Reprinted with permission from the BBC (bbc.co.uk)
Pre-Reading Questions: Keep a look out for these details when reading! As you’re reading, fill in the answers!
What is “Baidu”?
What do Baidu and these other companies have a history of doing?
Did Baidu grow or shrink over the course of this last year?
Reading Comprehension Questions: Now that you’ve read the piece, answer these questions!
Baidu’s forecast for this quarter put profits at about 5.34 billion Yuan. How much did analyst predict it would be?
Around 5.46 billion Yuan
Around 6 billion Yuan
Around 5.48 billion Yuan
Around 3.35 billion Yuan
What is expected to happen to Baidu over the next year as a result of this changes?
Baidu is expected to undergo major lay-offs.
Baidu is expected to turn an even bigger profit than normal.
Nothing of note is changing as a result of these misprojections.
Baidu is expected to continue growing steadily, despite disappointments.
What does Baidu make most of its revenue from?
Customers
Advertisers
Investments
Trading
How much of a share does Baidu have in China’s online search market?
78
76
81
80
What areas are Baidu looking to expand into soon?
cloud and mobile computing
mobile and tablet computing
cloud and hardware computing
cloud and tablet computing
Summary: Now that you’ve answered the questions, use them to compile a summary. Remember, you want to hit on the main ideas, explaining who (or what) did what when and where, as well as (if possible) why they did it. After that, explain what’s happened as a result and what might happen in the future.
EXAMPLE: The Chinese search engine company, Baidu, recently experienced a less-than-projected return on revenue for the quarter. Though analysts had initially expected them to do better, and though Baidu did see a large increase, the fact that they did not do quite so well as expected has turned off some investors, particularly Americans. This does not mean, though, that Baidu is suffering as a result. They are still in control of 80% of China’s online marketing, many companies are looking to advertise through them, and they are already looking into a number of new, emerging technological platforms to capitalize on.
Vocabulary: Define the following words using context clues.
shares
a number of units in a company, all of equal value, that represent ownership of a certain, small part of that company’s total assets.
revenue
the collective income of a person, company or country
track record
history; a collection of examples showing one’s tendencies/typical actions.
bid
an offer, usually financial
cloud computing
contrary to normal computing, which collects all the data and processing power in one place, cloud computing uses a number of remote servers linked via the internet to share in data processing tasks.
