8. Confusing words – 1
Choose the correct word for each sentence.
Note: Answer is the one that underlined.
- She works for an advertisement/advertisingagency.
- How will the increase in interest rates affect/effect your sales?
- My bank manager has agreed to borrow/lendme another $2,000.
- We’ve had to cancel/postponethe meeting until next Monday.
- These machines are controlled/inspected at least once a day.
- My plane was delayed/postponed by an hour due to computer failure.
- Before coming here, I studied economics/economy at university.
- I am interested/interesting in their new camera.
- She applied for a job/work as a personnel officer.
- Some employees have a long journey/travel to work every day.
- The cost of life/livinghas gone up again.
- Please send precise measurements/measures when ordering.
- We expect prices to raise/rise by at least five percent.
- We only exchange goods if you produce a receipt/recipe.
- I must remember/remindthe boss about that meeting this afternoon.
- Can you say/tellthe difference between these two products?
- The company is extremely sensible/sensitiveto any criticism.
- There’s some more paper in the stationary/stationerycupboard.
9. Banking Services
Fill each blank in the text with the correct word or
phrase. Choose from the following list. Use each item once only.
commission issued statement credit
rating
debited outstanding withdraw credit
transfer
in
full salaries banker’s
draft financial
institutions
interest slip cash
dispenser standing
order
Bank offers many services to business and their customers.
Here are some of the most common:
Many people now have a card which enables them to 1.
withdraw money from a 2. cash dispenser. You
feed your card into the machine and key in your PIN (personal identification
number) and the amount of money you want. If you have enough in your account,
the money requested will be 3.issuedup to a daily limit.
Your account is automatically 4. debited for the amount
you have drawn out.
Provided you have a sound 5.credit rating,you
can get a credit card from a bank and other 6. financial
institution. To obtain goods or services, you present your card
and sign a special voucher. When it receives the voucher, the credit card
company pays the trader (less a 7. commission) and then
send you a monthly 8. slip. Depending on the type of
card you have, you will either have to pay 9. in full or
be able to pay part of what is owed and pay 10. interest in
the balance left 11. statement.
If you need to make fixed payments at regular
intervals, e.g. for insurance premiums, you can arrange a 12. credit
transfer(sometimes known as a banker’s order) so that the bank will do
this for you.
If you have several bills to pay, you can do this by 13.
standing order . You write one cheque for the total sum involved,
fill in a 14. outstandingfor each bill and hand everything
to the bank cashier.
The transfer system is also used by employers to pay 15.
salaries directly into employees’ bank accounts.
If you are dealing with a supplier for the first time, a16.
banker’s draftmay be used as payment. This is a cheque guaranteed by a
bank and therefore it is not likely to ‘bounce’.
47. What’s the job?
Accountant Clerk Personnel Officer
Advertising Executive Computer Operator R&D
Manager
Assembly Person Draughts Person Receptionist
Chauffeur Motor Mechanic Sales Person
You will be in charge of a team of highly creative
individuals delivering new quality products and enhancing our existing range.
1. Personnel Officer
With particular responsibilities for recruitment and
selection. Communication skills and a pragmatic approach to problem solving
essential.
2. R&D Manager
With mechanical design experience to work as a member of a
team producing designs and drawings for production. Experience of our products
range is not essential.
3.Draught Person
Duties include filing, mailing, relief reception and other
general office work.
4. Receptionist
Needed for night shift. Clean modern factory. Varied work.
Good eyesight essential.
5. Assembly Person
Successful applicant will be articulate and presentable.
Remuneration includes retainer and car allowance plus commission structure.
6. Sales Person
Reporting directly to Managing Director. You will take over
financial control for all aspects of daily operation.
7. Accountant
Sober habits, clean driving licence, able to be on call 7
days per week at times. Uniform supplied.
8. Chauffeur
Must be experienced in the repair and maintenance of heavy
duty vehicles. References must be provided from previous employers.
9. Motor Mechanic
You are the first person our clients will meet so you need
to be friendly, stylish and efficient.
10. Clerk
Some experience in the above-mentioned software is essential
but training will be given to the successful applicant.
11. Computer Operator
You will be an essential member of an agency responsible for
some of the country’s top accounts. You will be responsible for the
administration of local and national promotions.
12. Advertising Executive
As you were reading the advertisements, did you notice
word partnerships such as financial control and communication
skills?
Look through the advertisements again and see how many
more you can find.
Complete each of the sentences below with a suitable word
partnership taken from the advertisements.
- We’re looking for new products to add to ourselling list.
- She’s an advertising executive of this team. We can’t do without her.
- You get more money if you work on the advertising company but it ruins your social life.
- He had a very good idea to solving problems.
- I didn’t get the job as a driver as I didn’t have a driving license.
- My concern are health and safety but I’m also concerned with the general welfare of employees.
ENGLISH ARTICLE
A shining example
Indonesia deserves great praise for its speedy transition
from autocracy, through chaos, to democracy
ONE thing sceptics say about democracy is that it is well
and good in orderly countries but impotent in the face of chaos. Three years
ago, a newly democratic Indonesia seemed about to prove the point. Separatist
and religious violence stalked the length of the archipelago; the rupiah was in
free-fall; politics had descended to a pitiable level of squabbling and
incompetence. The world's fourth most populous country, some foresaw, might
come apart like a string of pearls; or, almost as bad, avoid disintegration
only by the return of a brutal dictatorship such as that of Suharto, the
general who was ousted by huge street protests in 1998. The parallels with the
Balkans, where the fall of communism unleashed still greater horrors, seemed
disquietingly apt. Unlike the Balkans, however, Indonesia contains 220m people,
and is far and away the world's largest Muslim country: this would be chaos on
an epic scale. In October 2002, such fears suddenly bulked much larger, when
Islamist terrorists, linked to al-Qaeda, set off a bomb in Bali that killed
more than 200 people.
This week things look wonderfully different. On July 5th,
for the first time in their history, Indonesians voted to choose their
president. The final result will not be known until late September, since a
run-off between the two top candidates is now needed. But the election was
free, fair, peaceful and, above all, conducted in a spirit of moderation that
was remarkable in a country where democracy is only six years old. Megawati
Sukarnoputri, the incumbent, urged everyone to accept the result, whatever it
is, even though she seems unlikely to remain in office.
If she does go, it will not be for any great misdeed, but
because she is seen as having not been up to grappling with Indonesia's many
problems. It is true that she is no intellectual, and no administrator either.
But the verdict will be a little harsh. Her three years in office have been a
valuable time of consolidation. With the exception of the continuing conflict
in the province of Aceh, Indonesia is now more internally peaceful than seemed
imaginable when she took over. The terrorists have not been eradicated, but
they have been weakened by scores of arrests and a number of high-profile
trials: tentative at first, the government has become increasingly confident in
dealing with extremists. The improvement in economic stability has been almost
as remarkable. Indonesia is showing steady growth of 4-5% a year, has a booming
stockmarket and has won international praise for getting its government
finances back under control. It would be wrong to overstate any of this.
Indonesia is plagued by gigantic problems, high levels of corruption and of
poverty being the two worst. But at least these are not existential. Miss
Megawati has shown that Indonesia does not need a dictator as its president,
even if that president is no longer to be her.
The man most likely to take her place is a former general,
Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, who this week emerged well ahead in the first round
of voting, according to partial figures. Though he served under Mr Suharto, Mr
Susilo is regarded as untainted, and he has worked well for successive
democratic administrations. As a former security minister to Miss Megawati, he
gets much of the credit for talking down some of the conflicts that bedevilled
the early part of her term. If he has a weakness, it is that he has revealed
little about what policies he might adopt if elected, campaigning more by
exuding what appears to be a popular mixture of calmness, geniality and
competence—plus a reasonable singing voice.
Who and what he isn't
More important than what the front-runner is may be what he
is not. He is not, for instance, Wiranto, a much more controversial ex-general
who was up for election and who has been indicted for crimes against humanity
in East Timor. It seems that Indonesians, by a large margin, preferred a
moderate military man to a nationalist throwback, even though Mr Wiranto had
Indonesia's largest party behind him and Mr Susilo is backed by one he founded
only this year. Nor did they care much for Islamists: two were also on the
presidential ballot, but neither of them ever looked like making the run-off.
And both of these, it should be noted, were moderates, opposed to calls for
making Indonesia an Islamic state. Though there are plenty of groups that
demand the introduction of sharia Islamic law, none of them
was able to meet the minimal requirements for fielding a presidential
candidate.
Indonesia's example ought to put paid to the notion, still
common in the Muslim world and sometimes heard in the West, that democracy and
Islam can never co-exist. One might very well argue that it shows the contrary:
democracy is good for Islam. Whenever they are given a choice, Muslim
voters—not just in Indonesia, but in Malaysia, India, Pakistan and arguably
Turkey too—reject extremism. Once weighed in the democratic balance and found
wanting, the more militant groups tend to lose much of their potency and
support. It is the absence of democracy, as can been seen from Saudi Arabia to
Uzbekistan, that breeds terror and subversion, and taints the reputation of
what was once regarded as the most tolerant of religions. Malaysia is perhaps
the most striking example of this phenomenon: only when Mahathir Mohamad tipped
towards autocracy in the late 1990s did PAS, an Islamist party that
demands the introduction of stoning and amputation, come close to posing a
threat to secular government.
Even after this fine week for democracy, it would be
dangerous to assume that Indonesia will never return to chaos if the economy
sours, or if Mr Susilo fails too disgracefully in his stated aim of putting an
end to corruption. But perhaps there is a lesson in Indonesia's experience not
just for Islamic countries, but for one of Asia's other giants too. The party
men who run China like to argue that democracy is unsuited to a poor, sprawling
country that has no experience of it: chaos is what China's leaders say they
fear above all. But it does now seem that Indonesia—a polyglot rag-bag of
islands that emerged as a nation only through the accident of having been
collectively administered by the Dutch—has given the world a powerful
counter-example.
