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Read the following passages. Each passage is followed by several questions. Respond to the questions using information from the passage. Remember to write the answers on the answer sheet.

 

Section A

 

The idea that a sales team can learn something from Girl Scouts will come as a surprise to many. What has this out- dated organisation got to do with the fast -moving, corporate world of today? But in the girl scouts’ annual cookie drive, two hundred million units are sold per year, and their revenues exceed $700 million.

(1)          Her mission was to revitalize a 95-year tradition-bound icon, famous only for camping, crafts and cookies. She has worked on instilling leadership qualities in the girls, developing new funding opportunities, creating an efficient organisational structure and developinga reinvigorated brand which is relevant to the modern world.

(2)          No longer relying on neighbourhood door -to-door sales to obtaina meagre revenue, the organisation now utilises a wide range of savvy, modern methods which businesses worldwide can learn from.

Firstly, the girl scouts organization focuses on providing the girls with life skills. (3)         ‘Cookie College’ training courses develop the scouts’ business acumen, providing them with presentation, marketing and money management skills; skills which will be invaluable in their future lives.

These well-trained salesgirls can turn out exceptional results. Scout Markita Andrews sold over $80,000 dollars worth of cookies in the twelve years she was a girl scout. Her success is for the most part due to the incentive. By selling the greatest number of cookies, Markita wona trip around the world. Rewards are not only given to the lucky winners, however. Scouts earn reward points as they sell more cookies. (4)         

But Girl scouts are not only training and motivating their workforce, but they are also changing their tactics. Gone are the days when girls went door -to -door around the neighbourhood selling to family and friends.

(5)          They sell to large organisations and businesses, where cookies can be offered as sales incentives or part of corporate gift baskets. This way, girls are able to shift a greater number of cookies and maximise their sales time.

 

Complete the article with the following sentences. There are two extra statements that you do not need to use.

 

A. And these figures are achieved only ina three-month period in the spring.

B. The organization has changed greatly in latter years, ever since the appointment of CEO Kathy Cloninger in 2003.

C. By investing in the girls, the organization creates a team with strong leadership and communication skills.

D. They now go in for the bulk sales strategy.

E. Through role -playing, case studies and tasks, the girls become inspired and passionate about their role as a salesperson.

F. And nowhere are these changes more noticeable than in the annual cookie sale.

G. 1,500 cookies gets the scout a Wii game system.

 

Section B

 

Most of the people who appear most often and most gloriously in the history books are great conquerors and generals and soldiers, whereas the people who really helped civilization forward are often never mentioned at all. We do not know who launched a seaworthy boat, or calculated the length of the year, or manured a field; but we know all about the killers and destroyers. People thinka great deal of them so much so that on all the highest pillars in the great cities of the world you will find the figure of a conqueror or a general or a soldier. And I think most people believe that the greatest countries are those that have beaten in battle the greatest number of other countries and ruled over them as conquerors. It is just possible they are, but they are not the most civilized. Animals fight; so do savages; hence to be good at fighting is to be good in the way in which an animal or a savage is good, but it is not to be civilized. Even being good at getting other people to fight for you and telling them how to do it most efficiently—this, after all, is what conquerors and generals have done—is not being civilized. People fight to settle quarrels. Fighting means killing, and civilized peoples ought to be able to find some way of settling their dispute other than by seeing which side can kill off the greater number of the other side, and then saying that that side which has killed most has won. And not only has won, but, because it has won, has been in the right. For that is what going to war means; it means saying that might is right.

 

That is what the story of mankind has on the whole been like. Even our own age has fought the two greatest wars in history, in which millions of people were killed or mutilated. And while today it is true that people do not fight and kill each other in the streets—while, that is to say, we have got to the stage of keeping the rules and behaving properly to each other in daily life—nations and countries have not learnt to do this yet, and still behave like savages.

 

But we must not expect too much. After all, the race of men has only just started. From the point of view of evolution human beings are very young children indeed, babies, in fact, of a few months old. Scientists reckon that there has been life of some sort on the earth in the form of jelly fish and that kind of creature for about twelve hundred million years; but there have been men for only one million years, and there have been civilized men for about eight thousand years at the outside. These figures are difficult to grasp; so let us scale them down. Suppose that we reckon the whole past of living creatures on the earth as one hundred years; then the whole past of man works out at about one month, and during that month there have been civilizations for between seven and eight hours. So you see there has been little time to learn in, but there will the oceans of time in which to learn better. Taking man’s civilized past at about seven or eight hours, we may estimate his future, that is to say, the whole period between now and when the sun grows too cold to maintain life any longer on the earth, at about one hundred thousand years. Thus mankind is only at the beginning of its civilized life, and as I say, we must not expect too much. The past of man has been on the whole a pretty beastly business, a business of fighting and bullying and gorging and grabbing and hurting. We must not expect even civilized peoples not to have done these things. All we can ask is that they will sometimes have done something else.

 

Answer the following questions according to the passage.

 

6. What are the greatest countries in most people’s points of view?

7. What should the civilized people do?

8. What is the meaning of“For that is what going to war means; it means saying that might is right”in Paragraph 1?

9. According to the passage, conquerors and generals have been our most famous men, but what did they fail to do?

10. Why can’t we expect too much about the civilization?

 

Section C
 

 

In the world of entertainment, TV talk shows have undoubtedly flooded every inch of space on daytime television. And anyone who watches them regularly knows that each one varies in style and format. But no two shows are more profoundly opposite in content, while at the same time standing out above the rest, than the Jerry Springer and the Oprah Winfrey shows.

Jerry Springer could easily be considered the king of“trash talk”. The topics on his show are as shocking as shocking can be.

For example, the show takes the ever -common talk show themes of love, sex, cheating, guilt, hate, conflict and morality to a different level. Clearly, the Jerry Springer show is a display and exploitation of society’s moral catastrophes, yet people are willing to eat up the intriguing predicaments of other people’s lives.

Like Jerry Springer, Oprah Winfrey takes TV talk show to its extreme, but Oprah goes in the opposite direction. The show focuses on the improvement of society and an individual’s quality of life. Topics range from teaching your children responsibility, managing your work week, to getting to know your neighbors.

Compared to Oprah, the Jerry Springer show looks like poisonous waste being dumped on society. Jerry ends every show witha “final word”. He makes a small speech that sums up the entire moral of the show. Hopefully, this is the part where most people will learn something very valuable.

Clean as it is, the Oprah show is not for everyone. The show’s main target audience are middle-class Americans. Most of these people have the time, money, and stability to deal with life’s tougher problems. Jerry Springer, on the other hand, has more of a association with the young adults of society. There are 18 -21 year -olds whose main troubles in life involve love, relationship, sex, money and peers. They are the ones who see some value and lessons to be learned underneath the show’s exploitation.

While the two shows are as different as night and day, both have ruled the talk show circuit for many years now. Each one caters to a different audience while both have a strong following from large groups of fans. Ironically, both could also be considered pioneers in the talk show world.

 

Complete the summary with words from the passage, changing the form where necessary, with only one word for each blank.

 

TV talk shows flooded every inch of space on daytime television in the world of (11) __________. Among all the TV talk shows, the Jerry Springer and the Oprah Winfrey shows are standing  (12)__________the rest. The topics on the Jerry Springer show can be described as  (13)__________ while Oprah goes in the opposite direction. The topic on his show mainly covers the (14)__________of society and personal life. Jerry always ends every show with a“final word”which was considered to be (15)__________by the most people while the Oprah show is form middle-class Americans.

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