Table of Contents
BEST IELTS General Reading Test 465
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST 465 – PASSAGE – 3
IELTS GENERAL READING TEST – 465
READING PASSAGE – 3
Why you Hate work
The way we’re working isn’t working. Even if you’re lucky enough to have a job, you’re probably not very excited to get to the office in the morning, you don’t feel much appreciated while you’re there, you find it difficult to get your most important work accomplished, amid all the distractions, and you don’t believe that what you’re doing makes much of a difference anyway. By the time you get home, you’re pretty much running on empty, and yet still answering emails until you fall asleep. Increasingly, this experience is common not just to middle managers, but also to top executives.
Demand for our time is increasingly exceeding our capacity-draining us of the energy we need to bring our skill and talent fully to life. Increased competitiveness and a leaner, post-recession work force add to the pressures. The rise of digital technology is perhaps the biggest influence, exposing us to an unprecedented flood of information and requests that we feel compelled to read and respond to at all hours of the day and night.
IELTS General Reading Test
Curious to understand what most influences people’s engagement and productivity at work, a survey was conducted of more than 12,000 mostly white-collar employees across a broad range of companies and industries.
We also gave the survey to employees at two other companies- one a manufacturing company with 6,000 employees, the other a financial services company with 2,500 employees. The results were remarkably similar across all three populations.
Employees are vastly more satisfied and productive, it turns out, when four of their core needs are met: physical, through opportunities to regularly renew and recharge at work; emotional, by feeling valued and appreciated for their contributions; mental, when they have the opportunity to focus in an absorbed way on their most important tasks and define when and where they get their work done; and spiritual, by doing more of what they do best and enjoy most, and by feeling connected to a higher purpose at work.
IELTS General Reading Test
The more effectively leaders and organizations support employees in meeting these core needs, the more likely the employees are to experience engagement, loyalty, job satisfaction and positive energy at work, and the lower their perceived levels of stress. When employees have one need met, compared with none, all of their performance variables improve. The more needs met, the more positive the impact.
Questions 27-33
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the text for each answer.
27. The feeling of lack of excitement at work is common to both middle managers and ……………………..
28. The biggest influence on demand for our time has been the rise of ……………………..
29. The rise of digital technology is perhaps the ……………… influence
30. The survey mentioned in the passage included 12000 primarily …………………….. employees.
31. The four core needs of employees are physical, …………………….. mental and spiritual.
32. Feeling connected to a higher purpose at work satisfies an employee’s ……………….. needs.
33. Even if one of the employees’ needs is met, their …………………….. improve.
IELTS General Reading Test
Read the text below and answer Questions 34-40.
Why Google doesn’t care about college degrees?
Google isn’t big on college degrees, although the search giant is inundated with applicants touting perfect GPAs from Ivy League schools. Google’s chairman and head of hiring, Laszlo Bock, has given a few insights on how he sorts through a multitude of bright applicants. The upshot is that Google values the skills and experiences that candidates get in college, but a degree doesn’t tell them much about talent or grit. You don’t need a college degree to be talented. “When you look at people who don’t go to school and make their way in the world, those are exceptional human beings. And we should do everything we can to find those people,” Bock said.
IELTS General Reading Test
Many businesses “require” a college degree; at Google, the word “college” isn’t even its official guide to hiring. With the rise of self-paced college courses and vocational learning, plenty of driven people can teach themselves all of the necessary skills to work at the company. The crucial thing is to demonstrate a skill, not an expertise.
College degrees are, almost by definition, a certificate of expertise. A degree in journalism is a giant badge meant to tell the world that you know at least a little bit about the trade of telling stories and interviewing people. But a degree really doesn’t say what a graduate can do. Can they present an idea in front of a crowd? Can they build a website? Can they think interestingly about problems, or did they just pass some tests?
IELTS General Reading Test
Logic is learned, and stats are super important. Logical thinking goes way beyond programming. For instance, back in 2010, Facebook put up a blog post claiming that political candidates with more fans were more likely to win their race, implying that getting more Facebook fans would improve their chances. In no uncertain terms, this was a phenomenally bad argument.
Maybe candidates who were already more popular just happened to have more fans. And what about candidates with fewer fans that won their races? In these cases, why did fans not matter? The Facebook employees who ran the statistics understood some basic logic, but they didn’t demonstrate analytical thinking. Sifting through data requires training in the latest techniques for understanding causality and creatively exploring patterns.
IELTS General Reading Test
For some people, college is just really easy. A college degree can’t tell Google whether an applicant is naturally smart or is a hard worker. Apparently, Google would rather mold someone with grit rather than someone who is a lazy high-achiever. So, if you go to college, focus on skills. Both Bock and Schmidt are adamant that most people should go to college but that skills and experience are more important than the stamp of expertise.
Bock says Google is looking for the kinds of projects candidates completed or what they accomplished at an internship. If you want a job at Google (or some other prestigious company), don’t focus so much on your major, and make sure you graduate with all the skills and experiences you need to do awesome things in the world.
IELTS General Reading Test
Questions 34-40
Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS AND/OR A NUMBER from the text for each answer.
More than college degrees, Google values (34)……………………… and (35)………………………
36. It is possible today for sufficiently motivated people to teach themselves all the necessary skills by making use of self-paced college courses and ………………….
37. College degrees are invariably a certificate of ………………….
38. According to the Facebook post mentioned in the passage, political candidates could boost their chances of election by getting more ………………….
39. A college degree cannot help one ascertain whether a candidate is naturally smart or ………………….
40. If you do go to college, focus on acquiring …………………. and not just gathering expertise.
IELTS General Reading Test
IELTS General Reading Test
ANSWERS
27. TOP EXECUTIVES
28. DIGITAL TECHNOLOGY
29. BIGGEST
30. WHITE-COLLAR
31. EMOTIONAL
32. SPIRITUAL
33. PERFORMANCE VARIABLES
34. SKILLS
35. EXPERIENCE
36. VOCATIONAL LEARNING
37. EXPERTISE
38. FACEBOOK FANS
39. HARD-WORKING
40. SKILLS
IELTS General Reading Test