READING PRACTICE [35 marks]

For each question, choose the most appropriate answer.

Questions 1 to 7 are based on the information given below

1. The chart provides guidance on utilising the google search engine to locate
Amazon.com’s website on the internet.
A. True
B. False
C. Not stated

2. Amazon.com specialises in selling books online to students and the general public.
A. True
B. False
C. Not stated

3. The chart presents detailed guidance on how to order a book on Amazon’s website.
A. True
B. False
C. Not stated

4. We need to be registered as a customer on the Amazon homepage before we can

purchase any books at the website.
A. True
B. False
C. Not stated

5. At Amazon.com, we have the option of either purchasing a brand new or used book
from the selection of books on display.
A. True
B. False
C. Not stated
6. We need to review our book selection and shipping information before making the
payment for the book as it is too late to do so once the payment option has been selected.
A. True
B. False
C. Not stated

7. It is easy and convenient to purchase books from Amazon.com compared to going to a

traditional bookstore.
A. True
B. False
C. Not stated
Question 8 to 14 are based on the following passage.

In Indonesia, local designers court a booming, stylish niche

The past few years in Indonesia have seen the rise of local fashion brands for women that sell
affordable, fashionable, ready-to-wear pieces at pop-up markets throughout Jakarta or on the
Internet. Small to medium in size, these enterprise are mostly run by women in their 20s who do
it all by themselves, form providing capital to hunting for fabrics to design, to tending to their
booths. The labels typically sell women’s clothing at affordable prices, usually from Rp 50,000 5
(US$4.50) to Rp 200,000 for tops or bottoms and up to Rp 300,000 for dresses. With prices
lower than those of local brands at The Goods Dept. and pop-up market Brightspot Market, the
pieces are typically sold offline at fashion bazaars at convention centers or shopping malls, or
online through retailers such as berrybenka.com, pinkemma.com and scallope.com. Most also
have online shops on social media such as Facebook or Blogspot, or dedicated websites. The 10
target market is women aged from 16 to their early 30s, ranging from school girls to office
workers.

However, some people behind the local labels have been worried after H&M, the
international major fashion retailers from Sweden, recently opened a store in Jakarta. Tiara
Yunas, designer and co-owner of Binca, said that she felt the heat after seeing H&M’s massive
campaigns featuring prices not too different from hers. Things grew warmer still when Binca 15

booked unusually low sales at a bazaar organised by Go Girl magazine at Gandaria City on the
same day that H&M opened its branch at the mall last month. “Later, it turned out that my
overall sales outside at that particular bazaar were steady,” Tiara said. Binca, established in 2011
by Tiara and four friends, sells their line on berrybenka.com, pinkemma.com or at pop-up
markets, local retailer The Goods Dept. and some concept stores in Jakarta and Bandung. 20

Separately, Eva Buntara and Vivi Sulaiman of Ramune (ramuneshop.com) and Gladys
Sastra of Five Thirteen agreed that H&M was a company that might shrink their sales, although
so far those fears had yet to materialise. “We are confident that we are unique and not so
commonplace as H&M.” Vivi said. The entrepreneurs said that Japan’s Uniqlo and Forever 21
30
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from the US, both of which have been in Jakarta longer than H&M, have also not affected their
sales, despite competitive prices. Another entrepreneur, Helen Bellina of kiveeshop.com, said
that she welcome H&M as a new benchmark that would prepare the market for new styles. Helen
said that she would be more daring in releasing pieces that followed the latest trends if H&M had
done so first. For these entrepreneurs, inspiration can come from the fashion weeks in New York,
London and Milan, from fashion icons on Instagram – and also from their direct competitors:
international fashion retailers. “The existence of those stores makes us more creative.” Eva said.

Gladys and Tiara agreed their optimism also came from a calculation that the local market
would be getting larger. Not only were more people shopping in Indonesia, their purchasing
power was also greater. The upshot: More women are shopping for more clothes. “I have two or
three loyal customers who buy up to 10 pieces every month,” Gladys said. Ramune, which sells 35

its wares outside Java – as far away as Papua – also has its eye on the overseas market. Eva and
Vivi have cooperated with a Malaysian fashion online shop and are looking to enter Singapore.
However, the women also have high hopes for increased purchasing power in Indonesia,
targeting to increase production from 500 to 3,000 pieces per month. The other labels are also
optimistic, considering the increasing numbers of online fashion retailers and fashion bazaars, a 40
trend that began after the turn of the last decade but only truly took off about two years ago.

Eva said that the increasing number of local brands was good and that local designers were in
healthy competition against each other. None expect that the market to become saturated any
time soon. “The increasing use of social media helps us a lot. Nowadays, we can post own
pictures wearing fashionable items on Instagram and expect to get a lot of likes,” Gladys said. 45

The trend has led to more young women buying clothes more often. Even mainstream print
media has embraced the trend, providing space for readers to post pictures of themselves wearing
their most fashionable outfits. ‘We’re counting on the Indonesian market to become really big,”
Vivi said.

Adapted from The Jakarta Post; November 22,2013

8. The local fashion wear for women in Indonesia has been making its presence felt at local
markets and online.
A. True
B. False
C. Not stated

9. These local fashion designers cater their designs for the high end market via online
marketing and outlets at convention centers.
A. True
B. False
C. Not stated

10. Some local fashion labels’ sales declined due to increased competition from foreign
fashion retailers in the Indonesia market.
A. True
B. False
C. Not stated

11. The following are the benefits of having foreign fashion retailers in the Indonesian
market except
A. serve as benchmarks for new fashion styles and designs
B. force local fashion retailers to be more creative and brave
C. provides unique fashion designs at cheaper prices

12. The word saturated (line 48 ) means

A. the industry is healthy and thriving
B. to become inundated with fashion brands
 C. that there is room for growth and expansion

13. From the article, we can conclude that the Indonesian fashion market will
A. soon be dominated by foreign brand names and retailers
B. have sufficient demand for local and foreign brand names
C. have better choices and designs for local consumers

14. The main purpose of the article is to

A. highlight the challenges of local fashion designers in Indonesia
B. commend the work of local Indonesian fashion designers
C. provide details on the latest trends in the Indonesian fashion market

Question 15 to 21 are based on the following passage.

Supporting Farmers, Eating Local Foods

The average morsel of food sees more of the world than the farmer who grows it, travelling an
average 1,800 miles from the field to the dining table. It takes 17 calories of energy to put 1
calorie of food on the table, and 4 of those are expanded on transportation. When we go to the
supermarket, the majority of what is for sale came from other states or even countries. Imagine
walking down the supermarket aisles, asking yourself, “What type of food could be produced 5
within 100 miles of here?” In most areas, the lost is long: apples, beef, beets, cabbage, carrots,
cherries, chicken, corn, cucumbers, dairy products, grapes, potatoes, tomatoes and wheat. Most
of what we eat can actually be grown nearby. However, it often cannot be grown all year around,
and therein lies the conundrum. You cannot have a viable local food system without a seasonal
eating commitment, which includes preserving seasonal production for non-seasonal 10
consumption.
 One solution is season extension. With greenhouses, high tunnels and more seasonal, 15
localised eating, we can still feed ourselves if we reduce food waste and grow food on unused
land. Half of all food produced for human consumption never gets eaten. We can look at the
evidence at the back door of a restaurant, a supermarket, food processing factories and even our
own kitchens. Apart from that, we should grow our own food. Land is moving out of food
production at an extremely rapid rate, both as the result of aging farmers retiring from farming 20

and also non farmers purchasing agricultural land. Thus, a new generation of farmers need to be
trained even though most of the younger generation tend to shy away from the agriculture
industry. With aging farmers retiring, we need to teach and mentor new farmers who can succeed
them. The average age of a U.S farmer is now approaching 60 years old but business analysts
consider 35 years of age to be the median age of the practitioners in any vibrant economic sector.
Unless and until the people who want to preserve farmland can sit around a table and figure out
how to preserve farmers, we are not solving the need of the hour: land stewardship.

Innovation always requires risks. Would the Wright brothers have flown today? No, they
would have abandoned the notion of flights as their insurance company would have said their 25

risk exposure was too high. Maybe we should also stop administering tests in schools as the risk
of emotional trauma is too high. Where does this kind of timidity stop? A society ruled by fear is
stagnant. The level of fear exhibited by our culture today is just not normal. If we poked the
edible landscape where it would be poked, we would grow so much food that we could not eat
them all. With the supermarket and the abdication of personal food responsibility, the entire 30

fabric of local food systems has been lost from abattoirs to canneries to home gardens, the
infrastructure that previously supported community-embedded butchers, bakers and candlestick-
makers has given way to mega-markets and global trafficking.

The reason for this kind of disconnection occurring is due to cheap energy masking the
costs. If the true cost of fuel, including the cost of maintaining stability in the Middle East, were 35
added to transportation costs, food miles would not look efficient. If energy were as clear as it
was before the petroleum age, refrigerated warehouse, climate control and shipping mesclun mix
from California to Boston would be prohibitively expensive. Historically, energy required
significantly more effort. Today’s market-manipulative government intervention hides the true
40
costs of supermarket food. Meanwhile, it is prejudiced against local food viability. People have
traded historically strong, local food systems for fragile and detrimental industrial food systems.
As a culture, we traded our backyard gardens and neighbourhood farms for food imported from
China and chemicalised and fumigated mega fields.

We would grow all of the produce for the United States in just our lawns without needing
any additional farmland. Produce is extremely inefficient to ship because it contains so much 45

water. One of the strongest arguments for local food systems is to quit shipping all that water in
vegetables. Local food systems are the backbone of any sensible food model. They have stood
the test of time because they make sense if measured for energy, motion and logistic. This blip
known as the “petroleum age” or the “cheap energy age” does not change the rules that have
made local food production the foundation of all secure villages. No culture has ever survived if
it could not feed itself. The strongest communities are the ones that feed themselves. That is
historical normalcy. Let us build it.

Adapted from The Mother Earth News Magazine; June/July 2012

15. The food that we eat sees more of the world than the farmer who grows it (line 1 )
because
A. most of the food we consume originates from other states or countries
B. urbanisation has pushed farming land further away from our homes
C. the farming industry can only thrive by exporting produce to other places

16. The main idea of paragraph 2 is

A. the majority of the food we consume are imported from around the world
B. having seasonal eating commitment will ensure a successful local food system
C. the food we consume can be produced locally and available all year around

17. The following ideas to increase agriculture production at a local level except
 A. replace aging farmers with a new generation of young and trained farmers
B. utilise greenhouses, high tunnels and vacant land for food production
C. adopt seasonal and local food eating habits besides reducing food wastage

18. … a new generation of farmers need to be trained even though most of the younger
generation tend to shy away from the agriculture industry (lines 18-20 ) because
A. the younger generation tend to be disinterested in the farming industry
B. the farming industry is being threatened due to a disinterested younger generation
C. the younger generation’s participation is essential towards a stable farming industry

19. The word stagnant (line 30 ) means that something is

A. dormant
B. dominant
C. disarray

20. The following are reasons for the rise of supermarkets and mega fields of agriculture at
the expense of local agricultural production except
A. affordable fuel costs and efficient transportation system
B. government intervention in reducing the cost of supermarket food
C. the public’s yearning for produce from commercialised food production

21. Which of the following statements best describes the author’s intention?
A. Local food production is viable option for self-sufficiency in the United States
B. Low fuel cost and efficient transportation system keeps food prices low
C. Globalisation helped to erode people’s confidence in local food production
Question 22 to 29 are based on the following passage.

A Soap Opera on the High Seas

If you have spent any time in the past decade watching certain channels of cable television-
former educational channels like Discovery and History Channel, then you have seen Thom
Beers’ work. It is the reason that viewers who have never worked a day away from an Aeron
chair may know the dimensions and weight of a crab pot or the freezing point of synthetic
transmission fluid. It is the reason that on any given night you might turn on the television to find 5
a fisherman or bush pilot detailing the hazards of his job on Jay Leno’s talk show. Beers, who
currently has 13 shows on 8 networks, is one of the few producers in reality television who is
synonymous with an entire subgenre. What Andy Cohen is to over-the-top socialites and Mark
Burnett is to game shows on South pacific islands, Beers is to blue collar reality television
shows. There are the hits: Discovery Channel’s Deadliest Catch(about crab fisherman in the 10
Bering Sea), History Channel’s Ice Road Truckers (about truck drivers in the Canadian Arctic)
and Ax Men (about loggers), all of them among the top-rated programmes in their television
network histories. Storage Wars, which adapts the high-octane, competition-oriented format of
Beer’s earlier hits to the less-rugged world of delinquent-storage unit auctions, become A&E
Channel’s highest rated series ever inn 2012.

Then, there are the knockoffs of the reality television hits such as a half-dozen of Deadliest 15
Catch spin offs and similar shows like Lobster Wars and Swords. Beers’ work “has a very strong

20
point of view, which is why he has been so successful,” says Cecile Frot, the CEO of Freemantle
Media, one of the largest reality-TV production companies in the world. In 2009, Freemantle, a
British subsidiary of the German media colossus Bertelsman, reportedly paid $50 million for a
controlling stake in Beers’ company, Original Productions. In August 2010, Freemantle named
Beers CEO of its North American division, which produces Americal Idol, The X Factor and
American’s Got Talent. This is actually less strange than it seems. Beers is a particular genius in
realising that the sphere of aspirational television could be enlarged beyond the mainstays of
wealth, talent, young and celebrity. He also knew that Americans wanted to step into not only the
lives they might never live but also the lives they walked away from generations ago. “The
stories we are telling you guys’ versions of romance novels,” says Nancy Dubuc, the president of
A&E Networks, who commissioned Ice Road Truckers. “People think about leaving the confines
of their cubicle, or wherever they may be, and see the same traits that their grandfathers and
great-grandfathers had growing up. It is very nostalgic.

The son of a Ford regional service manager and a local actress in upstate New York, Beers 30

grew up in an environment in which the garage and the distant mirage of Hollywood were both
plausible ambitions. He attended four colleges and graduated from none of them before moving
to Manhattan to study acting with Lee Strasberg. After spending his 20s and early 30s struggling
as an actor and a playwright, he dabbled in television-commercial production. This led to a series
and special unit. In 1998, a Discovery Channel executive named Steve Burns approached Beers 35

at the time barely a year into a new career as an independent producer about making a one hour
special called Extreme Alaska. It was supposed to include a 15-minute segment about Alaskan
crab fishing, at the timo the deadliest occupation in the United States. In January 1999. Beers and
two cameraman set out from the Aleutian Island port of Dutch Harbour, where the Bering Sea
crab-fishing fleet delivers its catch. The plan was to spend a couple of days out of port on a crab 40
boat called Fierce Allegiance, get the footage and go home.

Instead Beers and his crew found themselves stuck at sea for a week as the boat battled an
uncommonly ferocious storm. Waves swelled to the height of a four storey building. Beers 55
pitched in with the work on deck, only to fall victim to the fisherman’s ailment known as “the
45
claw”, the muscles and joints in his hands knotting up hopelessly. Still, he was aware of the
elemental intensity of the footage: the crew lurching back and forth on the slick wood and steel
in their orange and yellow rain gear, the prehistoric strangeness of the snow crabs, and the
terrifying void of the heaving sea. When Beers returned to California, he called Burns, “Listen,
there is something big here.” Five years later, after the success of Monster Garage, Beers first
series for Discovery Channel, and the network agreed to send him back to the Bearing Sea with a
larger crew to film three-part mini-series called Deadliest Season. The network broadcasted all
three episodes in sequences on a Sunday night, with little promotional fanfare. The following
morning, Billy Campbell, the head of the network at the time, called Beers to congratulate him.
From the beginning of the first episode to the end of the third episode, the show’s viewer ship
had nearly quintupled, to 3.8 million. “When can we have another one?” Campbell asked and
Deadliest Catch made its debut the following year. By the end of the season it was the highest-
rated summer series on Discovery Channel.

Deadliest Catch arrived at the auspicious moment when advertisement-supported cable

television was transforming from a sleepy province of reruns and one-offs to a launching ground
for original shows. In 2003, sports broadcasts constituted nearly 50 percent of all original 60

advertisement-supported cable programming. By 2008, the year when cable advertising revenues
first surpassed broadcast advertising revenues, the overall number of original programmes had
nearly tripled. Documentary-style shows, created by small outside production firms with limited
overhead, free of unionised screenwriters and expensive talent, accounted for 30 percent of all
original programming. Crab fishing, it turned out, also bore an uncanny natural resemblance to 65

the kind of competition a reality producer might devise. Bering Sea fisherman worked for days
on end without respite to catch as many crabs as possible. It was a race against the clock with
quantifiable winners and losers, and the fisherman – permanently sleep-deprived, battered by the
elements – were edgy and prone to conflict. And as the Deadliest Catch narrator relentlessly
reminded the audience, the stakes, quite literally, could be life and death. By its third season, 70

Deadliest Catch has crossed over from cult hit to cultural touch stone.
 Meanwhile, Beers was trying to extract a formula from Deadliest Catch, settling on a few
rudiments that have since become staples of his work. There had to be a ticking clock; there had
to be teams in competition with one another, and there had to be a primal, omnipresent external
threat. The threat wasn’t always easy to come by. When History Channel first approached Beers 75
85
about making a show about truck drivers in the Canadian Arctic, he was nonplussed. The trucks
drove in a straight line on roads groomed across the surface of frozen lakes, at 25 miles an hour.
Then it hit him: the ice. His crew descended beneath the frozen surface in diving gear and filmed
the tricks rolling overhead, recorded the sounds of the ice cracking and bending under the weight
and juxtaposed it with claustrophobic night-vision footage filmed inside the truck cabins. Ice 80
Road Truckers became, for a while, the highest-rated show on History Channel. “All of my stuff
is based on the three-act structure, as if I was writing a play,” says Beers. It is now virtually
impossible to surf the cable television channels without landing on a series built on the Beers
template: shows about bush pilots, swamp loggers, wild-pig hunters, gold miners, snake
wranglers and animal control officers. “He cornered the market,” says Abby Greensfelder, a
former Discovery Channel executive who runs the reality television production company Half
Yard Productions. “Now a lot of people have imitated that, but he was a pioneer. He really
defined a genre.”

Adapted from The New York Times Magazine; December 16, 2012

22. If you have spent any time in the past decade watching certain channels of cable
television-former educational channels like Discovery and History Channel, then you
have seen Thom Beers’ work (line 1-3). In this statement, the writer implies that
A Thom Beers is an important producer at the Discovery and History Channel
B Thom Beers’ reality television shows are aired on Discovery and History
Channel
C Thom Beers cooperated with Discovery and History Channel to showcase his work

23. What does Beers have in common with Andy Cohen and Mark Burnett?
A. The co-produced top-rated reality television programmes like the Deadliest Catch
 B. They developed many reality television shows for Discovery and History Channels
C. They are well-known for their own niche area in reality television programmes

24. Based on the information from the passage, why was Thom Beers successful in creating
television hits like Deadliest Catch?
A. The stars of his hit shows are ordinary people who excel in what they do in real life.
B. He knew that the audience prefer aspirational television shows over the usual fare.
C. He sensed that people craved for guys’ versions of romance novels shows on
television.

25. Which of the following is true of Thom Beers?

A. He excelled as an actor and a playwright after studying under Lee Strasberg.
B. He joined Turner Broadcasting and created the hit series called Extreme Alaska.

C. He stumbled on the idea for Deadliest Catch while filming at sea in Alaska.

26. Based on information from the passage, what was surprising about the success of
Deadliest Catch?
A. It took Beers five years to convince the television executives to commence
production.
B. Its success followed after Monster Garage, Beers’ first reality television hit.
C. Its viewer ship skyrocketed despite little effort to promote its premier on television.

27. The phrase auspicious moment (line 61 ) means

A. perfect timing
B. turning point
C. decisive time
 28. Which of the following sentences expresses the main idea for paragraph 5?
A. Advertisement-supported cable television helped to promote Deadliest Catch.
B. The timing and situation were perfect for the success of Deadliest Catch.
C. Small production firms help successful documentary-style shows like Deadliest
Catch

29. The method of development of the passage is through

A. problem and solution
B. definition and examples
C. narration and description

Question 30 to 35 are based on the following passage

Future of Fish is a non-profit organisation that is helping entrepreneurs who hope to

reinvent the seafood industry by attacking problems throughout the long supply chains used by
today’s industrialised fisheries. “We hope to change incentives for behaviour in the industry so it
is no longer profitable to overfish and to fish non-sustainably,” founder Cheryl Dahle explained.
“And we are looking to reward sustainable behaviour with a better price.” The effort begins with 5

making information more available, properly identifying fish, and tracking it all the way from
sea to plate. Today’s consumers have little idea where, when, or how most of their fish was
caught. In fact, genetic studies show they often do not even know what kind of fish they really
buying.

“Estimates vary but some 30 to 70 percent of the fish sold in the United States is
mislabelled,” Dahle said. “If fish is mislabelled you don’t have a real choice to eat the right kind 10
of fish. Until the marketplace becomes transparent you cannot value fish for where it came from
or how it was caught – and those are two main pillars of sustainability.” At the same time, many

15
popular fish species like orange roughy and blue fin tuna have collapsed under fishing pressure.
Some studies suggest that todays’ population of large ocean fish are at just 10 percent of their
preindustrial levels. Some scientists warn that all fisheries could be in collapse by 2050.

However, many fish populations have shown an ability to rebound if they are managed
well. Tough regulations often encounter pushback, but Future of Fish hopes to drive adoption by
making them better for business. “Our approach is not a substitute for policy changes,” Dahle
said. “But Fish’s entrepreneurial partners work with processors and distributors to improve
sustainable practices, both for frozen fish and fresh. “The truth is that fresh is not regulated 20

term,” Dahle added. “It’s defined as not frozen or smoked, but fresh is in the nose of the
salesman. Often what you are buying as fresh fish may be 30 days old. If people knew more
about fish distribution they would understand the value of buying fish that was landed just days
before they eat it as opposed to weeks.”

One company Dahle works with is using tag technology to track the temperature of fish as 25
it moves through the supply chain, better monitor quality – this is especially important when it
comes to sushi-grade products. “Once you have tracking technology imbedded in fish you also
have a perfect traceability chain,” Dahle added. “Was this tuna part of a catch using fish 30
aggregating devices? Was it caught legally? You can start to track some of these things that
really matter for sustainability.” Dahle is confident that many consumers are concerned enough
about the health of our oceans to pay a premium for sustainably caught product. But she also
stresses that, once they are being rewarded, such practices can spread throughout the larger
seafood market as well. 35

“Not all coffee is Fair Trade, but the advent of Fair Trade has changed and improved the
practices of a much larger portion of the supply chain, including large buyers like Dunkin’ 35

Donuts,” said Dahle. “The premium, sustainable market doesn’t have to be the largest percentage
of the market to have a big influence.” But the sustainable market does have plenty of room for
growth, she added, which could mean less pressure on ailing fish stocks. “There is no reason
why you can’t take [sustainably caught] Alaskan salmon, and portion it properly and sell it at a
price point that can be served in a fish taco,” Dahle said. “It’s absolutely possible to do 40

sustainable, affordable fish.”

 Adapted from http://ocean.nationalgeographic.com/ocean/entrepreneurs-fight-for-future-of-fisheries

30. The word entrepreneurs (line 1 ) also means

A. enterprise
B. activists
C. businessmen
D. industrialists

31. Paragraph 1 draws attention to the

A. unacceptable behaviour among seafood companies in harvesting seafood products
B. problems plaguing the supply chains in the seafood industry around the world
C. consumers who are oblivious to the problems in the seafood industry
D. the unethical and unsustainable fishing methods in the aquaculture industry

32. We can infer from paragraph 2 that

A. around 30 to 70 percent of fish being sold in the United States are mislabelled
B. consumers do not really know what type of fish they are consuming due to
mislabelling
C. marketplace transparency will aid in the sustainability of endangered fish species
D. blue fin tuna stocks have collapsed due to overharvesting and will collapse by 2050

33. “… many fish populations have shown an ability to rebound if they are managed well.”
(line 18 ). This implies that
A. fish stocks will increase with greater urgency provided the environment is right
B. fish species will make a comeback with greater urgency with proper management
C. tough regulations and strict fishing quotas will save endangered fish stocks
D. policy changes will enable fish populations to recover from being endangered

34. In paragraph 3, the writer mentions that

A. there is greater distinction between frozen and fresh fish stocks
 B. the fresh fish segment need proper guidelines and regulation
C. fresh fish may take around 30 days to reach consumers’ plate
D. fresh fish has many hidden values for the consumers and retailers

35. There are many consumers who are willing to spend more for sustainably caught fish
and this practice can
A. determine whether the fish is caught legally and in a sustainable way
B. help endangered fish stocks to rebound and be available for future generations
C. influence the more common seafood market to follow suit in promoting sustainability
D. help track the fish from the moment of being caught to the moment it reaches the
market