Speaking Test Part II

　　1. Customer Relations: the importance of making customers feel valued

　　2. Company growth: the importance to a company of controlling expansion

　　3. Marketing: how to ensure that agents maintain a high level of effectiveness when representing a company

　　4. Time Management: the importance of planning work time effectively

　　5. Project Development: how to ensure inter-departmental co-operation on new projects

　　6. Purchasing: how to evaluate and select new products

　　7. Personnel Management: the importance to a company of having well motivated staff

　　8. Strategic Planning: how to decide whether to purchase or rent company premises

　　9. Sales: how to ensure that price levels for new products are set appropriately

　　10. Communication Skills: the importance of foreign language training for selected employees

　　11. Advertising: how to select a suitable agency to handle a company’s advertising

　　12. Finance: how to decide whether to float a company on the stock-market

　　13. Marketing: the importance to a company of offering its products on the world-wide web

　　14. Staff Training: how to evaluate the effectiveness of company training programmes

　　15. Company Growth: how to decide when it is the right time for a business to expand

　　16. Public Relations: the importance to a company of sponsoring well-known personalities from the arts and popular culture

　　17. Recruitment: how to ensure that the best candidate for a post is selected

　　18. Information Management: how to analyse and make effective use of information

　　19. Sales: the importance of brand image in ensuring that products or services sell well

　　20. Technology: the importance to a company of keeping up-to-date with internet developments

　　21. Quality Control: how to ensure that a company consistently maintains quality control standards

　　22. Product Promotion: how to make effective use of the media when promoting a new product or service

　　23. Product Management: the importance of teamwork for the effective management of projects

　　24. Health and Safety: how to develop a responsible attitude among staff to the health and safety requirements of accompany

　　25. Technology: the importance of computer skills for the workplace of the future

　　26. Communications: how to ensure that e-mail is used appropriately by staff for internal and external communications

　　27. Staff Development: how to administer a staff budget effectively

　　28. Market Research: the importance of finding out about customers’ habits and attitudes

　　29. Financial Management: how to identify ways of reducing costs in a company

　　30. Communication: how to achieve an effective working relationship between different departments within a company

　　31. Communication skills: the importance of understanding cultural differences when working in an international environment

　　32. Personnel Management: the importance of providing employees with clear job descriptions

　　33. Company Growth: how to ensure that company growth proceeds at the optimum rate

　　34. Time Management: how to manage a heavy workload effectively

　　35. Health and Safety: the importance to a company of having a Health and Safety policy

　　36. Human Resources: how to ensure that staff at all levels receive appropriate feedback on individual performance

　　Samples（部分口语试题参考答案）

　　1、Customer Relations: how to maintain customer interest in a company’s products

　　As is know to all, it is very important for a company to maintain customer interest in their products. I think a company should try every possible way to retain its current customers.

　　First, it should always make sure that it provides its customers with quality goods and after-sales service. Second, it should lay enough emphasis on the feedback from its current customers and take prompt action to take care of their needs and demands. Third, if possible it may provide some incentives to its old customers. For example, it can grant a certain discount to them if their purchases reach a certain amount. Apart from all these, a company should design strategies to attract new customers and create transactions with them, to expand their customer base, so to speak. These strategies include product diversification and upgrading.

　　All in all, a company should try its utmost to keep its current customers satisfied with its products and services, and at the same time it should stay ahead of the market through product and pricing strategies.

　　2、How to fill a key vacancy

　　In order to fill a key vacancy, a company will usually follow the same standard procedure.

　　It will begin by producing an accurate job description of what it would like the successful candidate to do. From this, it can then produce a profile of this ideal candidate, which is a list of skills, experience, attributes and so on.

　　Having produced this profile, the company must then decide on the best recruitment method to capture a candidate with this profile. This might be an internal advertisement or an external advertisement in a newspaper, on the Internet say, even an agency or perhaps a headhunter.

　　Having decided on the best recruitment method, the advertisements are then placed or the headhunter contacted and a list of candidates will be then drawn up to be put through the company’s recruitment processes. This might be interviews, psychometric tests or even hand-writing analysis. This will then produce the ideal candidate for the company.

　　The company will then have to negotiate terms with this candidate and, hopefully, this will result in terms which are both affordable for the company and attractive enough to get the candidate they want.

　　Background Information

　　3、Career Planning: how to assess the career opportunities provided by different types of companies

　　Career Planning

　　Even after a job is offered and accepted, career decisions must be made. On-the-job experience may affect the desired path. Aspiring to achieve a position above the present position is natural. The planned career path to that position may involve either a series of promotions within the firm or switching to a different firm. While planning a career path is a useful motivator, the plans should be achievable. If everyone planned to be president of a company, most plans would not be achieved. This can cause frustration. A preferable career path would include short-term goals, since some ultimate goals may