Questões de Inglês

Can businesses learn from each other’s secrets?
It is Friday morning and the collection teams at
1-800-Got-Junk, a North American waste removal business, are
out hauling garage clutter and office cast-offs on to pick-up
trucks. Items that are salvageable will be recycled or reused;
the rest will be chucked. Back at Got Junk’s Vancouver
headquarters, a tour party is engaged in recycling of a different
kind: the recycling of ideas.

1-800-Got-Junk invites other organizations in for a
privileged view of its inner workings. Rhys Green, who
manages Got Junk’s call-center operations, says he and his
team have grown used to the fortnightly tours that file past their
desks, sometimes stopping to ask questions or eavesdrop on a
call. Visitors respect that they are working, he says, and it is
nice that a junk business is considered “cool enough” to visit.
The only time having an audience intrudes is if the pace starts
to slow. “Having people wander around, when [things are just
ticking over] can be a little awkward. You kind of think: do I
look busy enough? That can be a little strange.”
Mr. Green’s team are not alone in this;
1-800-Got-Junk is among a growing number of entrepreneurial
businesses that host visitors from other companies, often from
different sectors, in search of fresh ideas.

Learning by observing does not have to be expensive,
say proponents — even bootstrap businesses can organize
affordable visits, since they range in cost from nothing to
serious money. Zappos, the online shoe retailer, runs free tours
and sells add-ons that go from $50 question-and-answer
sessions to three-day forays into its quirky culture. Labeled
“boot camps”, these include a meeting with founder Tony
Hsieh and “No Title” Fred Mossler, and weigh in at $6,000 per
person. Three and a half days of workshops and
behind-the-scenes tours at a Disney resort, run by the Disney
Institute, Disney’s professional development arm, costs about
$4,200.

Sharing knowhow may help open doors. Brian
Scudamore, who founded Got Junk in 1989, says the ideas that
visitors share with his business make the effort worthwhile.
“Someone on a tour said: ‘Do you guys do affiliate marketing?’
At the time, I didn’t really know what it was, so they got their
marketing team to walk us through the process and the results
have been fantastic.”

Not all companies are happy with visitors. At Gold
Medal Service, a New Jersey-based home services company,
competitors are not welcome after an employee caused such an
impression on a rival taking its tour that it offered him a job.
“Now, we don’t let in companies that compete in our
backyard,” says co-founder Mike Agugliaro.

Internet: (adapted).


Based on the text above, judge the items below.

The expression "bootstrap businesses" (L.24) refers to companies with low income.

A resposta correta é:

Can businesses learn from each other’s secrets?
It is Friday morning and the collection teams at
1-800-Got-Junk, a North American waste removal business, are
out hauling garage clutter and office cast-offs on to pick-up
trucks. Items that are salvageable will be recycled or reused;
the rest will be chucked. Back at Got Junk’s Vancouver
headquarters, a tour party is engaged in recycling of a different
kind: the recycling of ideas.

1-800-Got-Junk invites other organizations in for a
privileged view of its inner workings. Rhys Green, who
manages Got Junk’s call-center operations, says he and his
team have grown used to the fortnightly tours that file past their
desks, sometimes stopping to ask questions or eavesdrop on a
call. Visitors respect that they are working, he says, and it is
nice that a junk business is considered “cool enough” to visit.
The only time having an audience intrudes is if the pace starts
to slow. “Having people wander around, when [things are just
ticking over] can be a little awkward. You kind of think: do I
look busy enough? That can be a little strange.”
Mr. Green’s team are not alone in this;
1-800-Got-Junk is among a growing number of entrepreneurial
businesses that host visitors from other companies, often from
different sectors, in search of fresh ideas.

Learning by observing does not have to be expensive,
say proponents — even bootstrap businesses can organize
affordable visits, since they range in cost from nothing to
serious money. Zappos, the online shoe retailer, runs free tours
and sells add-ons that go from $50 question-and-answer
sessions to three-day forays into its quirky culture. Labeled
“boot camps”, these include a meeting with founder Tony
Hsieh and “No Title” Fred Mossler, and weigh in at $6,000 per
person. Three and a half days of workshops and
behind-the-scenes tours at a Disney resort, run by the Disney
Institute, Disney’s professional development arm, costs about
$4,200.

Sharing knowhow may help open doors. Brian
Scudamore, who founded Got Junk in 1989, says the ideas that
visitors share with his business make the effort worthwhile.
“Someone on a tour said: ‘Do you guys do affiliate marketing?’
At the time, I didn’t really know what it was, so they got their
marketing team to walk us through the process and the results
have been fantastic.”

Not all companies are happy with visitors. At Gold
Medal Service, a New Jersey-based home services company,
competitors are not welcome after an employee caused such an
impression on a rival taking its tour that it offered him a job.
“Now, we don’t let in companies that compete in our
backyard,” says co-founder Mike Agugliaro.

Internet: (adapted).


Based on the text above, judge the items below.

At Gold Medal Service, visitors are no longer allowed after a visiting rival hired a very good employee.

A resposta correta é:

Where to be born in 2013


Warren Buffett, probably the world’s most successful
investor, has said that anything good that happened to him
could be traced back to the fact that he was born in the
right country, the United States, at the right time (1930).
A quarter of a century ago, when The World in 1988 lightheartedly
ranked 50 countries according to where would
be the best place to be born in 1988, America indeed came
top. But which country will be the best for a baby born in
2013?
To answer this, the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU), a
sister company of The Economist, has this time turned
deadly serious. It earnestly attempts to measure which
country will provide the best opportunities for a healthy,
safe and prosperous life in the years ahead. Its qualityof-
life index links the results of subjective life-satisfaction
surveys—how happy people say they are—to objective
determinants of the quality of life across countries. Being
rich helps more than anything else, but it is not all that
counts; things like crime, trust in public institutions and the
health of family life matter too. In all, the index takes 11
statistically signifi cant indicators into account.
What does all this, and likely developments in the years
to come, mean for where a baby might be luckiest to be
born in 2013? After crunching its numbers, the EIU has
Switzerland comfortably in the top spot, with Australia
second. Small economies dominate the top ten. Half of
these are European, but only one, the Netherlands, is from
the euro zone. The Nordic countries shine, whereas the
crisis-ridden south of Europe (Greece, Portugal and Spain)
lags behind despite the advantage of a favourable climate.
The largest European economies (Germany, France and
Britain) do not do particularly well.
America, where babies will inherit the large debts of the
boomer generation, languishes back in 16th place. Despite
their economic dynamism, none of the BRIC countries
( Brazil, Russia, India and China ) scores impressively.
Among the 80 countries covered, Nigeria comes last: it is
the worst place for a baby to enter the world in 2013.


Source: The Economist print edition ( adapted ), Nov 21, 2012.


The ranking that can be inferred from the information in the passage puts

a) the Netherlands behind Spain.
b) Australia ahead of the USA.
c) only three European countries in the top 10.
d) Nigeria as a middling country.
e) Portugal and France in a similar position.

A resposta correta é:

Can businesses learn from each other’s secrets?
It is Friday morning and the collection teams at
1-800-Got-Junk, a North American waste removal business, are
out hauling garage clutter and office cast-offs on to pick-up
trucks. Items that are salvageable will be recycled or reused;
the rest will be chucked. Back at Got Junk’s Vancouver
headquarters, a tour party is engaged in recycling of a different
kind: the recycling of ideas.

1-800-Got-Junk invites other organizations in for a
privileged view of its inner workings. Rhys Green, who
manages Got Junk’s call-center operations, says he and his
team have grown used to the fortnightly tours that file past their
desks, sometimes stopping to ask questions or eavesdrop on a
call. Visitors respect that they are working, he says, and it is
nice that a junk business is considered “cool enough” to visit.
The only time having an audience intrudes is if the pace starts
to slow. “Having people wander around, when [things are just
ticking over] can be a little awkward. You kind of think: do I
look busy enough? That can be a little strange.”
Mr. Green’s team are not alone in this;
1-800-Got-Junk is among a growing number of entrepreneurial
businesses that host visitors from other companies, often from
different sectors, in search of fresh ideas.

Learning by observing does not have to be expensive,
say proponents — even bootstrap businesses can organize
affordable visits, since they range in cost from nothing to
serious money. Zappos, the online shoe retailer, runs free tours
and sells add-ons that go from $50 question-and-answer
sessions to three-day forays into its quirky culture. Labeled
“boot camps”, these include a meeting with founder Tony
Hsieh and “No Title” Fred Mossler, and weigh in at $6,000 per
person. Three and a half days of workshops and
behind-the-scenes tours at a Disney resort, run by the Disney
Institute, Disney’s professional development arm, costs about
$4,200.

Sharing knowhow may help open doors. Brian
Scudamore, who founded Got Junk in 1989, says the ideas that
visitors share with his business make the effort worthwhile.
“Someone on a tour said: ‘Do you guys do affiliate marketing?’
At the time, I didn’t really know what it was, so they got their
marketing team to walk us through the process and the results
have been fantastic.”

Not all companies are happy with visitors. At Gold
Medal Service, a New Jersey-based home services company,
competitors are not welcome after an employee caused such an
impression on a rival taking its tour that it offered him a job.
“Now, we don’t let in companies that compete in our
backyard,” says co-founder Mike Agugliaro.

Internet: (adapted).


Based on the text above, judge the items below.

The practice of inviting companies to visit one another was introduced by 1-800-Got-Junk and has spread to many other business areas.

A resposta correta é:

Rare Viking ‘Thing’ Found Under Parking Lot

Archaeologists have uncovered another parking lot find,
only this time it is in Scotland, and what they discovered is best
described as a “Thing”. Yep, that’s the technical term for a Viking
parliamentary gathering site, one of which has been unearthed in the
town of Dingwall. That name had long clued archaeologists into the
potential for such a find: Dingwall is likely derived from the word
thingvellir, or “the field of the assembly,” LiveScience reports. But
finding a “Thing” site is no small task, in part because the
gatherings usually occurred in open fields, and the temporary nature
of them meant only modest traces of human life were left behind.

Indeed, this is only the second “Thing” found in the UK,
the Scotsman reports. It was uncovered after the team used
historical records to identify a mound that had once been called the
“assembly mound”; a parking lot now covers it. Excavations
“indicated that the mound was man-made,” likely in the 11th
century, says site director Oliver JT O’Grady, and “radio-carbon
dating provide strong scientific evidence to support the
interpretation that the mound was created during the period of late
Norwegian political influence in Ross-shire and wider.” He and his
team are not exactly sure who built the site, but based on its size,
that creator would have needed both “political power and
resources,” explains LiveScience.

Internet: (adapted).


Based on the text presented above, judge the items below.

The site was named "Thing" for lack of a better way to describe it.

A resposta correta é:

In the World Economy, the Ditch Is Never Far Away


WHEN you see a car being driven fi rmly within its lane and
well under the speed limit, there’s nothing to worry about.
Or is there? If you’re David A. Rosenberg, the glass-halfempty
economist, there most certainly is. He says the world
economy is like that car. And where others see stability and
recovery, he sees “a car being driven by a drunk, lurching
from side to side on the road, narrowly avoiding the ditches
each time.”
At this particular moment, he says, the car happens to be
in the middle of the road. But he can’t help but ask, “Is
that because the driver has sobered up, or is it because
the car is just passing through the middle on its way to the
ditch on the other side?” Mr. Rosenberg isn’t certain of the
answer. But despite the cheer pervading the stock market
and the relatively upbeat perspective of most economists,
he says he isn’t convinced that the car will remain safely
out of those ditches.
Formerly the chief North American economist at Merrill
Lynch, and now proudly back in his native Canada as
chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff in Toronto,
Mr. Rosenberg writes a market newsletter that is always
provocative, often cantankerous and frequently out of step
with the Wall Street consensus. “I’d say I’m as pragmatic as
possible and not locked into one position,” he says, “but I
do understand that I have a much better record forecasting
rain than in predicting the return of sunshine.”


Source: Jeff Sommer, in The New York Times, February 2, 2013 ( adapted )


In the passage, economist David Rosenberg is portrayed as

a) a realist.
b) an optimist.
c) a pragmatist.
d) a pessimist.
e) an escapist.

A resposta correta é:

Rare Viking ‘Thing’ Found Under Parking Lot

Archaeologists have uncovered another parking lot find,
only this time it is in Scotland, and what they discovered is best
described as a “Thing”. Yep, that’s the technical term for a Viking
parliamentary gathering site, one of which has been unearthed in the
town of Dingwall. That name had long clued archaeologists into the
potential for such a find: Dingwall is likely derived from the word
thingvellir, or “the field of the assembly,” LiveScience reports. But
finding a “Thing” site is no small task, in part because the
gatherings usually occurred in open fields, and the temporary nature
of them meant only modest traces of human life were left behind.

Indeed, this is only the second “Thing” found in the UK,
the Scotsman reports. It was uncovered after the team used
historical records to identify a mound that had once been called the
“assembly mound”; a parking lot now covers it. Excavations
“indicated that the mound was man-made,” likely in the 11th
century, says site director Oliver JT O’Grady, and “radio-carbon
dating provide strong scientific evidence to support the
interpretation that the mound was created during the period of late
Norwegian political influence in Ross-shire and wider.” He and his
team are not exactly sure who built the site, but based on its size,
that creator would have needed both “political power and
resources,” explains LiveScience.

Internet: (adapted).


Based on the text presented above, judge the items below.

Few signs of human life were detected in the excavation site.

A resposta correta é:

Rare Viking ‘Thing’ Found Under Parking Lot

Archaeologists have uncovered another parking lot find,
only this time it is in Scotland, and what they discovered is best
described as a “Thing”. Yep, that’s the technical term for a Viking
parliamentary gathering site, one of which has been unearthed in the
town of Dingwall. That name had long clued archaeologists into the
potential for such a find: Dingwall is likely derived from the word
thingvellir, or “the field of the assembly,” LiveScience reports. But
finding a “Thing” site is no small task, in part because the
gatherings usually occurred in open fields, and the temporary nature
of them meant only modest traces of human life were left behind.

Indeed, this is only the second “Thing” found in the UK,
the Scotsman reports. It was uncovered after the team used
historical records to identify a mound that had once been called the
“assembly mound”; a parking lot now covers it. Excavations
“indicated that the mound was man-made,” likely in the 11th
century, says site director Oliver JT O’Grady, and “radio-carbon
dating provide strong scientific evidence to support the
interpretation that the mound was created during the period of late
Norwegian political influence in Ross-shire and wider.” He and his
team are not exactly sure who built the site, but based on its size,
that creator would have needed both “political power and
resources,” explains LiveScience.

Internet: (adapted).


Based on the text presented above, judge the items below.

O"Grady announced that radio-carbon dating seems to support the claim that the assembly mound was man-made.

A resposta correta é:

In the World Economy, the Ditch Is Never Far Away


WHEN you see a car being driven fi rmly within its lane and
well under the speed limit, there’s nothing to worry about.
Or is there? If you’re David A. Rosenberg, the glass-halfempty
economist, there most certainly is. He says the world
economy is like that car. And where others see stability and
recovery, he sees “a car being driven by a drunk, lurching
from side to side on the road, narrowly avoiding the ditches
each time.”
At this particular moment, he says, the car happens to be
in the middle of the road. But he can’t help but ask, “Is
that because the driver has sobered up, or is it because
the car is just passing through the middle on its way to the
ditch on the other side?” Mr. Rosenberg isn’t certain of the
answer. But despite the cheer pervading the stock market
and the relatively upbeat perspective of most economists,
he says he isn’t convinced that the car will remain safely
out of those ditches.
Formerly the chief North American economist at Merrill
Lynch, and now proudly back in his native Canada as
chief economist and strategist at Gluskin Sheff in Toronto,
Mr. Rosenberg writes a market newsletter that is always
provocative, often cantankerous and frequently out of step
with the Wall Street consensus. “I’d say I’m as pragmatic as
possible and not locked into one position,” he says, “but I
do understand that I have a much better record forecasting
rain than in predicting the return of sunshine.”


Source: Jeff Sommer, in The New York Times, February 2, 2013 ( adapted )


The sentence that best sums up the main idea in the passage is:

a) it is easier to forecast rain than sunshine.
b) it"s best to see a glass half-empty.
c) the world economy"s recovery is not certain.
d) economic stability is never long lasting.
e) economists can be likened to drunken drivers.

A resposta correta é:

Rare Viking ‘Thing’ Found Under Parking Lot

Archaeologists have uncovered another parking lot find,
only this time it is in Scotland, and what they discovered is best
described as a “Thing”. Yep, that’s the technical term for a Viking
parliamentary gathering site, one of which has been unearthed in the
town of Dingwall. That name had long clued archaeologists into the
potential for such a find: Dingwall is likely derived from the word
thingvellir, or “the field of the assembly,” LiveScience reports. But
finding a “Thing” site is no small task, in part because the
gatherings usually occurred in open fields, and the temporary nature
of them meant only modest traces of human life were left behind.

Indeed, this is only the second “Thing” found in the UK,
the Scotsman reports. It was uncovered after the team used
historical records to identify a mound that had once been called the
“assembly mound”; a parking lot now covers it. Excavations
“indicated that the mound was man-made,” likely in the 11th
century, says site director Oliver JT O’Grady, and “radio-carbon
dating provide strong scientific evidence to support the
interpretation that the mound was created during the period of late
Norwegian political influence in Ross-shire and wider.” He and his
team are not exactly sure who built the site, but based on its size,
that creator would have needed both “political power and
resources,” explains LiveScience.

Internet: (adapted).


Based on the text presented above, judge the items below.

The etymology of the town"s name made archeologists suspect that they might find a Thing in the area.

A resposta correta é: