2. Analyze grammar in the underlined words and word combinations (in writing).

2. Make up 5 questions of different types to the text (in writing). Text 19

1. Read and translate the text in writing.

Improving the Effectiveness of Business Communications

Business success depends on employees' ability to make decisions quickly and act on new information. "Sorry, I am not available, please leave a message," does not help. Worse, the caller has no idea when the recipient will be available to hear the message and reply.

Research on phone use shows that some business executives spend 2 hours each day leaving, listening to and responding to voicemail messages. The daily volume of messages from IM, e-mail, and voicemail affect worker productivity. It has become a cliché for busy managers to rush into the hallway following a meeting, call their office voicemail from their mobile phones, jot down names and phone numbers, and then prioritize call-backs. As calls are returned, too many result in new voicemail messages and new delays.

But presence capabilities on mobile phones change all that, especially in organizations in which people are motivated to reach one another to perform their jobs and keep business moving. Because mobility is closely aligned with productivity, employees who use mobile solutions such as presence increase their output and improve cycle time by eliminating bottlenecks in everyday communications.

Presence on mobile phones is a simple solution for employees who regularly use mobile phones for business purposes. In an enterprise, you can quickly identify communities of people who call each other regularly and rely on timely conversations to complete tasks and resolve issues. Even small improvements in their ability to reach one another can have significant benefits for the organization.

For example, a system that allows an employee to quickly see who is currently available from a mobile handset eliminates the need to dial multiple numbers using the trial-and-error method to reach a colleague. Instead, the employee can easily see who is available, and place a call to the appropriate person-no wasted calls, no time wasted leaving voicemail messages, and no wasted callbacks from other employees hours or days after the problem was resolved.

2. Analyze grammar in the underlined words and word combinations (in writing).

2. Make up 5 questions of different types to the text (in writing). Text 20

1. Read and translate the text in writing.

Telephone

The telephone has become the most widely used telecommunications device. Hundreds of millions of telephone sets are in use throughout the world. Each business day almost two billion telephone transmissions take place in the United States alone.

The word telephone, from the Greek roots tele, “far,” and phone, “sound,” was applied as early as the late 17th century to the string telephone familiar to children and was later used to refer to the megaphone and the speaking tube; but in modern usage it refers solely to electrical devices derived from the inventions of Alexander Graham Bell and others. The U.S. patent granted to Bell in March 1876 for the development of a device to transmit speech sounds over electric wires is often said to be the most valuable ever issued. The general concepts involved in the invention of the telephone—of speech sounds as a complex of vibrations in air that is transferable to solid bodies and of the convertibility of those vibrations to electrical impulses in conducting metals—had by then been understood for decades. Bell was but one of a number of workers racing to pull them together into a practical instrument for the transmission of speech. Within 20 years of the Bell patent, the telephone instrument, as modified by Thomas Watson, Emil Berliner, Thomas Edison, and others, acquired a form that has not changed fundamentally in a century. Since the invention of the transistor in 1947, metal wiring and other heavy hardware have been replaced by lightweight and compact microcircuitry.

Advances in electronics have improved the performance of the basic design, and they also have allowed the introduction of a number of “smart” features such as automatic redialing, call-number identification, and analog-to-digital conversion for transmission over digital circuits. Such advances supplement, but do not replace, the basic telephone design.