英美报刊选读-课文word整合版

1、精选优质文档-倾情为你奉上精选优质文档-倾情为你奉上专心-专注-专业专心-专注-专业精选优质文档-倾情为你奉上专心-专注-专业Unit2 Gender IssuesMen turn to jobs women usually doHOUSTON - Over the last decade, American men of all backgrounds have begun flocking to fields such as teaching, nursing and waiting tables that have long been the province of women.The

2、way I look at it is that anything, basically, that a woman can do, a guy can do, said Miguel Alquicira, who graduated from high school when construction and manufacturing jobs were scarce and became a dental assistant.The trend began well before the crash, and appears to be driven by a variety of fa

3、ctors, including financial concerns, quality-of-life issues and a gradual erosion of gender stereotypes.In interviews, about two dozen men played down the economic considerations, saying that the stigma associated with choosing such jobs had faded, and that the jobs were appealing not just because t

4、hey offered stable employment, but because they were more satisfying.I.T. is just killing viruses and clearing paper jams all day, said Scott Kearney, 43, who tried information technology and other fields before becoming a nurse in the pediatric intensive care unit at Childrens Memorial Hermann Hosp

5、ital in Houston.An analysis of United States census data by The New York Times shows that from 2000 to 2010, occupations that are more than 70 percent female accounted for almost a third of all job growth for men, double the share of the previous decade.That does not mean that men are displacing wom

6、en - those same jobs accounted for almost two-thirds of womens job growth. But in Texas, for example, the number of men who are registered nurses nearly doubled in that time period.The shift includes low-wage jobs as well. Nationally, two-thirds more men were bank tellers, almost twice as many were

7、receptionists and two-thirds more were waiting tables in 2010 than a decade earlier.Even more striking is the type of men who are making the shift. From 1970 to 1990, according to a study by Mary Gatta, senior scholar at Wider Opportunities for Women, an organization based in Washington, D.C., and P

8、atricia A. Roos, a sociologist at Rutgers University in New Jersey, men who took so-called pink-collar jobs tended to be foreign-born, non-English speakers with low education levels.Now, though, the trend has spread among men of nearly all races and ages, more than a third of whom have a college deg

9、ree. In fact, the shift is most pronounced among young, white, college-educated men like Charles Reed, a sixth-grade math teacher at Patrick Henry Middle School in Houston.Mr. Reed, 25, intended to go to law school after a two-year stint with Teach for America, a national teacher corps of recent col

10、lege graduates who spend two years helping under-resourced urban and rural public schools. But Mr. Reed fell in love with teaching. He says the recession had little to do with it, though he believes that, by limiting prospects for new law school graduates, it made his father, a lawyer, more acceptin

11、g.To the extent that the shift to womens work has been accelerated by recession, the change may reverse when the economy recovers. Are boys today saying, I want to grow up and be a nurse? asked Heather Boushey, senior economist at the Center for American Progress. Or are they saying, I want a job th

12、ats stable and recession-proof?Daniel Wilden, a 26-year-old Army veteran and nursing student, said he had gained respect for nursing when he saw a female medic use a Leatherman tool to save the life of his comrade. She was a beast, he said admiringly.More than a few men said their new jobs were far

13、harder than they imagined. But these men can expect success. Men earn more than women even in female-dominated jobs. And white men in particular who enter those fields easily move up to supervisory positions, a phenomenon known as the glass escalator, said Adia Harvey Wingfield, a sociologist at Geo

14、rgia State University.I hated my job every single day of my life, said John Cook, 55, who got a modest inheritance that let him drop a $150,000-a-year database consultants job to enter nursing school.His starting salary will be two thirds lower, but database consulting does not typically earn hugs l

15、ike the one Mr. Cook received from a girl after he took care of her premature baby sister. Its like, people get paid for doing this kind of stuff? Mr. Cook said, tears coming to his eyes as he recounted the episode.Several men cited the same reasons for seeking out pink-collar work that have drawn w

16、omen to such careers: less stress and more time at home. At John G. Osborne Elementary School, Adrian Ortiz, 42, joked that he was one of the few Mexicans who made more in his native country, where he was a hard-working lawyer, than he did in the United States as a kindergarten teacher in a bilingua

17、l classroom. Now, he said, my priorities are family, 100 percent.Betsey Stevenson, a labor economist at the University of Pennsylvania, said she was not surprised that changing gender roles at home, where studies show men are shouldering more of the domestic burden, are showing up in career choices.

18、 We tend to study these patterns of whats going on in the family and whats going on in the workplace as separate, but theyre very much intertwined, she said. So as attitudes in the family change, attitudes toward the workplace have changed.In a classroom at Houston Community College, Dexter Rodrigue

19、z, 35, said his job in tech support had not been threatened by the tough economy. Nonetheless, he said, his family downsized the house, traded the new cars for used ones and began to live off savings, all so Mr. Rodriguez could train for a career he regarded as more exciting.I put myself into the re

20、cession, he said, because I wanted to go to nursing school.Unit3 E-CommerceThe Post-Cash EconomyIn London, travelers can buy train tickets with their phones - and hold up the phones for the conductor to see. And in Starbucks coffee shops in the United States, customers can wave their phones in front

21、 of the cash register and pay for their soy chai lattes.Money is not what it used to be, thanks to the Internet. And the pocketbook may soon be destined for the dustbin of history - at least if some technology companies get their way.The cellphone increasingly contains the essentials of what we need

22、 to make transactions. Identification, payment and personal items, as Hal Varian, the chief economist at Google, pointed out in a new survey conducted by the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C. All this will easily fit in your mobile device and will inevitably do so.The phone holds and records p

23、lenty more vital information: It keeps track of where you are, what you like and who your peers are. That data can all be leveraged to sell you things you never knew you needed.The survey, released last month by the Pew Research Centers Internet and American Life Project along with Elon Universitys

24、Imagining the Internet Center in North Carolina, asked just over 1,000 technologists and social scientists to opine on the future of the wallet in 2020. Nearly two-thirds agreed that cash and credit cards will have mostly disappeared and been replaced with smart devices able to carry out a transacti

25、on. But a third of the survey respondents countered that consumers would fear for the security of transactions over a mobile device and worry about surrendering so much data about their purchasing habits.Sometimes, those with fewer options are the ones to embrace change the fastest. In Kenya, a serv

26、ice called M-Pesa (pesa is money in Swahili) acts like a banking system for those who may not have a bank account. With a rudimentary cellphone, M-Pesa users can send and receive money through a network of money agents, including cellphone shops. And in India, several phone carriers allow their cust

27、omers to pay utility bills and transfer small amounts of money over their cellphones.Several technology companies, big and small, are busy trying to make it easier for us to buy and sell all kinds of things without our wallets. A start-up, WePay, describes itself as a service that allows the smalles

28、t merchant - say, a dog walker - to get paid; the company verifies the reputations of payers and sellers by analyzing, among other things, their Facebook accounts.A British start-up, called Blockchain, offers a free iPhone application allowing customers to use a crypto-currency called bitcoins, whic

29、h users can mint on their computers.A company called Square began by offering a small accessory to enable food cart vendors and other small merchants to accept credit cards on phones and iPads. Squares latest invention allows customers to register an account with Square merchants and pay simply by s

30、aying their names. The customers picture pops up on the merchants iPad.Google Wallet has been designed to sit in your phone, be linked to your credit card, and let you pay by tapping your phone on a reader, using what is known as near field technology. But Google Wallet works on only four kinds of p

31、hones, and not many merchants are equipped for near field technology.Meanwhile, PayPal, which allows people to make payments over the Internet, has quietly begun to persuade its users to turn to their cellphones. PayPal posted about $118 billion in total transactions last year and became the fastest

32、-growing segment of eBay, its parent company.The physical wallet, which had no innovation in the last 50 years, will become an artifact, John J. Donahoe, the chief executive of eBay, told me recently. The wallet would move into the cloud, and ideally, from his perspective, into PayPal. No more would

33、 the consumer worry about losing a wallet. Everything, he declared, would be contained within PayPal. It would also enable the company to collect vast amounts of data about customer habits, purchases and budgets.Mr. Donahoe said he wanted his company to become a mall in your pocket.I recently descri

34、bed PayPals plans to Alessandro Acquisti, an economist who studies digital privacy at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh. Mr. Acquisti smiled. If today all you need to do is enter your phone number and PIN when you visit a store, perhaps tomorrow, he said, that store will be able to detect you

35、r phone by its unique identifier. Perhaps, you wont have to shop at all. Your shopping data would be instead collected, analyzed and used to tell you exactly what you need: a motorcycle from Ducati or purple rain boots in the next size for your growing child. Money will be seamlessly taken from your

36、 account. A delivery will arrive at your doorstep. In the future, maybe you wont have to pay, Mr. Acquisti offered, only half in jest. The transaction will be made for you.Unit4 Cultural ExchangeAsias Endangered Species: the ExpatForget expats. Western companies doing business in Asia are now lookin

37、g to locals to fill the most important jobs in the region.Behind the switch, experts say, are several factors, including a leveled playing field in which Western companies must approach newly empowered Asian companies and consumers as equals and clientsnot just manufacturing partners.Companies now w

38、ant executives who can secure deals with local businesses and governments without the aid of a translator, and who understand that sitting through a three-hour dinner banquet is often a key part of the negotiating process in Asia, experts say.In fact, three out of four senior executives hired in Asi

39、a by multinationals were Asian natives already living in the region, according to a Spencer Stuart analysis of 1,500 placements made from 2005 to 2010. Just 6% were noncitizens from outside of Asia.Its a strategic necessity to be integrated in the culture. Otherwise, the time to learn all of it take

40、s forever, said Arie Y. Lewin, a professor of strategy and international business at Duke Universitys Fuqua School of Business. He adds that locals may better navigate a business culture where copycats and competitors often play by different rules.Whats more, a failed expatriate hire can be a costly

41、 mistake and slow a firms progress in the region, said Phil Johnston, a managing director at recruiter Spencer Stuart.To help companies fill Asia-based executive roles, at least two search firmsSpencer Stuart and Korn/Ferry Internationalsay they have begun classifying executives in four broad catego

42、ries: Asia natives steeped in local culture but educated in the U.S. or Europe; the foreigner who has lived or worked in Asia for a long time; a person of Asian descent who was born or raised in a Western country but has had little exposure to Asia; and the local Asian executive who has no Western e

43、xperience.For companies seeking local expertise, both firms said the first category is by far the most sought-after. But Mr. Johnston said those candidates are difficult to find and retain, and they can command salaries of $750,000 to $1 millionon par with, and sometimes more than, their expat count

44、erparts.German conglomerate Siemens AG in 2010 hired Mei-Wei Cheng, a China-born Cornell University graduate, to head its Chinese operationsa role previously held by European executives.While Siemenss European executives had made inroads with Chinese consumersbuilding sales in the region to nearly o

45、ne-tenth of global revenuethe firm realized it needed someone who could quickly tap local business partners.After an extensive search, Siemens hired Mr. Cheng, formerly CEO at the Chinese subsidiaries of Ford Motor Co. and General Electric Co. GEThe decision to hire locally seems to have paid off fo

46、r Siemens: In his first 18 months on the job, Mr. Cheng forged two wind-power joint ventures with Shanghai Electric Group Co.Mr. Cheng communicates easily with local officials, a major advantage when it comes to selling energy technology to individual cities, says Brigitte Ederer, head of human reso

47、urces for Siemens and a member of the companys managing board. Many local officials dont speak English.Bob Damon, president of recruiter Korn/Ferry Internationals North American operations, said the current talent pool for executive roles is so limited that most top Asian executives simply rotate fr

48、om one Western company to another, as Mr. Cheng did.Other companies are adding to the demand by creating new positions in Asia. Campbell Soup Co. CPB last week announced the appointment of Daniel Saw as its first-ever president of Asia operations, while Canadian conglomerate Bombardier Inc. BBD.B.T

49、hired Albert Li to fill a new role overseeing its aerospace business in China. Both executives were born in Asia and have worked as regional managers for Western multinationals.Meanwhile, younger Chinese professionals are positioning themselves to meet the need for executive talent in the years to c

50、ome. Nearly four in 10 American M.B.A. programs say China was their fastest-growing source of foreign applicants last year, according to the Graduate Management Admission Council, which administers the Graduate Management Admission Test.Foreigners with no Asia experience, on the other hand, need not

51、 apply, recruiters said. Spencer Stuarts Mr. Johnston said he occasionally receives inquiries from Western middle managers, proclaiming that they are finally ready to make a career move to the region. He advises them that there is nothing about their experience that is interesting or relevant to Asi

52、a.In hubs like Singapore and Hong Kong, expats receive as much as $200,000 a year in subsidies for housing, transportation and private schooling, Mr. Johnston said. Payments to offset taxes for these benefits add up to another $100,000. Altogether, a bad match can cost a company as much as $1 millio

53、n, after figuring in relocation costs, he said.Monster Worldwide Inc. Chief Executive Sal Iannuzzi said the company has been hiring locally for several years, in part because he found deploying expatriates cost too much. It takes them six months to figure out how to take a ferry, theyre there for 12

54、 months, and then they spend the next six months figuring out how to get home, he said.Like some other companies, Monster now tracks its own workers to ensure a pipeline of talent.The online job-search companys current head of China operations, Edward Lo, a former fraternity brother of Mr. Iannuzzi,

55、 understands the local scene, is well connected in China and knows how to recruit, Mr. Iannuzzi said. Among Mr. Los duties: finding his own successor before he retires.Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide Inc. based in White Plains, N.Y., also develops its own leaders for Asia, plucking people who ha

56、ve come up through the company ranks. For example, the head of Asia Pacific started in the 1970s on the finance team in Hong Kong, and the head of the Middle East region was a hotel manager who worked his way up.Having grown up in their markets, managers understand customer needs, said Starwood CEO

57、Frits van Paasschen. Regional heads in China, for instance, know that when dealing with land owners or developers, deals are less transactional, and more trust-based, he said. They also know that Chinese travelerswho now comprise the majority of hotel guests in the regionfeel more at home when theyr

58、e supplied with tea kettles, slippers and chopsticks, he added.For fast-food company Yum Brands Inc. CEO David Novak calls his Asia-bred regional head and executive team our single biggest competitive advantage. China has become the companys biggest earnings driver, comprising more than 40% of opera

59、ting profit.Thanks to Yums China leaders, Mr. Novak says, KFC in China began serving rice porridge and soy milk for breakfast, and Pizza Hut now offers an afternoon tea menuboth of which have been big hits among local customers.Unit5 Auto-WorldThe Future of the Car :Clean, Safe and it Drives itselfC

60、ars have already changed the way we live. They are likely to do so againSOME inventions, like some species, seem to make periodic leaps in progress. The car is one of them. Twenty-five years elapsed between Karl Benz beginning small-scale production of his original Motorwagen and the breakthrough, b