Read the following passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the option that best fits each of the numbered blanks from 18 to 22.
Maura Fay works as a casting director, selecting performers for films, commercials and television drama. Her professional world is one in which people greet one another with extravagant warmth, exchange compliments freely and seem entirely at ease with display. It is hardly an environment (18)__________. Yet Fay has found that the presentation courses she now runs for tense senior executives are being received with a seriousness that might once have seemed unlikely.
(19)__________. But if business people are to communicate ideas, expertise and strategy in a way that others actually remember, they need to understand techniques long associated with performance: how to use the voice effectively, how to manage physical tension, how to control breathing and how to establish authority the moment they begin to speak. Fay therefore began adapting drama-based training for corporate clients. The process took time to gain credibility, but the results proved persuasive. Most of her trainers come from the theatre, many have worked professionally as actors, and some continue to do so; indeed, participants may sometimes find themselves being coached by someone they had seen on television only the previous evening.
(20)__________. At the same time, other organisations have begun to adopt comparable methods, using theatre-based workshops not only to sharpen presentation skills but also to address wider questions of behaviour in the workplace. Like music, drama can cross linguistic and cultural boundaries. People from different backgrounds may interpret the same situation differently, but that is precisely why (21)__________.
Fay is particularly interested in how business is conducted across cultures, and she draws on actors from a range of countries in her multicultural workshops. These actors demonstrate how clients in their own societies might respond in specific professional situations, and (22)__________.
Question 18:
A. holding conventional executives in an atmosphere of obvious appeal
B. in which conventional executives are likely to appear obviously appealing
C. where obvious appeal is conventionally held by executive figures
D. likely to hold much obvious appeal for conventional executives
