Part B

You are going to read an extract about the work of the Master of Ceremony. Six paragraphs have been removed from the extract. Choose from paragraphs A-G the one which fits each gap (27-32). There is one extra paragraph which you do not need to use .

Preparation for the Master of Ceremony

The Master of Ceremony (MC) performs a variety of duties during a program. As the MC you are responsible for getting things started, keeping the program moving, and closing the meeting. All that occurs between the opening and closing is your responsibility.

27

As in preparing for any speaking situation, it may work to your advantage to outline the program and then the “body” of the presentation before you prepare your introduction and conclusion. In some instances, however, your welcome may be an established custom, and is preparation may well be your first and easiest task.

28

In preparing the welcome, remember to start on time. Then, greet your guests and fellow members. Briefly make your remarks welcoming all present. Never let your welcome be presented impromptu. Plan ten wording carefully as your beginning is likely to set the mood for the entire program. If you are serious or humorous, the atmosphere will have thus been set for the occasion.

29

On the other hand, you don’t want people waiting for a speaker long after they have completed their dessert. It is best to prepare a time schedule for your entire program, check it with your caterer and speakers, and then stick to it as closely as you can.

30

As you arrange the program, have a reason for putting one event or speaker first, another second, and so on. This will help you provide continuity and will help the audience to see connections between speakers. In some instances, you may need to provide impromptu remarks to tie one speaker’s presentation to the next speaker.

31

Finally, as you prepare for the closing, review the suggestions in chapter 33 for the farewell speech. While the two are not exactly the same, there are similarities. Even the best program needs some sense of finality. Don’t simply dismiss your audience; you need to take a few seconds and thank the audience and tie the program to them one final time. Plan a way of tying the program to something in the future, and point out the benefits of having attended meeting.

32

As you can see, the preparation for being an MC is very extensive and needs to be planned carefully. Nothing should be left to chance. On the other hand, you should also prepare to speak, change, and adapt to the circumstances of the situation at hand. Adapt to the specific remarks of the speakers.

[A] Next, prepare your introductions and transitional remarks so they tie your program together and provide continuity. When you speak, make your comments brief and related to the speeches or events that have just occurred or are about to take place.

[B] It is essential that you keep a constant reminder that your purpose as MC is to; get things started, keep the program moving, and close the meeting. Resist any temptation during your preparation to think the audience has come to hear you. Whatever the occasion, you are not the featured speaker, so you will not want to “spotlight” your speeches.

[C] As you introduce speakers, remember, it is your responsibility in introducing speakers to arouse interest in the speaker and the speaker’s topic. Again, try to avoid lengthy or too brief introductions. Otherwise, you may find yourself in a predicament by having used too much of the speaker’s time or not have properly prepared the audience for the speaker.

[D] As a follow-up, stop and shake hands and thank all of your guest speakers again. Let them know that you are pleased with their performance and appreciate their help in making your job easy and enjoyable. Wait until all guests have departed before leaving. It is generally rude and impolite for the MC to leave the banquet or dinner before the special guests.

[E] Sometimes the MC has other responsibilities within the organization. These duties must also be maintained. Handle these first, so the duties do not interfere with your responsibilities as MC. Once you have accounted for your official duties, you can begin to prepare for the responsibilities of being MC.

[F] Once the program is under way, it is your responsibility to see that things keep moving. Try to avoid long gaps of time between events, but you don’t want to rush things too quickly either. If it is a dinner or banquet, you don’t want to have people eating their main course while the guest is speaking.

[G] On some occasions, you may also need to prepare yourself for either presenting or receiving awards or gifts. As in the other speeches by the MC, these speeches are generally brief. All you need to do is to highlight the honoree and stimulate the audience to appreciate the person being honored.

Part C

You are going to read a passage about habits. From the list of headings A – G. choose the best one to summarize each paragraph (33-38) of the passage. There is one extra heading that you do not need to use.

Habits are bad only if you can’t handle them

33

We are endlessly told we’re creatures of habit. Indeed, making this observation as if it were original is one of the most annoying habits of pop psychologists. The psychologist William James said long ago that life “is but a mass of habits … our dressing and undressing, our eating and drinking. our greetings and partings. our giving way for ladies to precede are things of a type so fixed by repetition as almost to be classed as reflex actions.” What pop psychology can’t decide, though, is whether this state of affairs is good or bad. Are habits, properly controlled, the key to happiness? Or should we be doing all we can to escape habitual existence?

34

This isn’t a question of good versus bad habits: we can agree, presumably, that the habit of eating lots of vegetables is preferable to that of drinking a three-litre bottle of White Lightning each night. Rather, it’s a disagreement about habituation itself. Since habit is so much more powerful than our conscious decision-making. What are needed are deliberately chosen routines. No matter how hard you resolve to spend more time with your spouse, it’ll never work as well as developing the habit of a weekly night out or of doing the hardest task first each morning.

35

You on the other hand, as we know all too well, habits lose their power precisely because they’re habitual. An expensive cappuccino, once in a while, is a life-enhancing pleasure; an expensive cappuccino every day soon becomes a boring routine. Even proven therapeutic techniques. such as keeping a diary, work better when done occasionally, not routinely.

36

I don’t have an answer to this dilemma. But there is one way to get the best of both worlds: develop habits and routines that are designed to disrupt your habits and routines, and keep things fresh. One obvious example is the “weekly review”, which time-management experts are always recommending: a habit, yes, but one that involves stepping out of the daily habitual stream to gain perspective. Or take Bill Gates’s famous annual “think week”, in which he holes up in the mountains with a stack of books and journals, to reflect on future paths of action. You don’t need a week in the mountains, though: an hour’s walk in the park each week might prove as beneficial.

37

A smaller-scale kind of routinised disruption is a method known as burst working, involving tiny, timed sprints of 5 to 10minutes, with gaps in between. Each burst brings a microscopic but refreshing sense of newness, while each tiny deadline adds useful pressure, preventing a descent into torpor. Each break, meanwhile, is a moment to breathe – a miniature “think week”, to step back, assess your direction, and stop the day sliding into forgetfulness.

38

All these techniques use the power of habituation to defeat the downsides of habituation. Like jujitsu (柔道). You’re turning the enemy’s strength against him; unlike jujitsu, we physically malcoordinated types can do it, too.

[A] Breaking routines does not need a lot of time

[B] Things done too much lose their value.

[C] Psychologists are not sure about the value of habits.

[D] It is possible to change habits deliberately.

[E] Disrupting habits and routines may lead to fresh ideas.

[F] There is a way out from habituation.

[G] Habits are indication of laziness.

Part D

You are going to read a passage about productive postponement. Decide whether the statements in the box agree with the information given in the passage. You should choose from the following:

A Yes = the statement agrees with the information in the passage

B No = the statement contradicts the information in the passage

C NOT GIVEN = there is no information on this in the passage

Productive postponement

It’s frustrating irony of the universe that the way to get something you really want is often not to want is so badly. Worry too hard about a task and the anxiety will prevent you performing your best: stop looking for love, goes the cliché, and that’s when you’ll find it. Try too hard to be happy and you’ll find yourself on a misery-inducing treadmill (单调的工作) of self-improvement efforts, contradictory advice and motivational seminars conducted by exceptionally dubious men in hotel ballrooms.

The solution is to “leg go” of worry, of seeking happiness. But implementing that advice is close to impossible: it’s a tall order just to stop feeling anxious or to stop wanting something you want. Mercifully, some authors offer a far more palatable alternative: instead of getting embroiled in trying to let go of thoughts and emotions that get in your way, postpone them instead.

Understandably, putting things off has often been considered as undesirable: see the bestseller Excuse Me, Your Life Is Waiting and similar warnings not to “postpone your dreams”. But there’s a flipside – a technique you might call productive postponement. The psychiatrist Robert Leahy, for example, recommends “worry postponement”; writing down your worrier as they arise, and scheduling time to fret. It sounds strange, but there’s research evidence for it, and logic: we worriers derive huge payoffs from worrying – we believe, on some level, that it makes things go better – and so the idea of giving if up can be terrifying. Just putting it off, safe in the knowledge that you can return to it later, is easier. (If you’re worried you’ll forget to worry, consider an email reminder service, and if worrying you’ll forget to worry strikes you as absurd, well. consider yourself lucky and welcome to my world.)

Psychotherapists call techniques such as postponement “metacognitive”, meaning that they make you aware of your habitual thought processes, and therefore work more lastingly than, say, trying to relieve a particular worry by addressing its specific content. Postponement works with perfectionism, too. If you can’t get rid of the notion that some task must be done perfectly, can you suspend that requirement just for now, resolving to revert to your perfectionism at some predetermined point in the near future? The essayist Anne Lamott, in her book Bird By Bird, calls this the principle of “shitty first drafts”. but, like so much of her counsel, it applies beyond writing.

Not

Yes

No

given

39

The more we try to get something, the more difficult if becomes.

[A]   [B]    [C]

40

It is advisable to give up what we are looking for.

[A]   [B]    [C]

41

Temporarily postponing things may be a good way to get what we want.

[A]   [B]    [C]

42

If you forget your worries. They will disappear.

[A]   [B]    [C]

43

Most people forget about their worries if they postpone worrying about them.

[A]   [B]    [C]

44

If you want to do things perfectly, you have to postpone.

[A]   [B]    [C]

45

Sometimes things can be done better when postponed.

[A]   [B]    [C]

 

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