Starting-up. Improve your speaking skills in English

IMPROVE YOUR SPEAKING SKILLS IN ENGLISH

Учебно-методическое пособие

по устной практике английского языка

В двух частях

Часть 2

2-е издание, исправленное и переработанное

Минск

УДК 802.0 (07)

I56

Серия основана в 2001 году

Рекомендовано к изданию Комиссией по приемке и аттестации электронных версий учебных и учебно-методических материалов Академии управления при Президенте Республики Беларусь.

Составитель Л.В. Вертаева

Рецензенты:

канд. филол. наук, и.о. профессора кафедры второго языка (английский) Минского государственного лингвистического университета Т.Ф. Плеханова

канд. филол. наук, доцент кафедры стилистики английского языка Минского государственного лингвистического университета Л.С. Крохалева

.

UNIT III

JOBS AND CAREERS

Starting-Up

A Discuss with your partners the motives which urge people to

work.

B Read the text below and discuss in class which ideas from the

text you share and which you don’t.

What Are We Working for?

Have you ever asked yourself what you are working for? If you have ever had the time to consider this taboo question, or put it to others in moments of weakness or confidentiality, you might well have heard some or all of the following. It’s the money of course, some say with a smile, as if explaining something to a small child. Or it’s the satisfaction of a job well done, the sense of achievement behind the clinching of an important deal. I worked as a bus conductor once, and can’t say I felt the same as I staggered along the swaying gangway trying to give out tickets without falling over into someone’s lap. It’s the company of other people perhaps, but if that is the case, what about farmers? Is it the conversation in the farmyard that keeps them captivated by the job? “Work is power and a sense of status, ” say those who have either attained these elusive goals, or feel aggrieved that nobody has yet recognised their leadership qualities. Or we can blame it all on someone else, the family or the taxman. I suspect, and I say this under my breath, that most of us work rather as Mr. Micawber (a character from Dickens’s novel “David Copperfield”) lived, hoping for something to turn up. We’ll win the pools, and tell the boss what we really think. We’ll scrape together the money and open that little shop we always dreamed of, or go round the world, or spend more time in the garden. One day we’ll get that promotion we deserve, but until then at least we have something to do. And we are so busy doing it that we won’t have time to wonder why.