effectively run mass production; this led to little workplace democracy, and
alienation. Equally, with emphasis on the continuous flow of the assembly line, machinery
was given more importance than workers.
The benefits of Scientific Management lie within its ability provide a company with the
focus to organize its structure in order to meet the objectives of both the employer and
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employee. Taylor found that the firms that introduced Scientific Management became the
world's most carefully organized corporations.
Scientific Management, however, has been criticized for "de-skilling" labor. As jobs are
broken down into their constituent elements, humans become little more than "machines" in
the chain. Their cognitive input is not required: it is best if they do not have to think about
their tasks. Y et the average intelligence o f employees has risen sharply; people have been
made aware o f their value as human beings. They are no longer content to receive only
financial reward for their tasks. It has been recognized that productivity and success are not
just obtained by controlling all factors in the workplace, but by contributing to the social well-
being and development o f the individual employee.
Higher levels of access to technology and information, as well as increased competition,
present another difficulty to theory of Scientific Management in the 21st century. Modem
organizations process huge amounts of input, and employees no longer work in isolated
units cut off from the organization at large. Managers recognize they are unable to control
all aspects of employees' functions, as the number layers of information factored into
everyday decisions is so high that it is imperative employees use their own initiative. High
competition between organizations also means that companies must react fast to maintain
market positions. All this forces modem companies to maintain high levels of flexibility.
In the era during which Scientific Management was developed, each worker had a
specific task that he or she had to perform, with little or no real explanation of why, or what
part it played in the organization as a whole. In this day and age, it is virtually impossible to
find an employee in the developed world who is not aware of what his or her organization
stands for, what their business strategy is, how well the company is performing, and what
their job means to the company as a whole. Organizations actively encourage employees to
know about their company and to work across departments, ensuring that communication
at all levels is mixed and informal.
Another weakness in Scientific Management theory is that it can lead to workers
becoming too highly specialized, therefore hindering their adaptability to new situations.
Nowadays, employers not only want workers to be efficient, they must also exhibit
flexibility. In conclusion, it can be seen that Scientific Management is still very much part of
organizations today. Its strengths in creating a divide between management functions and
work functions have been employed widely at all levels and in all industries. In addition, its
strengths in making organizations efficient through replacement of "rules of thumb" with
scientific fact ensured its widespread application.
Questions 1 - 6
Complete each sentence with the correct ending A-H.
According to the article:
1. Productivity H
2. Time-and-motion analysis D
3. Decision making G
4. Subdivision of labour A
5. Fordism F
6. A worker B
A meant a job was reduced to a number of basic elements.
B was considered undesirable in the role of the workers.
C became specialized in certain unchanging work routines.
D measured the exact time it took to do each part of a job.
E carefully calculated what was required for the success of a business.
F was an application of a theory to mass production.
G took a critical view of the style of management.
H suffered as a result of established inefficient practices.
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Questions 7 - 14
Complete this summary using the list of words A-N below.
Scientific Management theories are responsible for many of the procedures in evidence in
backbone
today's companies. The key to this was the 7........................ analysis of what each job
involved in order to replace 8........................ with scientific knowledge. True efficiency could
rules of thumb
only be reached when the different processes in the workplace were made 9........................
standard
Ford applied these principles to car production, where workers did specific jobs on the
10.........................
moving assembly line However, the theory was criticized for viewing people as
11........................ as they were expected to be able to perform their tasks without
machines
12.........................
thinking Their motivation, according to the theory, was supposed to be simply
13........................ . Nowadays, companies recognize that the best results also depend on
fianacial reward
other factors, such as promoting the 14........................
social well being of the workers and their professional
and personal development. .
A labour productivity B time-and-motion
C moving assembly line D stopwatch
E thinking F rules of thumb
G backbone H de-skilling
I division of labour J financial reward
K standard L machines
M average intelligence N social well-being
