Reading exercise 3:

In business so much emphasis is put on effective communication, personalising customer interaction and building a rapport with clients that it leaves you wondering where chatbots fit into this way of thinking.

Chatbots - automated systems for conversations by text or voice - are becoming more and more common in customer service situations. The little pre-sales chatbox with 'Hello, can I help you?' that pops up on the corner of your screen as you are browsing a shopping site can quite easily be ignored but if you contact a company with a question or a problem to be resolved you might not have any choice, at least at first, but to talk to one of these chatbots. These virtual agents, available 24/7, can save companies time and money by dealing with requests like billing details, technical support and all manner of other mundane tasks, freeing up real customer service agents for other more complex situations.

Artificial intelligence (AI) and natural language generation have meant that today’s chatbots have come a long way from the stilted, scripted conversations which were all the first examples were capable of, but it takes a lot of time, financial investment and data to build an advanced system. Transcripts of hundreds of thousands of company specific enquiries and calls have to be analysed to train the AI, through deep learning, in order for the chatbots to handle requests correctly. In addition, they must be able to connect with the rest of the company’s IT system and records, such as a customer's past purchases, settings and location. This allows the chatbots to combine this information with the customer’s current question so as to identify and then correctly respond to the customer’s intent. For these reasons, the latest virtual agent systems are really only suitable for huge service-oriented companies, with large-scale customer interactions, such as retail, travel, telecommunications and financial services.

These advanced forms of chatbots might be able to mimic real speech and respond to subtle changes in tone of voice, however their aim is not to fool people into believing they are talking with a real person – that would leave clients feeling cheated and probably wary of using the company again – but to show that chatbots offer a fast, easy, reliable and above all secure way of contacting a company. In this way, it should be possible to overcome customers’ dislike and fear of dealing with an automated system instead of talking to a customer service assistant. After all, being able to resolve any issues quickly and easily is good news for businesses and customers alike.

Exercise 1: What is the main idea of the passage?

A. Chatbots fuel customers’ fear of dealing with a machine.
B. Chatbots need a compilation of transcripts to grow more powerful.
C. Chatbots provide 24/7 responses to almost all customer inquiries.
D. Chatbots act as a solution to enhanced business-customer communication.

Exercise 2: Read the article and decide if these sentences are True (T), False (F), or Not given (NG).

1. The use of chatbots in customer service has increased.
2. Chatbots on e-commerce websites are often ignored by shoppers.
3. Chatbots mean that customer service agents may no longer have employment.
4. The first chatbots used a very natural and flowing form of language.
5. Deep learning is how AI chatbots are able to learn to deal efficiently with customer requests.
6. Smaller companies are advised not to use chatbots until the costs drop.
7. A good chatbot should be able to convince people it is a real person.
8. Some clients would prefer to speak to customer service assistants than use chatbots.

Exercise 5: Choose the correct verb forms in italics.

My first ever job interview didn’t go very well. I wish I (1) had done / did a lot of things differently. First of all, I (2) should check / should have checked exactly where I was supposed to go. If I (3) would have / had, I wouldn’t have gone to the wrong metro station. If I (4) didn’t / hadn’t done that, I (5) might have / might have had a chance of arriving on time. In fact, I was over twenty minutes late. They (6) must have thought / must thought I wasn’t very keen to get the job. I learnt my lesson, though, because I knew that if (7) I’d been / I was better prepared, I (8) could get / could have got the job. And I did get one in the end, with another company, and I love my work.

You are going to read an article about clock radios. For questions 20 – 34, choose from the sections (A – E). The sections may be chosen more than once.

In which section are the following mentioned? 

     20. a tester admitting that he did not trust any type of alarm clock

     21. a tester later regretting having touched the controls

     22. a tester approving of a model because of its conspicuous appearance

     23. the testers being able to operate the model without reference to the manual

     24. a tester’s praise for a model despite the existence of a technical fault

     25. doubts about the reliability of a model because of the design of an additional feature

     26. the testers feeling positive about their success in getting the model to work

     27. doubts about whether anyone would wish to follow certain instructions from the manual

     28. an explanation of why companies had started to make better radios

     29. the intended market for the model being apparent from its design

     30. a tester realising that he had drawn the wrong conclusion about a particular feature

     31. the testers agreeing on the usefulness of a particular feature

     32. an additional feature which made the price seem competitive

     33. uncertainty over whether the radio controls had been set in the correct sequence

     34. a tester’s reaction to the imprecision of the alarm

Complete each pair of sentences with one of the pairs of prefixes.

[ anti / mis / auto / self / bi / mono / co / en / mega / multi / mini / super / over / under / pre / re ]

1)

a. The _________ market on the corner of our road is very handy when we run out of milk or coffee, but I don't do my weekly shop there.
b. We go to the _________ market once a week and stock up on food.

2)

a. Although Pam has never had any lessons, she plays the piano very well and says she's __________ -taught.
b. If we manage to see the star in her dressing room, I'll definitely ask for her __________ graph.

3)

a. In my opinion, the film Civil War is __________ rated; it's not nearly as good as the reviews said.
b. If a shop assistant __________ charged you, would you tell her, or would you keep the extra money?

4)

a. The best way to gain a good command of a foreign language is to use a __________ lingual dictionary, so you have the word and its definition in the target language.
b. Tristana is __________ lingual in Spanish and English because her mother is British and her father is from Spain.

5)

a. Please __________ close this letter with the presents when you wrap up the parcel.
b. As his writing skills weren't that good, the politician __________ -wrote the book with a well-known journalist.

6)

a. I don't think you should __________ -heat that fish soup. You're supposed to cook it and eat it – it's not safe to consume it for a second day.
b. It says in the cookery book that you have to __________ -heat the oven to 150°C.

7)

a. It really annoys me when people allow their children to __________ behave in public places.
b. Parents should control their children's __________ -social behaviour in public places like cafés and restaurants.

8)

a. The best place to buy a new TV is that electronics __________ store on the outskirts of town.
b. We parked our car on the fifth floor of the __________ -storey car park and used the lift to get down to the ground floor.

VII, Choose the correct option (A – D) to complete the text.

Kay and Alan Fletcher have been teaching young people how to survive outdoors in their summer camp for five years now. They established their company because they believed young people (1) _____________ contact with nature. The Fletchers wanted to teach them the (2) _____________ of being close to nature. They also tried to teach them how to (3) _____________ unexpected problems and situations which sometimes happen when you explore the great outdoors. You (4) _____________ get lost, for example, or be exposed to bad weather. Occasionally, there is something worse: a disaster is unlikely (5) _____________ when you're out enjoying nature, but it could. So (6) _____________ addition, the course prepares young people mentally for going through (7) _____________ like a tsunami, bushfire or flood. When I visited the camp, some teenagers were trying (8) _____________ a fire with just a knife and some pieces of wood, but they couldn't. Kay insisted that they didn't give up and suggested using much smaller bits of wood. That (9) _____________ , and the youngsters cheered as the fire came to life. Alan and Kay keep reminding students that a positive attitude (10) _____________ . It's the rule they have lived by.

VII. Rewrite the sentences using a phrase from the list below.

[ It’s high time  •  They would sooner have  •  I would rather  •  We would just as soon  •  You would be better off  •  You had better  •  Imagine you had ]

1. Buying a desktop computer would be preferable for them but their son wanted a laptop.

⟶ ______________________________________________________________________________________________
2. Please don’t leave your games console on all night; it’s a terrible waste of electricity.

⟶ ______________________________________________________________________________________________

3. It would have helped had you given what you wanted to do at university more thought while you were applying for courses.

⟶ ______________________________________________________________________________________________

4. If you had accepted the internship, what options would it have offered you professionally?

⟶ ______________________________________________________________________________________________

5. Working while you are still studying would be better than searching for experience later.

⟶ ______________________________________________________________________________________________

6. Everyone would prefer to take the train to college together.

⟶ ______________________________________________________________________________________________

7. Paul really needs to be more responsible; I’m fed up with his reckless behaviour!

⟶ ______________________________________________________________________________________________

8. You need to type up this report or you will get in trouble.

⟶ ______________________________________________________________________________________________