Reading Passage 1 has six paragraphs, A-G.
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G, in boxes 1-7 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any letter more than once.
1 Description of one family member persuading another of selling cleaning products
2 An account of the cooperation of all factory staff to cope with sales increase
3 An account of the creation of the formula of Shower Power
4 An account of buying the original OzKleen company
5 Description of Shower Power’s international expansion
6 The reason of changing the packaging size of Shower Power
7 An example of some innovative ideas
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Tips: before you do the test, take a look at the types of the questions first. As we can see the type of questions 1 to 7 is matching heading, Q8 - Q11 is matching people with their opinions and the rest is multiple choice. It is recommended not to follow the sequence to do Q1-Q7 first because it will take you a lot of time to read carefully to get the main idea of the paragraph. You should either complete the Q8-Q11 by using scan techniques or finish Q12, Q13 before doing the others mainly because the information needed is in order and easier to locate. | |
Q1: Description of one family member persuading another of selling cleaning products | OzKleen’s next big break came when the daughter of a Coles Myer executive used the product while on holidays in Queensland and convinced her father that Shower Power should be in supermarkets. |
Note: The first sentence of paragraph F indicated that a daughter tried to persuade her father to sell Shower Power - a cleaning product - in supermarkets. The statement is clear and does not cause any confusion, hence F is the final answer. |
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q2: An account of the cooperation of all factory staff to cope with sales increase | It was all hands on deck cat the factory, labeling and bottling Shower Power to keep up with demand. OzKleen ditched all other products and rebuilt the business around Shower Power. |
Note: You can confirm that paragraph E contains the above statement once you know the key idiom “all hands on deck” which means everyone helps or must help, especially in a difficult situation. In order to cope with sales increase within a short period of time, all factory staff has to work and cooperate with others. The phrasal verb “keep up with something” means to continue doing something regularly to know the newest information, in this case is the newest data of sales demand. |
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q3: An account of the creation of the formula of Shower Power | Peter looked at citrus ingredients, such as orange peel, to replace the petroleum by-products in cleaners. He is credited with finding the Shower Power formula. |
Note: The statement generally is about the creation of something. Normally we might think and expect to see that the first appearance of the keyword “Shower Power” comes along with the description how it was created. The keyword Shower Power is first seen in paragraph B, but its creation can only be found at the end of paragraph C. Noticing the sentence “he is credited with finding something” has the same meaning as “he is the creator of something” or “he created/ found out/ devised… st”. So the answer is C |
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q4: An account of buying the original OzKleen company | In 1995, Tom Quinn and John Heron bought a struggling cleaning products business, OzKleen , for 250,000. It was selling 100 different kinds of cleaning products, mainly in bulk. The business was in bad shape, the cleaning formulas were ineffective and environmentally harsh, and there were few regular clients. |
Note: The keyword “OzKleen company” can be seen in paragraph B for the first time. By the time Tom and John bought the company, its original situation was “a struggling cleaning products business”. Therefore the answer is B. |
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q5: Description of Shower Power’s international expansion | Tom Quinn, who previously ran a real estate agency, says: “We are competing with the same market all over the world, the cleaning products are sold everywhere .” |
Note: We can realize that throughout paragraph B to F the author talked about the progress to improve the quality of Shower Power, emphasized that sales had continued increasing in short time, but the sales increases happened in domestic market only. The last paragraph eventually mentioned that the company expanded overseas and the products were sold everywhere. Hence the statement matches heading G. |
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q6: The reason of changing the packaging size of Shower Power | To begin with, Shower Power was sold only in commercial quantities but Tom Quinn decided to sell it in 750ml bottles after the constant “raves” from customers at their retail store at , near Brisbane. |
Note: The first sentence of paragraph D did not directly indicate the previous dimension of the bottle but according to the paragraph, the product Shower Power won rave reviews from customers leading to the decision of Tom to make a change in the bottle size and sell it in 750ml bottles (rather than sell it in commercial quantities only). We can say that the statement matches the information in paragraph D. Tips: if you do the multiple choice questions at first, you might realise that the question no.12 had already confirmed Tom Quinn changed the bottle size for a reason, and because the information has already been located you can quickly choose the answer D. |
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q7: An example of some innovative ideas | Some ideas that innovators are spruiking to potential investors include new water-saving shower heads, a keyless locking system, ping-pong balls that keep pollution out of rainwater tanks, making teeth grow from stem cells inserted in the gum, and technology to stop LPG tanks from exploding |
Note: The answer is A. The very first paragraph A already listed out some example of ideas that are used by innovators to attract investment. |
Look at the following people and list of statements below.
Match each person with the correct statement.
Write the correct letter A-E in boxes 8-11 on your answer sheet
List of Statement | |
A | Described his story of selling his product to a chain store |
B | Explained there was a shortage of money when sales suddenly increased |
C | Believe innovations need support to succeed |
D | Believes new products like Shower Power may incur risks |
E | Says business won’t succeed with innovations |
8 Grant Kearney
9 Tom Quinn
10 Peter Quinn
11 Belinda McDonnell
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q8: Grant Kearney: “Believe innovations need support to succeed” | “Ideas by themselves are absolutely useless,”he says. “ An idea only becomes innovation when it is connected to the right resources and capabilities ". |
Note: By scanning, we find out the first appearance of the name Grant Kearney is in paragraph A. According to him, innovation is the combination of an idea and the right resources and capabilities, without support the innovation is useless or in other words cannot succeed. Therefore, the final answer is C |
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q9:Tom Quinn: “Described his story of selling his product to a chain store” | “We did a dummy label and went to see Woolworths,”Tom Quinn says. The Woolworths buyer took a bottle home and was able to remove a stain from her basin that had been impossible to shift. From that point on, she championed the product and OzKleen had its first super- market order, for a palette of Shower Power worth $3000. |
Note: By scanning, we know that Tom Quinn showed up in paragraph B, C, and D, G. Paragraph B talked about how he and John bought the company. In paragraph C, his name has been mentioned to introduce his son Peter, nothing more. After making a change in bottle size, he had come to see Woolworths - a famous supermarket chain - to sell his product in paragraph D. In the last paragraph, he talked about the international expansion of his business. The statement was spoken by Tom Quinn, the answer is A |
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q10: Peter Quinn: Believes new products like Shower Power may incur risks | Despite the product success, Peter Quinn says the company was wary of how long the sales would last and hesitated to spend money on upgrading the manufacturing process . As a result, he remembers long periods of working round the clock to keep up with orders. Small tanks were still being used, so batches were small and bottles were labelled and filled manually. The privately owned OzKleen relied on cash flow to expand. “The equipment could not keep up with demand,” Peter Quinn says. |
Note: We can locate the name “Peter Quinn” in paragraph C, F and G by using scan technique. Running eyes to paragraph F, we might see that the hesitation of the company on upgrading the manufacturing process had lead to the risk of lacking the capacity for generation equipment. Therefore, Peter Quinn matches the statement D |
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q11: Belinda McDonnell: “Explained there was a shortage of money when sales suddenly increased” | Shower Power was released in Australian supermarkets in 1997 and became the top-selling product in its category within six months.[...] This stage, recalls McDonnell , was very tough. “It was hand-to-mouth, cashflow was very difficult”she says. |
Note: By searching for particular name of McDonnell, we can notice paragraph E contains information of the answer. It is necessary to understand the adjective “hand-to-mouth”: it means that you spend all your money you earn on basic needs and do not have anything left. Subsequently, the difficulty in cash flow can be understood as a shortage of money. In conclusion, the true answer is B Tips: You should notice that the particular names Grant and McDonnell only appeared once in the whole passage whereas the names of Peter and Tom Quinn showed up in different paragraphs, therefore it is recommended for you to match the statements of these two people first to save time. |
Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D.
Write your answers in boxes 12-13 on your answer sheet.
Tom Quinn changed the bottle size to 750ml to make Shower Power
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q12: Tom Quinn changed the bottle size to 750ml to make Shower Power A Easier to package. B Appealing to individual customers. C Popular in foreign markets. D Attractive to supermarkets. | Customers were travelling long distances to buy supplies. Others began writing to OzKleen to say how good Shower Power was.[...] and OzKleen had its first super- market order [...]. |
Note: It is necessary to consider all 4 choices in this case. By using scanning techniques, we can locate the keyword 750ml bottles in paragraph D. According to the paragraph, customers have to travel long distances to buy the product, but there is no clue about whether its new dimension make the packing process easier for customers or not. The whole paragraph did not contain any “foreign markets” so we can make sure that the answer is not C. The first sentence said that “Shower Power was only sold in commercial quantities” (sold in mass only) but after changing the bottle size to 750ml, customers traveled long distances to buy and gave positive comments about Shower Power and thanks to that, the company got its first supermarket order later. Therefore, the answer is B |
Why did Tom Quinn decide not to sell OzKleen?
Keywords in Questions | Similar words in Passage |
Q13: Why did Tom Quinn decide not to sell OzKleen? A No one wanted to buy OzKleen. B New products were being developed in OzKleen. C He couldn’t make an agreement on the price with the buyer. D He wanted to keep things unchanged. | OzKleen is already number three in the British market, and the next stop is France. The Power range includes cleaning products for carpets, kitchens and pre-wash stain removal. The Quinn and Heron families are still involved. OzKleen has been approached with offers to buy the company, but Tom Quinn says he is happy with things as they are . “We’re having too much fun.” |
Tips: Because multiple choice questions are in order and we have already located the Q12 in paragraph D, the information for Q13 should be in the paragraph after D. Note: We can find the answer for this question at the end of paragraph G. It is obvious that some people had offered to buy OzKleen company, hence we can eliminate the choice A. The whole paragraph did not say any words about how Tom made an agreement with the buyer, therefore the choice C is wrong. According to the article, a wide range of new products were being developed but it was not the reason for Tom to refuse the acquisition deal. He felt happy with things, thus the answer is D |
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below.
A Innovation and entrepreneurship, in the right mix, can bring spectacular results and propel a business ahead of the pack. Across a diverse range of commercial successes, from the Hills Hoist clothes line to the Cochlear ear implant, it is hardto generalize beyond saying the creators tapped into something consumers could not wait to get their hands on. However, most ideas never make it to the market. Some ideas that innovators are spruiking to potential investors include new water-saving shower heads, a keyless locking system, ping-pong balls that keep pollution out of rainwater tanks, making teeth grow from stemcells inserted in the gum, and technology to stop LPG tanks from exploding. Grant Kearney, chief executive of the Innovation Xchange, which connects businesses to innovation networks, says he hears of great business ideas that he knows will never get on the market. “Ideas by themselves are absolutely useless,”he says. “An idea only becomes innovation when it is connected to the right resources and capabilities".
B One of Australia’s latest innovation successes stems from a lemon-scented bath-room cleaner called Shower Power, the formula for which was concocted in afactory in Yatala, Queensland. In 1995, Tom Quinn and John Heron bought a struggling cleaning products business, OzKleen, for 250,000. It was selling 100 different kinds of cleaning products, mainly in bulk. The business was in bad shape, the cleaning formulas were ineffective and environmentally harsh, and there were few regular clients. Now Shower Power is claimed to be the top-selling bathroom cleaning product in the country. In the past 12 months ,almost four million bottles of OzKleen’s Power products have been sold and the company forecasts 2004 sales of 10 million bottles. The company’s, sales in2003 reached $11 million, with 700k of business being exports. In particular, Shower Power is making big inroads on the British market..
C OzKleen’s turnaround began when Quinn and Heron hired an industrial chemist to revitalize the product line. Market research showed that people werelooking for a better cleaner for the bathroom, universally regarded as the hardest room in the home to clean. The company also wanted to make the product formulas more environmentally friendly One of Tom Quinn’s sons, Peter, aged 24 at the time, began working with the chemist on the formulas, looking at the potential for citrus-based cleaning products. He detested all the chlorine-based cleaning products that dominated the market. “We didn’t want to use chlorine, simple as that,”he says. “It offers bad working conditions and there’s no money in it.”Peter looked at citrus ingredients, such as orange peel, to replace the petroleum by-products in cleaners. He is credited with finding the Shower Power formula. “The head,”he says. The company is the recipe is in a vault somewhere and in my sole owner of the intellectual property.
D To begin with, Shower Power was sold only in commercial quantities but Tom Quinn decided to sell it in 750ml bottles after the constant “raves” from customers at their retail store at , near Brisbane. Customers were travelling long distances to buy supplies. Others began writing to OzKleen to say how good Shower Power was. “We did a dummy label and went to see Woolworths,”Tom Quinn says. The Woolworths buyer took a bottle home and was able to remove a stain from her basin that had been impossible to shift. From that point on, she championed the product and OzKleen had its first super- market order, for a palette of Shower Power worth $3000. “We were over the moon,”says OzKleen’s financial controller, Belinda McDonnell.
E Shower Power was released in Australian supermarkets in 1997 and became the top-selling product in its category within six months. It was all hands on deck cat the factory, labeling and bottling Shower Power to keep up with demand. OzKleen ditched all other products and rebuilt the business around Shower Power. This stage, recalls McDonnell, was very tough. “It was hand-to-mouth, cashflow was very difficult,”she says. OzKleen had to pay new-line fees to supermarket chains, which also squeezed margins.
F OzKleen’s next big break came when the daughter of a Coles Myer executive 1 used the product while on holidays in Queensland and convinced her father that Shower Power should be in supermarkets. Despite the product success, Peter Quinn says the company was wary of how long the sales would last and hesitated to spend money on upgrading the manufacturing process. As a result, he remembers long periods of working round the clock to keep up with orders. Small tanks were still being used, so batches were small and bottles were labelled and filled manually. The privately owned OzKleen relied on cash flow to expand. “The equipment could not keep up with demand,” Peter Quinn says. Eventually a new bottling machine was bought for $50,000 in the hope of streamlining production, but he says: “We got ripped off.” Since then, he has been developing a new automated bottling machine that can control the amount of foam produced in the liquid, so that bottles can be filled more effectively - “I love coming up with new ideas.” The machine is being patented.
G Peter Quinn says OzKleen’s approach to research and development is open slather. “If I need it, I get it. It is about doing something simple that no one else is doing. Most of these things are just sitting in front of people ... it’s just seeing the opportunities.” With a tried and tested product, OzKleen is expanding overseas and developing more Power-brand household products. Tom Quinn, who previously ran a real estate agency, says: “We are competing with the same market all over the world, the cleaning products are sold everywhere.” Shower Power, known as Bath Power in Britain, was launched four years ago with the help of an export development grant from the Federal Government. “We wanted to do it straight away because we realised we had the same opportunities worldwide.” OzKleen is already number three in the British market, and the next stop is France. The Power range includes cleaning products for carpets, kitchens and pre-wash stain removal. The Quinn and Heron families are still involved. OzKleen has been approached with offers to buy the company, but Tom Quinn says he is happy with things as they are. “We’re having too much fun.”
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