Grammar
● Use the words and phrases separated by slashes and add the missing words to make complete sentences about GE, based on the article. Each slash indicates one missing word, and the words in brackets have to be put into their correct grammatical form. Write the whole sentence.
1 . Mr. Nayden (think) it / very important / customers should / (involve) / the process. ___________________________________________________________________________
2. Involvement / customers / extremely. ____________________________________ ___________________________________________________________________________
3
.
GE (use) / score card, where customers (show) what (need) (improve) /
what it / concentrate.
________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________
4 . GE Capital (question) / customers regularly – some / week, some / month, some / three months: / (depend) / their type / business – / order / check how it /(do). ______________
___________________________________________________________________________
Vocabulary
● Match the words to build new word combinations.
1) to break a) control
2) Japanese b) defects
3) moving c) quality management
4) real d) fundamentally
5) to reduce e) demanding
6) customer f) responsive
7) total g) part
8) to change h) down
9) to become i) service
10) quality j) methods
11) crucial k) parts
12) extremely 1) data
13) familiar m) control
14) demanding n) methods
15) high o) term
16) mobile p) precision
● Match these expressions to their definitions:
1
)
produced in large numbers
______________________________________________
2) the activity of achieving and maintaining high quality _______________________
3) a goal that is difficult to reach ___________________________________________
4) a phone you can use anywhere ___________________________________________
5) extremely accurate ____________________________________________________
6) a word you know and understand _________________________________________
7) the way they do things in Japan___________________________________________
● Read the text.
Innovations from the home of Karaoke
In 1971, Daisuke Inoue, an amateur electron (electric organ) player at a Kobe club whose speciality was accompanying singing customers was asked to go to a year-end office party to play for one of the club’s regular customers.
Instead of going to the party, Mr. Inoue recorded a taped accompaniment. He later founded a company, Crescent, which rented to clubs in the Kobe area tapes of popular song accompaniments and speaker boxes equipped with echo devices designed to make the singer voice sound better
From this, karaoke (literally “empty orchestra”) became a household word in Japan and the world. Surprisingly, Inoue now runs a company which makes insect traps but it was Crescent which provided the seed from which karaoke was born, though it took others to introduce many improvements to the system.
Sharp, an Osaka-based electronics manufacturer, represents a very different model of Kansai innovation. Founded in 1915 to make propelling pencils, it built Japan’s first mass-production radio receiver in 1925, its first television set in 1953, and in late 1960s, became the first Japanese company to market electronic calculators, beating Tokyo’s Casio Computer Company.
The company’s main strength is liquid crystal display technology used, for example, in the LCD Viewcam, a video camera. As a technological leader in consumer electronics, Sharp has a record which bears comparison with household names from the neighbouring Kanto region – and a history that goes further back than any of its Kanto competitors.
Tatsuo Yamamoto, director general of the Kansai New Business Conference, is certain the Kansai region can and will produce more Sharps, but he recognises a big problem: as is the case in Kanto, innovation in the financial sector has failed to keep up with progress in manufacturing and services.
To encourage a more risk-oriented attitude among investors, and to introduce the idea of business “angels”, his group hopes to open a venture university which would offer courses for wealthy individuals on how to invest in emerging companies. If it materialises, Mr. Yamamoto’s plan will be yet another example of Kansai setting a trend that the rest of Japan might want to follow.
From the Financial Times
● What do these figures refer to?
1) 1925 ______________________
2) 1953 ______________________
3) 1971 ______________________
4) 1960s _____________________