Read the statement and the instructions that follow it, and then make any notes in your test booklet t hat will help you plan your response. Begin writing your response on the separate answer sheet. Make sure that you use the answer sheet that goes with this writing task.
"Scientists are continually redefining the standards for what is beneficial or harmful to the environment. Since these standards keep shifting, companies should resist changing their products and processes in response to each new recommendation until those recommendations become government regulations."
Discuss the extent to which you aGREe or disagree with the opinion stated above. Support your views with reasons and/or examples from your own experience, observations, or reading.
SECTION 1
Time—25 minutes
16 Questions
Directions: For each question in this section, seltion, section, select the best of the answer choices given.
1. A company is considering changing its policy concerning daily working hours. Currently, this company requires all employees to arrive at work at 8 a.m. The proposed policy would permit each employee to decide when to arrive—from as early as 6 a.m. to as late as 11 a.m.
The adoption this policy would be most likely to decrease employees productivity if the employees job functions required them to
(A) work without interruption from other employees
(B) consult at least once a day with employees from other companies
(C) submit their work for a supervisor s eventual approval
(D) interact frequently with each other throughout the entire workday
(E) undertake projects that take several days to complete
2. The amount of time it takes for most of a worker s occupational knowledge and skills to become obsolete has been declining because of the introduction of advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). Given the rate at which AMT is currently being introduced in manufacturing, the average worker s old skills become obsolete and new skills are required within as little as five years.
Which of the fo llowing plans, if feasible, would allow a company to prepare most effectively for the rapid obsolescence of skills described above?
(A) The company will develop a program to offer selected employees the opportunity to receive training six years after they were originally hired.
(B) The company will increase its investment in AMT every year for a period of at least five years.
(C) The company will periodically survey its employecs to determine how the introduction of AMT has affected them.
(D) Before the introduction of AMT, the company will institute an educational program to inform its employees of the probable consequences of the introduction of AMT.
(E) The company will ensure that it can offer its employees any training neccessary for meeting their job requirements.
3. Installing scrubbers in smokestacks and switching to cleaner-burning fuel are the two methods available to Northem Power for reducing harmful cmissions from its plants. Scrubbers will fuels will. Therefore, by installing scrubbers, Northern Power will be doing the most that can be done to reduce harmful emissions from its plants.
Which of the following is an assumption on which the argumetn depends?
(A) Switching to cleaner-burning fuel will not be more expensive than installing scrubbers.
(B) Northern Power can choose form among various kinds of scrubbers, some of which are more effective than others.
(C) Northern Power is not nccessarily committed to reducing harmful emissions from its plants.
(D) Harmful emissions from Northern Power s plants cannot be reduced more by using both methods together than by the installation of scrubbers alone.
(E) Aside from harmful emissions from the smoke stacks of its plants, the activeties of Northern Power do not cause significant air poliution
4. Some anthropologists study modern-day socreties of foragers in an effort to learn about our ancrent ancestors who were also foragers. A Haw in this strategy is that forager societies are extrenely varied. Indeed, any forager society with which anthropologists are familiar has had considerable contact with modern, nonforager societies.
Which of the following, if true, would must weaken the criticism made above of the anthropologists strategy?
(A) All forager societies throughout history have had a number of important features in common that are absent from other types of societies.
(B) Most ancient forager societies either dissolved on made a transition an another way of life.
(C) All anthropologists study one kind or another of modern-day society.
(D) Many anthropologists who study modern-day
(E) Even those modern-day forager societues that have not had significant contact with modern societies are importantly different from anctern forager societies.
5. Mayor: In each of the past five years, the city has cut school funding and each time school officials complained that the cust would force them to reduce expenditures for essential services. But each time, only expenditures for nonessential services were actually reduced. So school officials can implement further cuts without reducing any expenditures for essential services.
Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the mayor s conclusion?
(A) The city s schools have always provided essential services as effciently as they have provided nonessential services.
(B) Sufficient funds are currently available to allow the city s schools to provide some nonessential serivces.
(C) Price estimates quoted to the city s schools for the provision of nonessential services have not increased substantially since the most recent school funding cut.
(D) Few influential city administrators support the funding of costly nonessential services in the city;s schools.
(E) The city s school officials rarely exaggerate the potential impact of threatened funding cuts.
6 . Advertisement:
For sinus pain three out of four hospitals give their patients Novex. So when you want the most effective painkiller for sinus pain. Novex is the one to choose.
Which of the following, if true, most seriously undermines the advertisement s argument?
(A) Some competing brands of painkillers are intended to reduce other kinds of pain in addition to sinus pain.
(B) Many hospitals that do not usually use Novex will do so for those patients who cannot tolerate the drug the hospitals usually use
(C) Many drug manufacturers increase sales of their products to hospitals by selling these products to the hospitals at the lowest price the manu facturers can afford
(D) Unlike some competing brands of painkillers, Novex is available from pharmacies without a doctor s prescription.
(E) In clinical trials Novex has been found more effective than competing brands of painkillers that have been on the market longer than Novex.
7. A report that many apples contain a cancer-causing presservative called Alar apparently had little effect on consumers. Few consumers planned to change their apple-buying habits as a result of the report. Nonetheless, sales of apples in grocery stores fell sharply in March, a month after the report was issued.
Which of the following, if true, best explains the reason for the apparent discrepancy described above?
(A) In March ,many grocers removed apples from their shelves in order to demonstrate concern about their custormers health.
(B) Because of a growing number of food-safety warnings, consumers in March were indifferent to such warnings
(C) The report was delivered on television and also appeared in newspapers
