Part 1
You will hear a telephone conversation between Rose Kelly and an agent at a home cleaning agency.
Agent: Good morning, Home Care Cleaning Agency.
Rose Kelly: Oh, hello. I'd like to arrange to have some cleaning done, please.
Agent: Certainly. Have you used our services before?
Rose Kelly: No, I haven't, but a friend of mine has often used your company and suggested I phone you.
Agent: Oh, that's great. I'll just take some details from you and then you can let me know exactly what you would like done.
Rose Kelly: Okay.
Agent: First of all, what area are you in?
Rose Kelly: I'm in the southwest.
Agent: Okay, and are you interested in having a regular cleaner or is this a one-off clean?
Rose Kelly: No, I'd like to arrange to have someone come in once a week.
Agent: Right. Now, let's just get a bit of information about the house. How many bedrooms does it have?
Rose Kelly: Three.
Agent: Are they all double bedrooms?
Rose Kelly: Well, one of the bedrooms is quite small, so it's probably really two double rooms.
Agent: Right. We have the small bedroom set up as an office. Okay. And just a standard kitchen, lounge, dining room and bathroom?
Rose Kelly: Well, actually, we don't have a separate dining room. It's a kitchen diner. Then there's the lounge, and as well as that, we have a family room. Oh, and two bathrooms.
Agent: Okay. That's all I need to know about the house itself. Now, what we do is we offer a basic cleaning service and then you let us know about anything extra you'd like cleaned.
Rose Kelly: Right. And what does the basic service include?
Agent: We clean all the floors and surfaces and do a basic clean in the kitchen and bathroom.
Rose Kelly: Okay, that sounds good. And do you clean windows?
Agent: Well, I'm afraid we don't do that, the health and safety regulations, but we do offer other special services. We can put clean sheets on the beds, for example.
Rose Kelly: Uh-huh.
Agent: Or we can clean out your fridge. A lot of people like that done.
Rose Kelly: I'm not so worried about that, but I would like the sheets changed.
Agent: That's no problem. We can do that. What about the carpet? As well as the standard vacuum, we can shampoo it if you want.
Rose Kelly: Right. We've got young children, so it gets pretty dirty. I haven't had it done for six months.
Agent: It really needs doing more often than that. You can have it done every month if you like, but three months is what we usually recommend.
Rose Kelly: That sounds good. The only other thing is the washing. Do you do laundry work?
Agent: Yes, we do. That's no problem. What exactly would you like done?
Rose Kelly: Well, it's no problem to put a load of washing in the machine. I can do that, but I would like to have the ironing done.
Agent: That's fine. And would you like the washing put away in drawers or wardrobes?
Rose Kelly: No, it's okay. You can just leave everything out and fold it up.
Agent: Okay, right. Now, I'll just set up an account for you and I'll take down some of your details. First of all, what's your full name?
Rose Kelly: It's Rose Kelly.
Agent: And could I have your home address, please, Mrs. Kelly?
Rose Kelly: Yes. It's 48 Amyes Road. That's A-M-Y-E-S. And that's in Mount Eden.
Agent: Okay. Now, what day of the week would you like the property cleaned?
Rose Kelly: It doesn't really matter. Not Monday, but any other day.
Agent: Okay, let's see. We have a cleaner in your area later on Thursday, so shall we go for that day? We could have someone there by about 9:30 in the morning. Does that suit you?
Rose Kelly: Yes, that's fine. And do you charge an hourly rate or a total for the whole job?
Agent: No, we charge by the hour. It will work out to about $25 per hour.
Rose Kelly: Oh, that's quite reasonable. I thought it might be closer to $30. And how long do you expect it to take?
Agent: Well, you said the house isn't large, so I'd guess no more than three hours at the most. We can occasionally finish a three-bedroom in two and a half, but that's probably not too realistic.
Rose Kelly: Right, that sounds good.
Agent: Okay, that's lovely. Thank you very much and we'll have someone there next week.
Rose Kelly: Thank you.
Part 2
A museum guide introduces the museum and its galleries to a group of visitors.
Guide: Okay. Well, first of all, I'll give you a bit of background to the museum and then tell you about some of the galleries. You probably won't have time to see everything today, so what I recommend you do is go to the Egyptian room first because it's everyone's favorite place and it gets very crowded with the school parties later in the day.
Guide: Oh, and I should mention that the photography gallery is undergoing refurbishment at the moment, so while that's definitely worth seeing, it'll have to wait for another time. Now, the actual museum building itself is quite interesting. It was designed by a local architect called William Craven in the 19th century, at a time when the city was developing rapidly with new factories to cope with the expansion of the textile industry.
Guide: The museum's built in a very similar style to the railway station which was constructed at around the same time. That was designed by another architect, but William Craven did also provide the plans for the town hall, which was built just a few years later. Construction of the museum began in 1888 with a large team of carpenters, stonemasons, and builders.
Guide: Then in recent years, it's been extensively refurbished. The lovely big windows have been retained to let the daylight flood in, but the award-winning part of the project was the restoration of the area around the central hall — in particular, the beautiful wrought iron staircase which was brought back to its former glory. Unfortunately, the museum's original tiled floor had to be replaced with new tiles of a similar design.
Guide: It was a very expensive project and since we don't charge admission fees, we had to find other ways of funding it. We did get some money from the Department of Culture at national level, but we had even more generous support from companies and industries here in the city who were our main benefactors. However, we do also depend on donations from people living in the area for the ongoing maintenance of the building.
Guide: So, how will the museum mainly be spending its money in the next five years? We already work with schools and colleges helping people get a better understanding of all the creative disciplines. We consider the most important part of our work the restoration of the valuable historical objects we are lucky enough to have in our possession, and this will continue to be where the most funding is allocated. Of course, it would be wonderful to purchase new objects for the museum, but we simply don't have the space at the moment.
Guide: Well, we do hope you enjoy your day today, but if you would like to learn more about our exhibits on display here, I suggest you come to one of the Saturday morning lectures which are given every month by one of our team of experts. Of course, you can pick up leaflets about the exhibits in most of the galleries too, but you'll only get a basic introduction from those. We're also working to update our website so that it provides more background on the exhibits, but that's still at the planning stage.
Guide: Okay. Now, let me just tell you a bit about what's on at the moment. Well, we're very well known for our collection of 18th century paintings, both oils and watercolors. Some of these are English landscapes and portraits, but we also have paintings by other European artists who were working during this period.
Guide: If you're interested in art that's a bit nearer home, the Farnley collection is a set of drawings by Paul Farnley. He was born in Ireland, but he came to work here in the city in the early 20th century and then made it his home. He worked in a factory but spent his spare time drawing the buildings and urban landscape of the city, and his work has now been collected and displayed here.
Guide: On a more practical note, we have a display of kitchen appliances which might interest you. These are the sorts of things you wouldn't normally expect to see in a museum. There's an electric potato peeler from the 1970s which sold really well at the time, but no one's got one now. There are lots of other similar appliances which must have seemed like great ideas at the time, but which never took off.
Guide: You might also like to visit the fashion gallery. This is an exhibition which is running for the next few weeks only and shows men's and women's fashion from 1900 to 2000, including some of the famous designers of the time. Okay, so if anyone's got any questions, follow me over.
Part 3
A student, Sam, discusses a report on theoretical business tools with a tutor, Francis.
Sam: Hi Francis.
Francis: Hi Sam. So, how did you go with applying the different theoretical business tools for the report I asked you to write?
Sam: It was interesting and made us really focus on which tool was best to use when analyzing a business.
Francis: Good. So, tell me what you found out.
Sam: We liked the theory behind PEST analysis. That's political, economic, social, and technological. Although we're not sure if it was very applicable to our case. Some of the other groups had studies for which it worked really well and they said it was easy to use, but I felt it focused too much on the big picture and was unsuitable for our company.
Francis: I agree. On the other hand, I enjoyed using the drill-down method. It was painstaking to do and we seemed to be working on it for ages, but the results were worth waiting for.
Sam: Yes, I liked the way it eventually broke down complex problems.
Francis: Yes, I much preferred doing the PMI analysis. It was so straightforward to break down into its three components — plus, minus, and interesting implications. You just needed to brainstorm these components and then write them up, fast and effective, and it didn't make your brain hurt doing it.
Sam: I agree, and you don't need any special training at all. Anyone can use it.
Francis: Hmm. So, was there any tool that you thought was superior to the others?
Sam: In my opinion, the one tool that is critical to business, especially for larger companies, is Pareto analysis. If they applied Pareto analysis, they would see that by focusing on the critical 20% of their problems, they could generate 80% of the benefits. This would allow them to work faster and it also reduces their workload. It's all about finding out what their basic problems are.
Francis: I agree with Sam about Pareto, but my favorite was the SWOT analysis — you know, looking at the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats — as it can be used in so many different situations. It works in large and small companies and even down to departmental level. It was great for our case study.
Sam: Yes, that's true.
Francis: Okay. I've read your draft report, but can you tell me a bit more about that company you focused on?
Sam: Well, the company we used in our study was a manufacturing company who have relied on distributors to take their product to the end user. We did some analysis examining the possibility of them distributing their own products. We initially looked at their strengths. The company, although it is small, is well known and has a very good reputation. The management are very committed to increasing the company profits and they are confident this move would be successful.
Francis: Right. And the company has quite a lot of staff who have previously worked for distribution companies, so the knowledge is already there.
Sam: That was something we didn't expect to find and is probably going to help them the most to achieve their goals.
Francis: I was quite impressed by some of the opportunities you detailed. I did think you missed something quite pertinent to their future growth, however.
Sam: What was that?
Francis: You didn't consider the potential for establishing an offshore division. You talked about the company negotiating better terms with its suppliers. Most of these are based abroad, and so if the company had a way of actually distributing the product there, this could be a tremendous opportunity and give them an edge over their competitors.
Sam: That's a good point.
Francis: So, what did you think about the threats we identified?
Sam: I thought you did a good job. I was really pleased to see that you considered how the government's planned environmental policy could really affect the viability of this venture. With this law being introduced next year, they might need to find new ways of using their existing technology. It's easy to identify what your competitors are doing, but it's the bigger picture that often gets ignored.
Francis: So, Sam, what did you learn from this assignment?
Sam: Heaps. I guess I hadn't realized how much time it takes to ensure your company survives and profits. It was great to study the different tools in books, but applying them in the real world was much harder than I thought. It was a great learning experience.
Francis: I'm glad I could make your assignment relevant. I'm basically happy with your report. You've got the format correct with the necessary headings, etc., and you've got sufficient details under the different headings. Just remember to state whether or not you think the company should go ahead with the new venture. But you've done a good job so far.
Part 4
A presenter gives an overview of a research project on what happens to students after they graduate.
Presenter: I'd like to give you a brief overview of a research project I've been working on as part of a team of four. We wanted to get some data on what happens to students after they graduate and also find out how useful they felt their degree course was to them. We focused on graduates from the course in business management, since this is one of the most popular and long-established courses.
Presenter: We decided to use two different data-gathering methods. We started off by emailing a brief questionnaire to all last year's graduates from that course, and then we selected a number of those who had replied, and with them we carried out phone interviews. We'd originally intended to use face-to-face interviews, but didn't feel that would be practical. In fact, we found this method provided a combination of wide coverage and depth, which is what we wanted.
Presenter: So, what did we find? Well, I suppose our most surprising finding was just how many graduates had gone on to work towards an additional qualification, rather than getting a job immediately — that was 32%, almost a third. Of the rest, a very small proportion were unemployed, just 4%, and all the rest were in employment. More than half of them were in the public sector, with a sizable minority in the private sector, and a small number in the not-for-profit sector.
Presenter: We were also interested in the attitudes of those who were employed towards their work. The majority said that their expectations had been fulfilled. They were generally satisfied in terms of their salary, and also happy with their prospects for career development, with very few of them feeling that they were in a dead-end job with no prospects of promotion.
Presenter: For the second main part of our research, we wanted to get some feedback from the graduates on how useful they felt their degree course had been to them. There were really three main skills which the graduates felt they'd gained from doing the course and identified as having been the most valuable to them: the ability to work as members of a team, personal organization (things like meeting deadlines and time management), and approaches to problem solving.
Presenter: We also asked them about which elements of the course had been least valuable to them. To our surprise, the thing that was mentioned most often here was presentations — they hadn't enjoyed having to give these as part of their course, nor had they found it useful having to listen to those given by their fellow students, because they felt they weren't trained how to do it properly. The second thing that got very negative feedback was work on essay writing; most people thought this was unnecessary and that it would have been better to work on report writing. Finally, some respondents said that they would have liked more guidance on the best way to go about looking for a job.