Prep2012-Pack1-CR-021 VCR014018 Easy

　　Manager: Although our corporation lists rules in an orientation booklet, few employees read the booklet carefully enough to familiarize themselves with all the rules. Lecturing employees for inadvertent rule violations often makes them resentful and less cooperative. Thus, to improve employee adherence to rules, we plan to issue gentle reminders about various rules in each issue of our weekly newsletter.

　　Which of the following would it be most helpful to discover about the employees in the corporation in order to evaluate the likelihood that the plan will succeed?

　　A. Whether most of them who are lectured for inadvertent rule violations are deterred from violating the same rule again

　　B. Whether most of them who inadvertently violate rules already feel resentful and uncooperative

　　C. Whether most of them violate at least some rules with which they are familiar

　　D. Whether most of them who regularly read the weekly newsletter are familiar with at least some rules

　　E. Whether most of them would usually read with sufficient care the portions of the weekly newsletter that are reminders of rules

　　Prep2012-Pack1-CR-022 VCR008516 Easy

　　Letter to the editor: Our city plans to allow major commercial development along the south waterfront and, in so doing, to increase its tax revenue.

　　But, to succeed commercially, the development would inevitably create far more road traffic than the existing roads to the waterfront can handle, causing serious congestion. Providing enough roads or public transportation to the area would cost far more than the city could gain from the increased tax revenue.

　　Which of the following, if added to the city's plan, would be most likely to help solve the problem the letter describes?

　　A. Funding construction of new roads to the waterfront with a system of tolls on the new roads to the waterfront

　　B. Allowing residential development along the waterfront so that there will be waterfront residents who can walk to the commercial development

　　C. Giving tax breaks to developers of businesses along the waterfront to offset any tax levied on them for construction of roads or public transportation

　　D. Evaluating the net benefits that the commercial development would bring to the city in terms of improved quality of life for the city's residents rather than in financial terms

　　E. Allowing commercial development in other city neighborhoods whose roads are not seriously congested with traffic

　　Prep2012-Pack1-CR-023 VCR00710 Medium

　　Products sold under a brand name used to command premium prices because, in general, they were superior to nonbrand rival products. Technical expertise in product development has become so widespread, however, that special quality advantages are very hard to obtain these days and even harder to maintain. As a consequence, brand-name products generally neither offer higher quality nor sell at higher prices. Paradoxically, brand names are a bigger marketing advantage than ever.

　　Which of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the paradox above?

　　A. Brand names are taken by consumers as a guarantee of getting a product as good as the best rival products.

　　B. Consumers recognize that the quality of products sold under invariant brand names can drift over time.

　　C. In many acquisitions of one corporation by another, the acquiring corporation is interested more in acquiring the right to use certain brand names than in acquiring existing production facilities.

　　D. In the days when special quality advantages were easier to obtain than they are now, it was also easier to get new brand names established.

　　E. The advertising of a company's brand-name products is at times transferred to a new advertising agency, especially when sales are declining.

　　Prep2012-Pack1-CR-024 VCR00762 Medium

　　A museum has been offered an undocumented statue, supposedly Greek and from the sixth century B.C. Possibly the statue is genuine but undocumented because it was recently unearthed or because it has been privately owned.

　　However, an ancient surface usually has uneven weathering, whereas the surface of this statue has the uniform quality characteristically produced by a chemical bath used by forgers to imitate a weathered surface. Therefore, the statue is probably a forgery.

　　Which of the following, if true, most seriously weakens the argument?

　　A. Museums can accept a recently unearthed statue only with valid export documentation from its country of origin.

　　B. The subject's pose and other aspects of the subject's treatment exhibit all the most common features of Greek statues of the sixth century B.C.

　　C. The chemical bath that forgers use was at one time used by dealers and collectors to remove the splotchy

　　surface appearance of genuinely ancient sculptures.

　　D. Museum officials believe that forgers have no technique that can convincingly simulate the patchy weathering characteristic of the surfaces of ancient sculptures.

　　E. An allegedly Roman sculpture with a uniform surface similar to that of the statue being offered to the museum was recently shown to be a forgery.

　　Prep2012-Pack1-CR-025 VCR06878 Medium

　　Manufacturers of mechanical pencils make most of their profit on pencil leads rather than on the pencils themselves.

　　The Write Company, which cannot sell its leads as cheaply as other manufacturers can, plans to alter the design of its mechanical pencil so that it will accept only a newly designed Write Company lead, which will be sold at the same price as the Write Company's current lead.

　　Which of the following, if true, most strongly supports the Write Company's projection that its plan will lead to an increase in its sales of pencil leads?

　　A. First-time buyers of mechanical pencils tend to buy the least expensive mechanical pencils available.

　　B. Annual sales of mechanical are expected to triple over the next five years.

　　C. Write Company executive is studying ways to reduce the cost of manufacturing pencil leads.

　　D. A rival manufacturer recently announced similar plans to introduce a mechanical pencil that would accept only the leads produced by that manufacturer.

　　E. In extensive test marketing, mechanical-pencil users found the new Write Company pencil markedly superior to other mechanical pencils they had used.