Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 3...

Question 12. A. sophisticated modern Olympic-standard        

                 B. modern Olympic-standardsophisticated

                 C. Olympic-standard sophisticated modern

                 D. modern sophisticated Olympic-standard

Question 24. a. Grace: Do you prefer eating at home or dining out?

B. Grace: True, but restaurants offer a sense of discovery and new flavors.

C. Nathan: Dining out is convenient, but cooking at home feels more personal and healthy.

D. Nathan: Yes, sharing meals outside also strengthens social bonds and enjoyment.

e. Grace: I think balancing both keeps life tasty and meaningful.

A.  a-b-c-d-e                        B. a-c-b-d-e                         C. a-b-d-c-e                         D. a-b-e-c-d

Question 25. a. I tried to bend over backwards to satisfy him, hoping my efforts would resolve the situation peacefully.

B. While working at a café last summer, I encountered an extremely difficult customer who complained about everything.

C. Yet he continued to berate me loudly in front of other customers, making me feel humiliated and helpless.

D. Such encounters ultimately taught me to maintain professionalism under pressure and not take criticism personally.

e. Rather than letting it ruin my day, I sought advice from my manager and learned conflict resolution strategies.

A.  b-a-c-d-e                        B. a-b-c-e-d                        C. b-a-c-e-d                        D. d-b-a-c-e

Question 34. What does the CBD allow under its moratorium?

A.  Only small, justified, controlled studies                B. Broad pilots with private finance

C.  National opt-outs without review                        D. Marketplace-led demonstration projects

Question 35. According to paragraph 3, the precautionary principle requires refraining from actions that could cause ______.

A.  modest or reversible damage where compensation is assured afterward

B.  severe or irreversible harm amid significant scientific uncertainty that persists

C.  limited impacts provided regional consultations are timely and inclusive

D.  localized harm when benefits demonstrably exceed regional externalities

Question 36. What is the core risk posed by voluntary carbon markets, according to the passage?

A.  They underprice removals but strengthen patent transparency overall.

B.  They centralize governance within UN shipping and seabed bodies.

C.  They ensure robust audits that accelerate treaty ratification timelines.

D.  They create a loophole that commercializes risky trials and dilutes mitigation.

Question 37. The phrase backdoor for commercialization in paragraph 4 refers to ______.

A.  loophole                B. subsidy                        C. embargo                        D. license

Question 38. Which of the following can be inferred from the passage?

A.  New treaties are unnecessary because national courts already ban all outdoor trials worldwide.

B.  LC/LP rules have fully entered into force, rendering additional protocols redundant.

C.  Immediate priorities imply enforcing restrictive treaties rather than inventing new ones, because proliferating experiments are driven by market incentives and weak compliance.

D.  Human-rights bodies endorse solar geoengineering if FPIC is obtained from coastal communities.

Read the passage and mark the letter A, B, C or D on your answer sheet to indicate the best answer to each of the following questions from 1 to 8.

        The Covid-19 pandemic shook global supply chains to their core, and they have not yet fully recovered. Managers who once embraced lean, just-in-time routines often overcorrected toward ad-hoc, ill-defined “just-in-case” practices. The result was a glut: inventories surged across retail, wholesale, and manufacturing, even as the Business Confidence Index and Consumer Confidence Index swung erratically. With sentiment oscillating, planning horizons shrank, and contingency policies multiplied; yet crude stockpiles proved a blunt instrument rather than a nuanced hedge against uncertainty.

        When confidence whipsaws from month to month, the signal-to-noise ratio collapses and planning becomes brittle. When confidence lurches from month to month, planning grounded in stale numbers becomes perilous. Firms that chase yesterday’s indicators risk mistiming production, booking capacity at the wrong moment, or amplifying volatility through panic ordering. Some stabilize operations by pacing commitments, sequencing replenishment windows, and letting buffers breathe; nonetheless, a failure to discriminate between genuine demand and transient noise can still cascade through warehouses and storefronts.

        In apparel, the problem is magnified by time: buyers must place peak-season orders roughly six months ahead of shelves. With volatility high, June forecasts can diverge sharply from December realities. If predictions undershoot, stockouts surface and a coveted season is missed; if they overshoot, excess piles up and January brings bruising markdowns. Long lead times, once tolerable under steadier conditions, now act like an echo chamber, turning small misreads into outsized consequences that are difficult to reverse mid-cycle.

        Overstocking, then, is a costly insurance policy, not resilience itself. Durable resilience is quieter: calibrated safety stock, disciplined scenario thinking, and clearer sensing of genuine demand. Rather than hoarding, firms experiment with shorter decision cadences, staged commitments, and transparent thresholds that trigger adjustments. Where planning must be conditional, governance should be explicit; where buffers must exist, they should be measured. In turbulent markets, prudence lies less in volume than in timing, discrimination, and the agility to unwind missteps swiftly.

(Adapted from Harvard Business Review, “Using Technology to Improve Supply Chain Resilience,” Sept. 2023)

Question 1. The word ad-hoc in paragraph 1 can be best replaced by ______?

A.  improvised                B. deliberate                        C. standardized                D. prescheduled

Question 6. Which of the following best paraphrases the underlined sentence in paragraph 2?

A.  Frequent shifts in business confidence render plans built on older indicators increasingly unreliable and prone to error.

B.  Monthly volatility in confidence undermines forecasts relying on historical data, increasing the likelihood of strategic missteps.

C.  When market sentiment fluctuates erratically, using past metrics to guide decisions introduces significant execution hazards.

D.  Rapid shifts in sentiment make plans based on outdated figures risky and liable to fail in execution.