Work in pairs. Think about personal qualities that can help a person to become successful on business. Complete the mind map.
13. Read the text and find out Bill Gates’ traits of character, which helped him to put policies into effect:
THE RICHEST MAN IN THE WORLD
Everyone has heard of Bill Gates, the idol of American business and the richest man in the world.
Microsoft, the business he started with a friend in 1975, has become the world’s largest computer software company.
Bill Gates was born on the 28th of October 1955 in Seattle, USA. Seattle was once famous for producing Boeing aircraft, but is now better known as the home of Microsoft. From his parents Bill got a good business sense and a quick mind. His father is a lawyer and his mother was a teacher and then a company director.
At school Bill soon showed that he was very intelligent. His favourite subjects were Maths and Science. At 13 he got interested in computers. Bill Gates and his friend Paul Allen were soon spending all their time writing programmes and learning about computers instead of doing their homework.
After finishing school in 1973, Bill went to Harvard, America’s most famous university. Most of the time, he worked on the computer in the university laboratory. The next year, he and Paul Allen wrote an operation programme for the Altair, one of the world’s first microcomputers. Bill knew, even then, that he would revolutionize the world of computing and he left Harvard before finishing his studies.
The two friends started Microsoft in 1975 and very soon it became a business success. In 1980, Gates bought a small company which produced an operating system called DOS. He made some changes to it and renamed in MSDOS. He sold the right to use this system to IBM. Since 1980 MSDOS has been the standard operating system for all PCs. Microsoft has also developed such well-known programs as Windows, Excel and Internet Explorer. Bill’s dream is to computerize everything – TVs, telephones, lights, even the way you cook dinner.
One reason for his success is that Bill has always been very ambitious and hard-working. This hasn’t left much time for a normal personal life, but in 1994 he married Melinda French, a Microsoft employee. The couple has two children: a daughter and a son. Bill Gates wrote two books, The Road Ahead and Business and the Speed of Thought. Both books are best-sellers. Bill hasn’t got much free time but when he has a chance he likes to play golf and bridge. He is also fond of reading about science.
For such a rich person his life is simple, and he spends very little on himself. When it comes to helping others, Gates is very generous.
14. Summarize all the qualities that are necessary for a good entrepreneur and writea recipe of a successful businessman:
a) List the verbs which are used for describing cooking
b) Think about the structure of a typical recipe.
15. Read the text:
Henryk Metelski was born on the Lower East Side of New York on May 17th, 1909, in a small room. His family was very large. His parents were from Warsaw and they emigrated from Poland. Henryk's father was a baker by trade and had soon found a job in New York. He started his own business and ran a small restaurant for their countrymen. Henryk was not an outstanding pupil at his high school. His natural gifts lay elsewhere. A cunning, smart little boy he was more interested in the control of the underground school market in cigarettes and liquor than in study the history of the American Revolution. He was successful in his business and had some profits. Even at that time he knew the value of money and power. When Henryk was fourteen-year-old, his father and mother died, leaving the five children to take care of themselves.
Henryk became a master of survival, a schooling that was very useful to him in later life.
He knocked around the Lower East Side with his eyes open, shining shoes here, washing dishes there, always looking for the way to wealth and prestige. His first chance came when his room-mate Jan Pelnik, a messenger boy on the New York Stock Exchange, was ill. Henryk made the decision very quickly. In the report of his friend to the Chief Messenger he replaced food poisoning to tuberculosis and his friend was fired. Henryk then changed his room, got a new uniform, lost a friend, got a job and good salary.
Working on the New York Stock Exchange he learnt a lot. He saw people who failed, lost their personal assets, and declared bankruptcy. But he also watched men of little ability make fortunes while he remained nothing more than an observer. He saw people, who made more money in a week on the Stock Exchange than be could hope to make in a lifetime on his salary.
16. Decide if the statements are true or false:
1. Henryk was born in Chicago.
2. His parents were immigrants from Italy.
3. He was the only child in the family.
4. Henryk was a successful pupil at school.
5. He was always eager to be wealthy.
6. He worked as a messenger boy.
17. Find the synonyms among the following word:
| to be from rich fast to go bankrupt by trade wealthy to be fired to run a business useful value to come from | to lose a job by profession to start surplus to make fortunes to have money worth quick to carry on power | authority to fail necessary outstanding to emigrate salary to organize wages profit brilliant |