Questões de Língua Inglesa da Fundação CESGRANRIO (CESGRANRIO)

In paragraphs 5 and 7 of Text II (lines 55-72; 92-104), the authors comment that the use of technology in companies

• A.

  is never seen positively by managers since they fear being responsible for discharging their employees.

• B.

  can be instrumental in expanding mechanisms of interaction and collaborative work that will lead to more effective task results.

• C.

  has not been considered responsible for layoffs and boosting expenditures – especially when it was introduced in production processes.

• D.

  expands the companies' capabilities of rivaling with their competitors by controlling production failures and by exerting pressure on suppliers.

• E.

  is a recent phenomenon since companies have only lately realized that they need to increase the speed of product innovation and the quality of their products.

Which of the options correctly explains the noun phrase extracted from the text?

• A.

  "...top and bottom companies in collaboration-intensive sectors..." (lines 34-35) – companies that collaborate more or less for the economy.

• B.

  "...prized and growing corps of workers." (lines 39-40)– a burgeoning group of invaluable employees.

• C.

  "...less–than-perfectly-understood interactions..." (lines 47-48) –interrelationships that are totally incomprehensible to the public at large.

• D.

  "...largely unchartered territory." (lines 55-56) – an area that has been misrepresented.

• E.

  "...improved partner and customer intimacy..." (line 102)– enhanced the familiarity of competitors with our customers' needs.

"Over an 18-month period, the initiative saved this company more than $100 million in travel and business expenses and reduced the company's carbon emissions by 24 million metric tons." The fragment above, which was omitted from paragraph 6(lines 73-91) of the original text, would adequately fit back into the paragraph right after the sentence

• A.

  "There are some companies that already are tackling aspects of this collaboration–technology nexus."

• B.

  "A well-known multinational company selling networking and communications technology, for example, was eager to improve interactions between its technology specialist sales teams and enterprise customers."

• C.

  "Frequent travel and stepped-up job requirements had resulted in overstretched teams whose effectiveness had become diminished."

• D.

  "Policy and governance changes ensured that technology use became part of daily workflows and not an added task."

• E.

  "Internal surveys showed that 78 percent of the targeted employees reported increased productivity and improved lifestyles without diminishing customer or partner satisfaction."

As far as policy changes are concerned, the multinational company introduced in paragraph 6 (lines 73-91)

• A.

  decided to enhance communicative effectiveness of part of its workforce and external clients using some Web 2.0 tools.

• B.

  invested over $100 million in flight tickets and hotel stays so as to discuss the use of collaboration tools with its business partners.

• C.

  managed to save on overall company expenditure over a period of eighteen months as it eliminated negotiations with far-away nations.

• D.

  increased customer satisfaction as a result of its implementation of a renewable energy project that was part of a greener company governance program.

• E.

  cut down on carbon emissions merely by implementing virtual collaborative tools since the workers now had the chance to skip work and enjoy a better lifestyle.

In the fragments “…their first plan fails to catch on.” (line 17) and “How can you break through to a business model…” (line 41), the expressions “catch on” and “break through to” mean, respectively,

• A.

  arrange; find.

• B.

  work; discover.

• C.

  capture; give in.

• D.

  pick up; destroy.

• E.

  triumph; deteriorate.

Considering the sentence "Frequent travel and stepped-up job requirements had resulted in overstretched teams whose effectiveness had become diminished." (lines 78-81), all of the following statements are true, EXCEPT

• A.

  a specific set of employees had escalating demands at work.

• B.

  the performance of the stressed teams of employees had decreased.

• C.

  workers with intense workloads were getting stressed and letting down in efficiency.

• D.

  some workers in the company were constantly away from their offices on business trips.

• E.

  teams that were working on the same project were stretched out in different parts of the world.

"The agency model presumes the employer is able to accurately measure employee performance. Yet measuring performance is always difficult, and in knowledge work it is especially difficult. If you have no real chance of observing, understanding, or attributing the results of employee work, you become much more dependent on employees' willingness to openly communicate the meaning of their work."

                           Robert Austin  in http://sciencecareers.sciencemag.org/
                                                      career_development/previous_issues/
                                          articles/1470/managing_knowledge_workers/

The extract above is in tune with Text II because it

• A.

  defines what the agency model is and discusses how companies control the contribution of each employee.

• B.

  discusses top priorities in defining what knowledge workers should do to add meaning to their persona lives.

• C.

  asserts that defining which criteria to adopt in assessing a knowledge worker's output on the job is not a straightforward task.

• D.

  argues that employees need not openly discuss their observations and results in order to be evaluated on their contributions to the company.

• E.

  emphasizes that it is important to have company staff members communicate what they do so that managers can check if they have free time.

The authors use exemplification in many parts of the text in order to clarify their ideas. Mark the option that indicates the correct relationship between the examples and the issue being illustrated.

• A.

  "...interact to solve problems, serve customers, engage with partners, and nurture new ideas." (lines 6-7) are examples of tasks performed by knowledge workers.

• B.

  "...healthcare providers and education," (lines 16-17) are examples of sectors of the economy with few knowledge workers.

• C.

  "in operations per hour." (line 44) is an example of how collaboration workers are measured.

• D.

  "...the collaborative creative work needed to win an advertising campaign or the high levels of service needed to satisfy public citizens." (lines 50-52) are examples of tasks performed by production workers.

• E.

  "...poorly planned meetings, unproductive travel time, and the rising tide of redundant e-mail communications," (lines 68-70) examples of effective collaboration within companies.

The text “Fossil fuels” can be classified as a

• A.

  recommendation for future use and transport of fossil fuels.

• B.

  manual for the recycling of fossil fuels consumed in industries.

• C.

  panoramic account of the past, present and future of fossil fuels in society.

• D.

  historical perspective of world energetic resources before the Industrial Revolution.

• E.

  newspaper article on recent discoveries in oil drilling and their economic potential.

The author's communicative intention in Text III is to

• A.

  criticize the devastating impact of the sudden urban growth on the world's rural population.

• B.

  provide solutions to the accelerated population increase in the less developed regions of the world.

• C.

  list some projections for the world's population growth in rural and metropolitan areas in the next decades.

• D.

  compare the developed regions of the world that are ikely to suffer from the substantial population growth in urban areas.

• E.

  identify the reasons why the percentage of urban dwellers in developed regions will not increase in the same proportion in less developed areas.