六级阅读Speed Reading的实战练习（一）

　　Passage one

　　Pizza Hut was started in 1958, by two brothers in Wichita, Kansas. Frank and Dan Carney had the idea to open a pizza parlor. They borrowed $600 from their mother, and opened the very first Pizza Hut. In 1959, the first franchise unit opened in Topeka, Kansas. Almost a decade later, Pizza Hut would be serving one million customers a week in their 310 locations. In 1970, Pizza Hut was put on the New York Stock Exchange under the ticker symbol PIZ.

　　In 1986, Pizza Hut introduced delivery service, something no other restaurant was doing. By the 1990s Pizza Hut sales had reached $4 billion worldwide. In 1998, Pizza Hut celebrated their 40th anniversary, and launched their famous campaign The Best Pizzas Under One Roof. In 1996, Pizza Hut sales in the United States were over $5 million. Out of all the existing pizza chains, Pizza Hut had the largest market share, 46.4%. However, Pizza Huts market share has slowly eroded because of intense competition from their rivals Dominos, Little Caesars and newcomer Papa Johns. Home delivery was a driving force for success, especially for Pizza Hut and Dominos.

　　However, this forced competitors to look for new methods of increasing their customer bases. Many pizza chains decided to diversify and offer new non-pizza items such as buffalo wings, and Italian cheese bread. The current trend in pizza chains today is the same. They all try to come up with some newer, bigger, better, pizza for a low price. Offering special promotions and new pizza variations are popular today as well. For example, chicken is now a common topping found on pizzas.

　　In the past, Pizza Hut has always had the first mover advantage. Their marketing strategy in the past has always been to be first. One of their main strategies that they still follow today is the diversification of the products they offer. Pizza Hut is always adding something new to their menu, trying to reach new markets. For example, in 1992 the famous buffet was launched in Pizza Hut restaurants worldwide. They were trying to offer many different food items for customers who didnt necessarily want pizza.

　　Another strategy they used in the past and are still using is the diversification of their pizzas. Pizza Hut is always trying to come up with some innovative way to make a pizza into something slightly different - different enough that customers will think it s a whole new product. For example, lets look at some of the pizzas Pizza Hut has marketed in the past. In 1983, Pizza Hut introduced their Pan Pizza, which had a guarantee of being ready to eat in 5 minutes when dining at Pizza Hut restaurants. In 1993, they introduced the BigFoot, which was two square feet of pizza cut into 21 slices. In 1995, they introduced Stuffed Crust Pizza, where the crust would be filled with cheese. In 1997, they marketed The Edge, which had cheese and toppings all the way to the edge of the pizza. Currently, they are marketing The Big NewYorker, trying to bring the famous New York style pizza to the whole country.

　　Another opportunity that Pizza Hut has is their new ordering online system. Anyone with Internet access can order whatever they wish and get it delivered to their house without even speaking to someone. This program has just been started, so we do not have any numbers to support whether or not it will be a success.

　　Lastly, Pizza Hut has always valued customer service and satisfaction. In 1995, Pizza Hut began two customer satisfaction programs: a 1-800 number customer hotline, and a customer call-back program. These were implemented to make sure their customers were happy, and always wanted to return. In our plan, we will first give a situation analysis of current and relevant environmental conditions that affect our plan. Next, we will give a brief analysis of the current fast food industry, and any trends or changes that might occur in the future.

　　However, the fact that Pizza Hut does have a restaurant to run is also a weakness. Pizza Hut has higher overhead costs, due to the restaurant that other competitors dont have to deal with. Another result of higher overhead costs is higher prices Pizza Hut must charge. Obviously, Pizza Hut is not the low cost producer. They rely on their quality pizza and good service to account for their higher prices.

　　An indirect weakness that Pizza Hut has is that they have lost a lot of their customers and market share due to such intense competition with competitors. Pizza Huts opportunities are almost endless. They can increase revenue with their new innovative pizzas, and increase brand loyalty with good customer service.

　　Pizza Huts number one threats are from their competitors. Currently, their closest competitor is Dominos Pizza. Dominos main competitive advantage over Pizza Hut is their price. It is generally lower than Pizza Hut. Also, Dominos was very profitable when they ran the promotional deal of delivering a pizza within 30 minutes. However, many lawsuits have been filed against Dominos in the past for reckless driving by their drivers, so Dominos withdrew the promotion. Little Caesars is another one of Pizza Huts competitors, right behind Dominos in market share. Little Caesars is famous for offering large quantities of pizza for less money. Other competitors include Papa Johns, Sbarro, and Pizza Inn.

　　A problem facing all of the pizza chains is that each of their individual competitive advantages are pretty much everyones competitive advantages. Most if not all the top pizza chains offer free delivery, and always have some sort of promotional deal offering large pizzas at reduced prices. Other competitors to take into consideration are frozen pizzas and make-it-yourself pizzas that are purchased in grocery stores. Some examples of these are Tombstone Pizzas, Boboli, and DiGornio pizzas.

　　1. Pizza Hut expanded its business into many parts of the country by the time of 1969.

　　2. Pizza Hut has always dominated the market and is free of challenge.

　　3. Fruits and salads are now commonly served at pizza restaurants.

　　4. The diversification strategy is to be the first mover.

　　5. In Pizza Hut, a Pan Pizza was ___________ to serve in 5 minutes.

　　6. If you want a pizza from Pizza Hut delivered directly to your house, you have to have ________ in the first place.

　　7. In order to make sure their customers were happy, Pizza Hut introduced ________________.

　　8. The higher overhead costs of Pizza Hut obviously accounted for ______________.

　　9. The reason why Domino s withdrew their promotion was that they suffered legally from _____________.

　　10. Major pizza makers have to face the problem that their competitive advantages are _________.

　　Passage Two

　　The world was stunned by the news in the summer of 1995, when a British embryologist named Ian Wilmut, and his research team, successfully cloned Dolly the sheep using the technique of nuclear transfer. Replacing the DNA of one sheep s egg with the DNA of another sheep s the team created Dolly. Plants and lower forms of animal life have been successfully cloned for many years, but before Wilmuts announcement, it had been thought by many to be unlikely that such a procedure could be performed on larger mammals and life forms. The world media was immediately filled with heated discussions about the ethical implications of cloning.

　　Some of the most powerful people in the world have felt compelled to act against this threat. President Clinton swiftly imposed a ban on federal funding for human-cloning research. Bills were put in the works in both houses of Congress to outlaw human cloning because it was deemed as a fundamentally evil thing that must be stopped. But what, exactly, is bad about it? From an ethical point of view, it is difficult to see exactly what is wrong with cloning human beings. The people who are afraid of cloning tend to assume that someone would, for example, break into Napoleons Tomb, steal some DNA and make a bunch of emperors. In reality, infertile people who use donated sperm, eggs, or embryos would probably use cloning. Do the potential harms outweigh the benefits of cloning? From what we know now, they dont. Therefore, we should not rush placing a ban on a potentially useful method of helping infertile, genetically at-risk, homosexual, or single people to become parents.

　　Do human beings have a right to reproduce? No one has the moral right to tell another person that they should not be able to have children, and I dont see why Bill Clinton has that right either. If humans have a right to reproduce, what right does society have to limit the means? Essentially all reproduction done these days is with medical help at delivery, and even before. Truly natural human reproduction would make pregnancy-related death the number one killer of adult women.

　　Some forms of medical help are more invasive than others. With in-vitro fertilization, the sperm and egg are combined in a lab and surgically implanted in the womb. Less than two decades ago, a similar concern was raised over the ethical issues involving test-tube babies . Today, nearly 30,000 such babies have been born in the United States alone. This miracle has made many parents happy. So what principle says that one combination of genetic material in a flask is acceptable, but not another?

　　Nature clones people all the time. Approximately one in 1000 births is an identical twin. However, despite how many or how few individual characteristics twins have in common, they are still different people. They have their own identities, their own thoughts, and their own rights. They enter different occupations, get different diseases, and have different experiences with marriage, alcohol, community leadership, etc. Twins have different personalities as would cloned individuals. Even if someone cloned several Napoleons, each would be different and even more unique than twins; the cloned child would be raised in a different setting. Therefore, cloning does not rob individuals of their personality.

　　Perhaps the strongest ethical argument against cloning is that it could lead to a new, unfamiliar type of family relationship. We have no idea what it would be like to grow up as the child of parents who seem to know you from the inside. Some psychological characteristics may be biologically, or genetically, based. The parent would know in advance what crises a cloned teenager could go through and how he or she will respond. Because the parents may understand what the child is going through, to greater degree than most parents, it may produce a good and loving relationship in the long run. On the other hand, most children want to have their own space. Simply because a family relationship is new and untried is no reason to automatically condemn it. In the past, many types of family relationships were considered harmful, but later showed to cause no harm to the children. Among these is joint custody after divorce, gay and lesbian parenting, and interracial adoption. As with adoption, in-vitro fertilization, and the use of donor sperm, how the child will react to the news about his or her arrival in this world will depend on how the parents feel about their mode of reproduction. Parents and children may adjust to cloning far more easily than we might think, just as it happened with in-vitro fertilization.

　　One recurring image in anti-cloning propaganda is of some evil dictator raising an army of cloned warriors. But who is going to raise such an army. Clones start out life as babies. It is much easier to recruit young adults than to take care of babies for twenty years. Remember that cloning isnt the same as genetic engineering. No one can make another superman and his super powers might have a slim chance of being genetically determined, but nothing is certain.

　　Some might think that cloning is playing God. However, can you really say that you know Gods intentions? There is substantial disagreement as to what God s will is. Armstrong wrote, anyone who has truly proved that God exists, that God isnt only Creator, but Life-giver, Designer, Sustainer, and Ruler over all his creation, knows that the human family began with one man, and that together with him a wife, miraculously created from his own body and as unique and original a creation as Adam himself, formed the first family. Though Gods miraculous creation of Eve was far from cloning, it is interesting to note in passing that Gods own Word says He used Adams rib-physical bone and tissue - to create Eve?

　　Another argument against cloning is that it would only be available to the wealthy and, therefore, would increase social inequality. What else is new? This is the story of American health care. We need a better health care system, not a ban on new technologies. Hopefully our new president will help us with this problem as well.

　　The U.S. Federal Government should not deem human cloning and cloning research illegal. It may provide a way for completely sterile or homosexual individuals to reproduce, and will probably provide valuable basic research and possible spin-off technologies related to reproduction and development. Our society has respected general rights to control one s body regarding reproduction, and finally prohibiting it would violate the fundamental freedom of scientific inquiring.

　　Will human cloning be done? Undoubtedly. The technique used in sheep cloning does not require a highly sophisticated laboratory. Since the United States government does not support research on human cloning, and the United Kingdom, France, and Germany have banned it, the research making cloning possible may take place in Asia, Eastern Europe, or the East. Much cloning may also take place in secret, and will occur regardless of United States policies. Approximately eighty percent of Americans feel that cloning is wrong. However, the vast majority of people, including those who rail against cloning research, owe their lives to previous medical discoveries. Dont let the forces of ignorance and fear turn us away from new types of research.

　　1. Cloning large mammals and life forms had been practiced for many years by the time Dolly was cloned.

　　2. The tomb of Napoleon has already been broken into and samples of genes have been collected.

　　3. The introduction of human cloning may reduce a great amount of death of adult women.

　　4. In-vitro fertilization is much better than natural birth in terms of safety.

　　5. Identical twins can still have different personalities because they are brought up ________________.

　　6. The reason why in a family with a cloned child there is likely to be a good and loving relationship is the parents better understanding of _______________________.

　　7. Compared with cloning human and bringing them up as an army, it would be much cheaper to ______________________________.

　　8. Some worry that human cloning as a potential privilege for the rich might contribute to _____________.

　　9. The illegalization of human cloning by the government may erase the hope of people like _________________________.

　　10. Since human cloning can not be done in the U.S., the U.K., France and Germany, researchers can still conduct their researches in Asia, Eastern Europe, or the East, or in ___________.