1、TPO综合写作汇总文本TPO1ReadingIn the United States, employees typically work five days a week for eight hours each day. However, many employees want to work a four-day week and are willing to accept less pay in order to do so. A mandatory policy requiring companies to offer their employees the option of wor
2、king a four-day workweek for four-fifths (80 percent) of their normal pay would benefit the economy as a whole as well as the individual companies and the employees who decided to take the option. The shortened workweek would increase company profits because employees would feel more rested and aler
3、t, and as a result, they would make fewer costly errors in their work. Hiring more staff to ensure that the same amount of work would be accomplished would not result in additional payroll costs because four-day employees would only be paid 80 percent of the normal rate. In the end, companies would
4、have fewer overworked and error-prone employees for the same money, which would increase company profits. For the country as a whole, one of the primary benefits of offering this option to employees is that it would reduce unemployment rates. If many full-time employees started working fewer hours,
5、some of their workload would have to be shifted to others. Thus, for every four employees who went on an 80 percent week, a new employee could be hired at the 80 percent rate. Finally, the option of a four-day workweek would be better for individual employees. Employees who could afford a lower sala
6、ry in exchange for more free time could improve the quality of their lives by spending the extra time with their families, pursuing private interests, or enjoying leisure activities.ListeningOffering employees the option of a four-day workweek wont affect the company profits, economic conditions or
7、the lives of employees in the ways the reading suggests.First, offering a four-day workweek will probably force companies to spend more, possibly a lot more. Adding new workers means putting much more money into providing training and medical benefits. Remember the costs of things like health benefi
8、ts can be the same whether an employee works four days or five. And having more employees also requires more office space and more computers. These additional costs would quickly cut into company profits.Second, with respect to overall employment, it doesnt follow that once some employees choose a f
9、our-day work week, many more jobs will become available. Hiring new workers is costly, as I argued a moment ago. And companies have other options. They might just choose to ask their employees to work overtime to make up the difference. Worse, companies might raise expectations. They might start to
10、expect that their four-day employees can do the same amount of work they used to do in five days. If this happens, then no additional jobs will be created and current jobs will become more unpleasant.Finally, while a four-day workweek offers employees more free time to invest in their personal lives
11、, it also presents some risks that could end up reducing their quality of life. Working a shorter week can decrease employees job stability and harm their chances for advancing their careers. Four-day employees are likely to be the first to lose their jobs during an economic downturn. They may also
12、be passed over for promotions because companies might prefer to have five-day employees in management positions to ensure continuous coverage and consistent supervision for the entire workweek.TPO2ReadingIn many organizations, perhaps the best way to approach certain new projects is to assemble a gr
13、oup of people into a team. Having a team of people attack a project offers several advantages. First of all, a group of people has a wider range of knowledge,expertise, and skills than any single individual is likely to possess. Also, because of the numbers of people involved and the greater resourc
14、es they possess, a group can work more quickly in response to the task assigned to it and can come up with highly creative solutions to problems and issues. Sometimes these creative solutions come about because a group is more likely to make risky decisions that an individual might not undertake. Th
15、is is because the group spreads responsibility for a decision to all the members and thus no single individual can be held accountable if the decision turns out to be wrong. Taking part in a group process can be very rewarding for members of the team. Team members who have a voice in making a decisi
16、on will no doubt feel better about carrying out the work that is entailed by the decision than they might doing work that is imposed on them by others. Also, the individual team member has a much better chance to “shine”, to get his or her contributions and ideas not only recognized but recognized a
17、s highly significant, because a teams overall results can be more far-reaching and have greater impact than what might have otherwise been possible for the person to accomplish or contribute working alone.ListeningNow I want to tell you about what one company found when it decided that it would turn
18、 over some of its new projects to teams of people, and make the team responsible for planning the projects and getting the work done. After about six months, the company took a look at how well the teams performed.On virtually every team, some members got almost a free ride they didnt contribute muc
19、h at all, but if their team did a good job, they nevertheless benefited from the recognition the team got. And what about group members who worked especially well and who provided a lot of insight on problems and issues? Well, the recognition for a job well done went to the group as a whole, no name
20、s were named. So it wont surprise you to learn that when the real contributors were asked how they felt about the group process, their attitude was just the opposite of what the reading predicts.Another finding was that some projects just didnt move very quickly. Why? Because it took so long to reac
21、h consensus; it took many, many meetings to build the agreement among group members about how they would move the project along. On the other hand, there were other instances where one or two people managed to become very influential over what their group did. Sometimes when those influencers said T
22、hat will never work about an idea the group was developing, the idea was quickly dropped instead of being further discussed. And then there was another occasion when a couple influencers convinced the group that a plan of theirs was highly creative. And even though some members tried to warn the res
23、t of the group that the project was moving in directions that might not work, they were basically ignored by other group members. Can you guess the ending to this story? When the project failed, the blame was placed on all the members of the group.TPO3ReadingRembrandt is the most famous of the seven
24、teenth-century Dutch painters. However, there are doubts whether some paintings attributed to Rembrandt were actually painted by him. One such painting is known as Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet. The painting was attributed to Rembrandt because of its style, and indeed the representa
25、tion of the womans face is very much like that of portraits known to be by Rembrandt. But there are problems with the painting that suggest it could not be a work by Rembrandt.First, there is something inconsistent about the way the woman in the portrait is dressed. She is wearing a white linen cap
26、of a kind that only servants would wear-yet the coat she is wearing has a luxurious fur collar that no servant could afford. Rembrandt, who was known for his attention to the details of his subjects clothing, would not have been guilty of such an inconsistency.Second, Rembrandt was a master of paint
27、ing light and shadow, but in this painting these elements do not fit together. The face appears to be illuminated by light reflected onto it from below. But below the face is the dark fur collar, which would absorb light rather than reflect it. So the face should appear partially in shadow-which is
28、not how it appears. Rembrandt would never have made such an error.Finally, examination of the back of the painting reveals that it was painted on a panel made of several pieces of wood glued together. Although Rembrandt often painted on wood panels, no painting known to be by Rembrandt uses a panel
29、glued together in this way from several pieces of wood.For these reasons the painting was removed from the official catalog of Rembrandts paintings in the 1930s.ListeningEverything you just read about Portrait of an Elderly Woman in a White Bonnet is true, and yet after a thorough re-examination of
30、the painting, a panel of experts has recently concluded that its indeed a work by Rembrandt. Here is why.First, the fur collar. X-rays and analysis of the pigments in the paint have shown that the fur collar wasnt part of the original painting. The fur collar was painted over the top of the original
31、 painting about a hundred years after the painting was made. Why? Someone probably wanted to increase the value of the painting by making it look like a formal portrait of an aristocratic lady.Second, the supposed error with light and shadow. Once the paint of the added fur color was removed, the or
32、iginal painting could be seen. In the original painting, the woman is wearing a simple collar of light-colored cloth. The light-colored cloth of this collar reflects light that illuminates part of the womans face. Thats why the face is not in partial shadow. So in the original painting, light and sh
33、adow are very realistic and just what we would expect from Rembrandt.Finally, the wood panel. It turns out that when the fur collar was added, the wood panel was also enlarged with extra wood pieces glued to the sides and the top to make the painting more grand and more valuable. So the original painting is actually p
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