10 клас аудіювання

Listening Comprehension Test for 10^th Form Students

This story is about love and loss. I was lucky – I found what I loved to do early in life. We started Apple in my parents’ garage when I was 20. We worked hard, and in 10 years Apple had grown from just the two of us in a garage into a $2 billion company with over 4000 employees. We had just released our finest creation – the Macintosh – a year earlier, and I had just turned 30. And then I got fired. How can you get fired from a company you started? Well, as Apple grew we hired someone who I thought was very talented to run the company with me, and for the first year or so things went well. But then our visions of the future began to diverge and eventually we had a falling out. When we did, our Board of Directors sided with him. So at 30 I was out. And very publicly out. What had been the focus of my entire adult life was gone, and it was devastating.

            I really did not know what to do for a few months. I felt that I had let the previous generation of entrepreneurs down – that I had dropped the baton as it was being passed to me. I met with David Packard and Bob Noyce and tried to apologize for screwing up so badly. I was a very public failure, and I even thought about running away. But something slowly began to down on me – I still loved what I did. The turn of events at Apple had got changed that bit. I had been rejected but I was still in love. And so I decided to start over.

            I did not see it then, but it turned out that getting fired from Apple was the best thing that could have ever happened to me. The heaviness of being successful was replaced by the lightness of being a beginner again, less sure about everything. It freed me to enter one of the most creative periods of my life.

            During the next five years, I started a company named NeXT, another company named Pixar, and fell in love with an amazing woman who would become my wife. Pixar went to create the world’s first  computer animated feature film, Toy Story, and is now the most successful animation studio in the world. In a remarkable turn of events, Apple bought NeXT, I returned to Apple, and the technology we developed at NeXT is at the heart of Apple’s current reinaissance. And Laurene and I have a wonderful family together.

            I am pretty sure none of this would have happened if I hadn’t been fired from Apple. It was awful tasting medicine, but I guess the patient needed it. Sometimes life hits you in the head with a brick. Don’t lose faith. I’m convinced that the only thing that kept me going was that I loved what I did. You’ve got to find what you love. And that is true for your work as it is for your lovers. Your work is going to fill a large part of your life, and the only way to be truly satisfied is to do what you believe is great work. And the only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it. And like any great relationship, it just gets better and better as the years roll on. So keep looking until you find it. Don’t settle. 

Listening Comprehension Test for 10^th Form Students               Assignments

Task 1.  Put “+”  if the statement is true, put “–“ if it is false.

1. The narrator is probably connected with growing or selling apples.

2. The business seemed to be quite profitable.

3. The person telling the story had to retire at an early age.

4. There always was a complete unity of opinion in the company.

5. One of the events in the company became widely known all over.

6. The narrator eventually lost the sense of life.

7. It is easier to start something new than to run something existing.

8. The firing brought the narrator more good than evil.

9. The narrator was one of the fathers of a new technology.

10. As a whole, the story is rather discouraging.

Task 2. Circle the correct letter A, B, C or D

11. The narrator started his own business:

A. alone    B. with a friend    C. with 20 workers   D. with 4000 workers

12. As his best creation the narrator views:

A. a sort of fruit   B. a sort of garage     C. A sort of computer    D. a sort of raincoat

13. The conflict between the narrator and the management was growing for about:

A.  10 months    B. 12 months     C.  10 years    D. 30 years

14. The narrator must have felt somehow:

A. guilty   B. proud    C. surprised   D. encouraged

15. The narrator’s resignation must have received:

A.  a big press   B. a great failure   C. a great support   D. little attention

16. The narrator was considering:

A. starting another business                       B. returning to the old company

C.  inventing a new technology                 D. moving somewhere else to live

17. The narrator regarded getting fore from the business as:

A. the saddest event                                B. the complete crash of dreams  

 C. his own fault                                      D. a lucky chance

18. It can be inferred from the story that:

A. a failure is always good                                       B. life is always unfair  

C. owing a big business is very hard                        D. it is good to let the people down

19. What does the narrator feel about his personal life?

A. He was happy.   B. He was indifferent.  C. He was upset.   D. He was furious.

20. The story can let one believe that the narrator is:

A. trying to accept being guilty.                             B. not interested in his future

C. currently working in his original company        D.  looking for a new job.