Topic 1 Listening
For some of the reasons presented in the reading, many companies have a policy of hiring outsiders to fill managerial positions. However, a closer examination will show that the policy is misguided.
First of all, the new perspective an outsider brings into the company’s corporate structure often leads to conflict in the managerial team. Companies often have specific corporate philosophies… (for example, about how decisions are to be reached and how work is to be organized). So when outsiders bring with them a significantly different philosophy, this can create serious disagreement and conflict… and make it difficult for the managerial team as a whole to function smoothly and efficiently. An internal employee, by contrast, is more likely to know company tradition.
Another point to note is that hiring outsiders may entail an additional cost that perhaps isn’t obvious. It’s true that outside hires may come with required managerial skills and experience. But to become effective as managers in a new company, they also have to establish personal relationships with their new colleagues—get to know them and win their trust. This can often take more time than one would expect, and an uncomfortable settling-in period between a new boss and workers can also be more costly in lost productivity than on-the-job training for an internal employee.
Finally, suppose a company makes a point of hiring outsiders as managers instead of promoting insiders. Well, that company will soon find that its own best employees will have not choice but to look to advance their own careers outside the company. And when these key employees leave, they will also take their valuable business contacts away with them to their new employer.
Topic 2 Reading
Scant physical evidence remains of the first human domestication of grain. Still, there is enough to conclude that ancient peoples, motivated by the nutritional value of bread or cakes made of wild wheat, looked for controlled ways to grow it to provide a consistent food supply. Three related discoveries are likely to have led to the introduction of bread as the first grain-based food.
The first discovery was that wheat could be prepared for use by grinding. People probably began consuming wheat by chewing it raw. Because wheat is very hard, they gradually discovered that it was less trouble to eat if crushed to paste between two stones—the result would have been the ancestor of the drier, more powdery wheat flour we use today.
From there, it was a short step to the next breakthrough: baking the simplest bread, which requires no technology but fire. Loaves of wheat paste, when baked into bread, could be stored for long periods, certainly longer than raw seeds. This kept the food value of wheat available for an extended period after it had been harvested.
Finally, ancient peoples found that, if the paste was allowed to sit in the open, yeast spores from the air settled on it and began fermenting the wheat. This natural process of fermentation caused bubbles to from in the wheat paste that suggested it would be lighter in texture and even easier to eat when baked.
Topic 3 Listening
Conventional wisdom says that a very primitive kind of bread was the first grain food that human societies ate. But, you know, for the last few decades, there’s been an alternative hypothesis that quite a few anthropologists are starting to give a closer look. That hypotheses says that is was, in fact, beer—not bread—that was the first again food. Sound strange? Consider a couple of things.
For one thing, you don’t have to grind wheat to make it easier to eat. If you keep it in a moist environment, it naturally starts sprouting, with a new baby plant splitting the hard seed case in half. Sprouted wheat is sweeter, softer, and actually more nutritious than whole wheat seeds—and it would have developed without human bright idea of crushing it. In order to discover the usefulness of ground wheat, someone gad to get the bright idea of crushing it. To discover the usefulness of sprouted wheat, people just had to do nothing and let it sit. Which do you think happened first?
Another thing: what turns grain into beer is fermentation, and wheat begins to ferment almost as soon as it’s stored—from water and yeasts in the air. After the wheat sprouted, it would have started to ferment. The process would have been obvious because of the bubbles and foam that formed. People could have experimented by tasting it and discovering the first beer.
And even if you assume that people were already grinding wheat to paste, think about it. The paste ferments and bubbles. Is it likely that early peoples would have thought to fire it before eating? We’re used to cooking our food, but in prehistoric times, the idea that you would take fire to food to improve it for eating was not obvious.
