In this section, you can practice with some reading comprehension multiple-choice questions based on the latest exams to access CFGS. (Questions Type 1). Try your best, and good luck!
Other sections of the exam
Read the text and choose the correct answer to the questions below (2019a).
Indra Nooyi: “Everybody’s Watching You”
Indra Nooyi Was an Unusual Presence at the Top of the Business World
An immigrant and a woman, she served as chief executive of PepsiCo for 12 years—a position that placed her among the world’s most powerful corporate titans, overseeing a business that sells more than $63 billion worth of products each year and includes 22 global brands, including Frito-Lay, Gatorade, Quaker, and Tropicana.
When she was named chief executive in 2006, she was one of fewer than a dozen women at the top of America’s 500 largest public companies.
“You’re now a role model. Everybody’s watching you and these jobs are very hard, so one has to be very careful that you take it all in stride,” she told the BBC in 2011.
“Don’t let the privilege and the trappings… go to your head. Keep your legs firmly rooted to the ground and focus on the responsibility of these jobs and that’s all I do.”
Getting started
Born in the city of Madras, now Chennai, in the south of India, Ms. Nooyi, 62, has credited her family with instilling her with ambition.
Her mother required her to prepare speeches on important topics of the day; her grandfather, a judge, practised maths problems with Ms. Nooyi and her siblings.
“He was just a giant of a figure in our family and… was just very focused on making sure his grandchildren… got the best education,” Ms. Nooyi told the BBC in 2011.
She went on to study at Madras Christian College and the Indian Institute of Management, before moving to the US in 1978 to study at Yale University’s School of Management.
After various business roles, including at Motorola, Ms. Nooyi started her career at Pepsi in 1994, rising to become president and chief financial officer in 2001 and chief executive in 2006.
Since she took over as chief executive in 2006, Pepsi’s revenue has increased from $35 billion to more than $63 billion, while the share price has increased by about 80 %.
“To be a CEO (Chief Executive Officer) is a calling,” she said in 2007. “You should not do it because it is a job. It is a calling and you have got to be involved in it with your head, heart and hands. Your heart has got to be in the job, you have got to love what you do, it consumes you.”
When Ms. Nooyi steps down in October, there will be about two dozen women at the helm of the largest publicly listed US firms, the S&P 500 companies, according to a list maintained by the non-profit group Catalyst.
Ms. Nooyi, who is married with two daughters, has been frank about the tensions between her high-flying career and her family responsibilities.
“My observation… is that the biological clock and the career clock are in total conflict with each other. Total, complete conflict,” she told The Atlantic in 2014.
In a Bloomberg interview, she said a wide network of support was essential if women are to “have it all”, describing the importance of making trade-offs in the next breath.
“There will be heartache, there will be pain, there will be some collateral damage underneath the surface,” she told Bloomberg. “You’ve got to live with it.”
Text adapted from an article by
Natalie Sherman. BBC News [online] (August 6, 2018)
Read the text and choose the correct answer to the questions below (2019b).
Dear Dairy: Galicia Ditches Zebras for Cows at a City Crosswalk
The Spanish region of Galicia, located in the northwest of the country, is a land of cows. So much so, that in some municipalities, it is the human race that could be considered an endangered species. Around a million of the animals—one for every 2.7 inhabitants—live there, while more than 8,400 families run dairies that produce more than half of all the milk consumed in Spain. Given their importance in the region, then, cows are a “symbol of peace,” as the Galician poet, writer and painter Alfonso Daniel Rodríguez Castelao once said.
In line with this thinking, the city of A Coruña has just unveiled its first “cow-walk,” a crosswalk—or zebra crossing, as they are known in some parts of the English-speaking world—that ditches the traditional stripy pattern for the distinctive white patches of a Friesian cow’s hide.
The initiative will be a way of reminding the city-dwellers of Galicia that the green pastures that are home to the region’s cows are just a stone’s throw away.
The location for the cow-walk was proposed by the City Hall, but the idea was dreamed up 54 kilometers to the south, in the Casa Grande de Xanceda, a dairy located in Mesía, A Coruña, where 380 cows are reared for their milk, which is used to make ecological yogurt.
While the city slept, the dairy was charged with painting on the distinctive spots of a Friesian cow, which will, from now on, indicate where humans have priority. Friesians are not a native breed, but they are in the majority in the region. “Zebras do not represent Galicians, but cows are a part of our very essence,” says Jessica Rey, the head of marketing at the Casa Grande de Xanceda. “We don’t want this cow-walk to be a mere anecdote, but rather for the idea to be exported to the streets of other cities and towns in Galicia. This first one is merely the prototype.”
To coincide with the unveiling of the cow-walk, the company organized an information day “to bring the rural world to the city,” and along the way explain the true value of a liter of milk. Given that the farm prides itself on rearing “happy cows,” rather than bringing a live animal to the center of the city, they came with a fake, life-sized animal, loaded with milk. Before members of the public got a chance to actually milk the stand-in cow, they could put on virtual reality glasses that would teleport them to a meadow.
“In this community, the cow is a symbol of prosperity,” explains Rey. “Despite the constant crises in the sector due to the fluctuation in the price of milk—which has fallen constantly in the last six months, causing losses of € 20 million—where there are cows, there is always an opportunity.”
The sector, the company says, “is a source of employment and development,” and without it, the hemorrhage in population that rural parts of Galicia are suffering would be even more acute. “There are more than enough reasons to celebrate the cow as an icon of Galicia,” it argues, “giving it the importance that it deserves in our culture and society.”
Text adapted from an article by Silvia R. Pontevedra.
El País [online] (August 30, 2018)