【正确答案】[听力原文]
EXAMINER: OK. Now I'd like to ask you some more general questions related to this topic, which was a minor disagreement with someone. Let's talk about expressing opinions. Do you think most people are comfortable about expressing their opinions?
CANDIDATE: Well, I absolutely don't agree with that at all. I think that a lot of people kind of have certain feelings about certain issues and they're usually quite scared of confrontation or they're scared to actually bring these opinions, particularly negative opinions, out. I think in our culture we're encouraged to continually offer positive feedback to people and sometimes we feel uncomfortable giving negative feedback even if it's quite necessary. So I don't think we're good at expressing opinions at all.
EXAMINER: So in what kinds of situations are people more likely to voice an opinion?
CANDIDATE: I think unfortunately because we don't get the opinion out early enough. What tends to happen is that people don't make their opinion clear until they're already very frustrated and angry. For example, if they've been standing in line, while the queue is still quite short they won't mention anything to the receptionist or whoever. But when ... by the time the line has got really long and they've been waiting a long time then it's already too late. They've already lost their temper and they'll go and shout at the worker whoever they are ... and it'll be bad on everybody.
EXAMINER: Are people more opinionated now than in earlier' generations?
CANDIDATE: Well that's a difficult question to answer because I've only ever lived in this generation. But talking about earlier generations, I can think about my grandfather and he's a very opinionated man and he lived through World War Two and since then he's had very strong opinions about Germans ... opinions I very strongly disagree with, of course. And he's got strong opinions about TV, about what should be on, about how my grandmother should cook, about what we should wear, where we should go to school and he's very happy to express them, sometimes in a very upsetting way. So, based on his experience, I'd have to say they were a lot more opinionated in previous generations.
EXAMINER: Is there a difference between the way men and women express their opinions?
CANDIDATE: I would say there is. When my girlfriend gets angry with me, she tends to not speak to me. She'll just ... she'll get up and walk out of the room, or she will refuse to reply to my text messages, or she'll kind of avoid me and she won't let me know what exactly I did wrong. So I have to spend a day figuring out what mistake I made so that I can then try and make up for it, whereas if my male friends are angry with me, they'll just come round and talk it out with me, maybe have a little bit of a fist fight and we'll get it cleared up straight away and know what we're talking about.
EXAMINER: How does culture influence the way people form and express opinions?
CANDIDATE: I think culture must be very important in terms of how we get our ideas across. I think that I've lived in quite a few different cultures around the world. And in particular I was very ... I noticed very strongly in Holland people ... even though the culture is quite similar to British culture, they're actually a lot more direct with their opinions. And they say what they're thinking much earlier and it's not considered offensive to people and a confrontation isn't really thought of as a bad thing so much in Holland. And I think that's actually a very healthy thing for their society. Whereas somewhere like Taiwan or somewhere like ... east Asia, we'd have the opposite, where it's considered rude to criticise people, especially people in power, like your managers or your superiors. And so I think that's actually damaging to the whole culture as a whole.
EXAMINER: Right. So let's move on to conflict resolution. What are the different ways of resolving differences of opinion?
CANDIDATE: There are several different ways to overcome a difference of opinion. Firstly, I guess you can confront each other directly and talk about the point and see if you can reach an amicable agreement about what we should do. Secondly, you can do what a lot of people do which is try and solve the problem without ever letting the other person know: maybe going behind their back, talking to their friends, maybe going directly to their manager. This is common like for example, if you want to go to a shop and you're not happy with the service ... rather than arguing with the worker involved, you might just go and talk to the manager of the store, rather than actually confront people. And finally of course you can just take a step away and avoid resolving the opinion. There is a saying that "As long as you keep running and your problems don't catch up with you, it's not a bad thing."
EXAMINER: Which method is most common in your society?
CANDIDATE: From the three I just gave I guess it would be the second, which is to try and solve the problem without a direct confrontation. This is very common if you go into any aspect of the service industry. I used to work in a hospital and I constantly found the patients who were upset with me would never actually let me know. I'd always get emails or angry memos from my managers or my supervisors telling me that I'd upset somebody. So certainly in European culture and British culture particularly, I think we like to avoid confronting people and try and solve it in another way.
EXAMINER: So which do you think are the most appropriate?
CANDIDATE: Well I just think it's healthy to get problems out in the open, and talk about it and understand that you're not trying to make an enemy, you're trying to reach an amicable agreement. And an agreement that's better for both parties. I think we need to view argument as a constructive process where the goal isn't to have the idea which you advocate actually necessarily selected, but the goal is to actually come to a good agreement on what is the best idea, whether it is the one you are promoting or not. And I think that is a very healthy way to have a discussion and have an agreement.
EXAMINER: Have methods for resolving disputes changed with time?
CANDIDATE: Well I would say they have. Nowadays we've got what we call the rule of law, which is if you've really got a problem, you can always take someone to court. You can get involved in maybe a criminal or a civil action against them. For example a friend of mine lent another friend some money and then refused to return it ... ah the other friend refused to return it, so they went to a civil court and the judge awarded the friend who'd lent the money back his money. And it was a lot more peaceful and a lot easier than if they'd actually confronted each other because by then they were not friends at all.
EXAMINER: And do you think these methods will change in the future?
CANDIDATE: Well I hope so. I think that even though we do have a rule of law of some kind, we still need to improve its flexibility and the availability of it. Generally, the only people who take recourse to legal action are people from middle or upper classes, and the working class still rely on more direct confrontational, maybe violent methods. So I would hope that law permutates a bit more through the society and we can have a more harmonious society based on it.
EXAMINER: Thank you Phillip, that is the end of the speaking test.
CANDIDATE: Thank you very much.