2009年12月英语六级真题及答案

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2009 年 12 月英语六级真题及答案

Part Ⅰ Writing (30 minutes)

Directions: For this part, you are allowed 30 minutes to write a short essay entitled Should

Parents Send Their Kids to Art Classes? You should write at least 150 words following the

outline given below.

1. 现在有不少家长送孩子参加各种艺术班

2. 对这种做法有人表示支持，也有人并不赞成

3. 我认为……

Should Parents Send Their Kids to Art Classes?

Part ⅡReading Comprehension (Skimming and Scanning) (15 minutes)

Directions: In this part, you will have 15 minutes to go over the passage quickly and answer

the questions on Answer Sheet 1. For questions 1-7, choose the best answer from the four

choices marked A), B), C) and D). For questions 8-10, complete the sentences with the

information given in the passage.

Bosses Say “Yes” to Home Work

Rising costs of office space, time lost to stressful commuting, and a slow recognition that

workers have lives beyond the office—all are strong arguments for letting staff work from

home.

For the small business, there are additional benefits too—staff are more productive, and

happier, enabling firms to keep their headcounts ( 员工数 ) and their recruitment costs to a

minimum. It can also provide competitive advantage, especially when small businesses want to

attract new staff but don’t have the budget to offer huge salaries.

While company managers have known about the benefits for a long time, many have done little

about it, sceptical of whether they could trust their employees to work to full capacity

without supervision, or concerned about the additional expenses teleworking policies might

incur as staff start charging their home phone bills to the business.

Yet this is now changing. When communications provider Inter-Tel researched the use of

remote working solutions among small-and-medium-sized UK businesses in April this year, it

found that 28% more companies claimed to have introduced flexible working practices than a year

ago.

The UK network of Business Links confirms that it too has seen a growing interest in remote

working solutions from small businesses seeking its advice, and claims that as many as 60-70%

of the businesses that come through its doors now offer some form of remote working support to

their workforces.

Technology advances, including the widespread availability of broadband, are making the

introduction of remote working a piece of cake.

“If systems are set up properly, staff can have access to all the resources they have in

the office wherever they have an internet connection,” says Andy Poulton, e-business advisor

at Business Link for Berkshire and Wiltshire. “There are some very exciting developments which

have enabled this.”

One is the availability of broadband everywhere, which now covers almost all of the country

(BT claims that, by July, 99.8% of its exchanges will be broadband enabled, with alternative

plans in place for even the most remote exchanges). “This is the enabler,” Poulton says.

Yet while broadband has come down in price too, those service providers targeting the

business market warn against consumer services masquerading ( 伪装 ) as business-friendly

broadband.

“Broadband is available for as little as ￡ 15 a month, but many businesses fail to

appreciate the hidden costs of such a service,” says Neil Stephenson, sales and marketing

director at Onyx Internet, an internet service provider based in the north-east of England.

“Providers offering broadband for rock-bottom prices are notorious for poor service, with

regular breakdowns and heavily congested ( 拥堵的 ) networks. It is always advisable for

businesses to look beyond the price tag and look for a business-only provider that can offer

more reliability, with good support.” Such services don’t cost too much—quality services can

be found for upwards of ￡30 a month.

The benefits of broadband to the occasional home worker are that they can access email in

real time, and take full advantage of services such as internet-based backup or even internet-

based phone services.

Internet-based telecoms, or VoIP (Voice over IP) to give it its technical title, is an

interesting tool to any business supporting remote working. Not necessarily because of the

promise of free or reduced price phone calls (which experts point out is misleading for the

average business), but because of the sophisticated voice services that can be exploited by the

remote worker—facilities such as voicemail and call forwarding, which provide a continuity of

the company image for customers and business partners.

By law, companies must “consider seriously” requests to work flexibly made by a parent

with a child under the age of six, or a disabled child under 18. It was the need to accommodate

employees with young children that motivated accountancy firm Wright Vigar to begin promoting

teleworking recently. The company, which needed to upgrade its IT infrastructure (基础设施) to

provide connectivity with a new, second office, decided to introduce support for remote working

at the same time.

Marketing director Jack O’Hern explains that the company has a relatively young workforce,

many of whom are parents: “One of the triggers was when one of our tax managers returned from

maternity leave. She was intending to work part time, but could only manage one day a week in

the office due to childcare. By offering her the ability to work from home, we have doubled her

capacity—now she works a day a week from home, and a day in the office. This is great for her,

and for us as we retain someone highly qualified.”

For Wright Vigar, which has now equipped all of its fee-earners to be able to work at

maximum productivity when away from the offices (whether that’s from home, or while on the

road), this strategy is not just about saving on commute time or cutting them loose from the

office, but enabling them to work more flexible hours that fit around their home life.

O’Hern says: “Although most of our work is client-based and must fit around this, we

can’t see any reason why a parent can’t be on hand to deal with something important at home,

if they have the ability to complete a project later in the day.”

Supporting this new way of working came with a price, though. Although the firm was

updating its systems anyway, the company spent 10-15% more per user to equip them with a laptop

rather than a PC, and about the same to upgrade to a server that would enable remote staff to

connect to the company networks and access all their usual resources.

Although Wright Vigar hasn’t yet quantified the business benefits, it claims that, in

addition to being able to retain key staff with young families, it is able to save fee-earners

a substantial amount of “dead” time in their working days.

That staff can do this without needing a fixed telephone line provides even more efficiency

savings. “With Wi-Fi (fast, wireless internet connections) popping up all over the place, even

on trains, our fee-earners can be productive as they travel, and between meetings, instead of

having to kill time at the shops,” he adds.

The company will also be able to avoid the expense of having to relocate staff to temporary

offices for several weeks when it begins disruptive office renovations soon.

Financial recruitment specialist Lynne Hargreaves knows exactly how much her firm has saved

by adopting a teleworking strategy, which has involved handing her company’s data management

over to a remote hosting company, Datanet, so it can be accessible by all the company’s

consultants over broadband internet connections.

It has enabled the company to dispense with its business premises altogether, following the

realisation that it just didn’t need them any more. “The main motivation behind adopting home

working was to increase my own productivity, as a single mum to an 11-year-old,” says

Hargreaves. “But I soon realised that, as most of our business is done on the phone, email and

at off-site meetings, we didn’t need our offices at all. We’re now saving ￡16,000 a year on

rent, plus the cost of utilities, not to mention what would have been spent on commuting.”

1. What is the main topic of this passage?

A) How business managers view hi-tech.

B) Relations between employers and employees.

C) How to cut down the costs of small businesses.

D) Benefits of the practice of teleworking.

2. From the research conducted by the communications provider Inter-Tel, we learn that .

A) more employees work to full capacity at home

B) employees show a growing interest in small businesses

C) more businesses have adopted remote working solutions

D) attitudes toward IT technology have changed

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