IELTS General Training Reading Test 2: Free, with Answers

At Grange Park Hotel, all accidents at work must be reported, however minor they may seem. This includes 'near misses': incidents in which nobody was hurt, but someone could easily have been. Reporting near misses helps us to identify hazards and deal with them before they cause an injury.

When an accident happens

Your first priority is to make sure that the injured person receives any treatment they need. Every department has at least one trained first aider, whose name is displayed on the staff noticeboard. If the injury is serious, call an ambulance immediately: you do not need a manager's permission to do this.

Once the injured person has been looked after, make the area safe so that nobody else is hurt. For example, if someone has slipped on a wet floor, put up a warning sign and ask the housekeeping team to dry it. Do not move any equipment that was involved in the accident unless it would be dangerous to leave it where it is, as it may need to be examined later.

Recording the accident

Details of every accident must be entered on the online form within 24 hours. Your report should state exactly where and when the accident took place, describe what happened in your own words and give the names of any witnesses. If possible, take photographs of the scene and attach them to the form. Please keep to the facts: do not try to guess the cause of the accident or suggest who was to blame.

What happens next

The health and safety officer reads every report and may arrange to interview you and any witnesses. In the case of a serious accident, a full investigation will be carried out. Any changes to working practices that result from it will be announced at the monthly staff meeting. If you have been injured and need time off work, ask the human resources department about sick pay.

Preventing accidents

All new staff receive health and safety training during their first week, and refresher sessions are held every year. If you notice a hazard, such as a loose carpet or a faulty light, report it to your supervisor straight away rather than waiting for somebody to be hurt.

Staff whose roles allow it may work from home for up to three days a week once they have completed their six-month probation period. Requests should be discussed with your line manager, who will consider the needs of your team before agreeing a regular pattern of office and home days.

Equipment

The company will provide a laptop, a headset and a second screen for use at home. Staff may also order an adjustable chair through the facilities team, although desks are not supplied. All equipment remains the property of the company and must be returned if you leave or stop working from home.

Before you begin, you must complete an online assessment of your workspace. This asks, for example, whether your screen is at the correct height and whether the room is well lit. If the assessment identifies a problem, a member of the facilities team will contact you to suggest a solution.

Costs

Staff who work from home on at least two days a week receive an allowance of £26 a month towards the cost of heating and electricity, which is added to their salary. Internet costs are not covered, since almost all staff already have a home connection, and the company does not pay for travel to the office on office days.

Security

Laptops must never be left in a car, even if it is locked, and they must not be used by other members of your household. Confidential documents should not be printed at home. If your laptop is lost or stolen, report this to the IT helpdesk immediately so that it can be locked remotely.

Keeping in touch

Working from home can feel isolating. Every team holds a short video call on Monday mornings, and you are expected to keep your online calendar up to date so that colleagues know when you are available. In addition, managers will arrange a one-to-one meeting with each member of their team every month.

AImages and accounts of blind people being led by dogs stretch back many centuries. A wall painting in the Roman town of Herculaneum, which was buried by the eruption of Vesuvius in 79 CE, appears to depict such a scene, and in A Christmas Carol, Charles Dickens describes the dogs of blind men pulling their owners into doorways to avoid the miserly Scrooge. For most of history, however, whatever guiding dogs did was learned informally, and its quality depended entirely on the temperament of the individual animal. The idea that dogs could be systematically trained for the work did not emerge until the First World War, when unprecedented numbers of German soldiers returned from the front having lost their sight. In response, several schools in Germany began experimenting with dogs that had been taught specific skills, such as halting at the edge of a pavement, and the early results proved remarkably encouraging.

BThe person who brought these experiments to wider attention was Dorothy Harrison Eustis, a wealthy American living in Switzerland, where she bred German shepherds as police dogs. After visiting a guide dog school in Potsdam, she described what she had seen in an article called 'The Seeing Eye', which appeared in The Saturday Evening Post, a popular American magazine, in November 1927. The response took her completely by surprise. Letters arrived from blind readers all over the United States, and one of them came from Morris Frank, a young man from Nashville, Tennessee, who had lost the sight of both eyes in two separate accidents. Frank had paid people to act as his guides, but he had found them unreliable, and he longed for the independence that a dog might give him. He promised that if Eustis could provide him with a dog, he would help to set up a similar school in his own country.

CAlthough Eustis had never trained a dog for a blind person, she agreed to try. In 1928, Frank travelled to her kennels near Vevey, where he was paired with a female German shepherd called Kiss, whom he promptly renamed Buddy. After several weeks of intensive training together, the pair sailed to New York, where Frank was determined to demonstrate what a properly trained guide dog could achieve. In front of a group of reporters, Buddy led him safely across West Street, a busy waterfront road that was notorious for its traffic. Frank sent Eustis a telegram that consisted of just one word: 'Success'. In 1929, the two of them founded The Seeing Eye, the first guide dog school in the United States. Frank spent much of the next three decades travelling across North America with Buddy and the five dogs that followed her, all of which he also called Buddy. His aim was to persuade railway companies, hotels and restaurants to admit guide dogs, at a time when many of them routinely refused to do so.

DBritain was not far behind. On 6 October 1931, four German shepherds called Flash, Judy, Meta and Folly were handed over to their new owners in Wallasey, near Liverpool. All four owners were former soldiers who had been blinded during the First World War. The experiment was considered sufficiently successful for further dogs to be trained, and in 1934 The Guide Dogs for the Blind Association was formally established. Its first permanent trainer was Nikolai Liakhoff, a former officer in the Russian army who had settled in Britain the previous year.

EToday, most guide dogs are Labradors, golden retrievers or a cross between the two, breeds that are chosen for their calm temperament and their willingness to work. Their training begins long before they wear a harness. At around seven weeks old, puppies go to live with volunteer 'puppy walkers', who look after them for about a year and gradually accustom them to the noise and bustle of everyday life: buses, shops, crowded pavements and offices. The walkers receive regular visits and advice from the charity's staff, but the day-to-day work of raising the dog is entirely theirs. 'The puppy walker's job isn't to teach guiding at all,' explains Joanna Reid, who has trained guide dogs for fifteen years. 'It's to produce a confident, well-behaved dog that very little can frighten. If a dog is nervous on a busy railway platform, there's not much we can do with it later.'

FFormal training generally starts when the dog is about fourteen months old and continues for roughly six months. The dog learns to walk in a straight line along the centre of the pavement, to stop at kerbs and steps, and to lead its owner around obstacles, including ones above head height such as low branches. Perhaps its most remarkable skill is what trainers call 'intelligent disobedience': if the owner gives a command that would put them in danger, such as stepping into the road as a car approaches, the dog is taught to refuse. 'People often assume that the dog decides when it's safe to cross,' says Reid. 'It doesn't. The owner listens to the traffic and makes that decision, and the dog only overrules them if they've got it wrong.' Not every dog completes the course. Some prove too easily distracted, and these may become companion dogs for blind children or be adopted as family pets. Those that qualify spend several weeks training with their future owner before the partnership begins, and most retire before their eleventh birthday.