As organizations experience increased competition for clients, patients, and customers, awareness of the importance of public contact increases. They are giving new attention to the old adage “First impressions are lasting impressions.” Research indicates that initial impressions do indeed tend to linger. Therefore, a positive first impression can set the stage for a long-term relationship.

We are indebted to Susan Bixler, president of Professional Image, Inc., and author of Professional Presence, for giving us a better understanding of what it means to possess professional presence. Professional presence is a dynamic blend of , self-confidence, control and style that empowers us to be able to command respect in any situation. Once acquired, it permits us to be perceived as self-assured and thoroughly competent. We project a confidence that others can quickly perceive the first time they meet us.

Bixler points out that, in most cases, the credentials we present during a job interview or when we are being considered for a promotion are not very different from those of other persons being considered, [t is oar professional presence that permits us to rise above the crowd. Debra Benton, a career consultant, says, “Any boss with a choice of two people with equal qualifications will choose the one with style as well as substance.” Learning to create a professional presence is one of the most valuable skills we can acquire.
The development of professional presence begins with a full appreciation of the power of first impressions. The tendency to form impressions quickly at the time of an initial meeting illustrates what social psychologists call a primacy effect in the way people perceive one another. The general principle is that first impressions establish the mental framework within which a person is viewed, and later evidence is either ignored or reinterpreted to coincide with this framework.

11. For all of the following walks of life EXCEPT the the professional presence has been

discussed in this passage.

[A] economic [B] military

[C] academic [D] medical

12. The underlined word “

[A] apparatus [B] cosmetics

[C] clothing [D] specialty

13. Which of the following statements can be inferred from the passage?

[A] No first impressions would ever change in the later contacts.

[B] How one composes oneself determines how one is evaluated by others.

[C] Social psychology is a science that stipulates the principles for social behaviors.

[D] Opportunities in jobs or promotions are for those who differ from their competitors.

14. The underlined word : “

[A] proper comportment [B]desirable position

[C] careful pause [D] positive assurance

15. Which of the following is likely to be the title of this article?

[A] The Power of First Impression

[B] The Primacy Effect in Marketing

[C] Social Psychology in Business

[D] The Importance of Feedback

Passage Four

You can’t drive if you’re blind, or blind drunk, but an alarming number of Americans find themselves, at least occasionally, driving in a blind rage. “It’s a major social issue，” says Dr. Ricardo Martinez, administrator of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration. “A 3,000-pound car in the hands of rude, hostile person is a weapon.”

A report on “road rage” to be released this week by the American Automobiles Association concluded that “motorists ... are increasingly being shot, stabbed, beaten, and run over for inane reasons.” And inanity is not confined to young louts in “Baywatch” T-shirt: young men are by far the most common perpetrators, but middle-aged men and women can be equally big jerks. The most common manifestation of road rage was aggressive tailgating, followed by headlight flashing, “obscene gestures”, blocking other vehicles, and verbal abuse. Drivers have been assaulted with weapons ranging from partially eaten burritos to canes (“a favorite with the elderly and disabled”） to golf clubs ---- and other vehicles, including buses,bulldozers, forklifts, and military tanks. “In terms of fatal crashes, drunks are a much bigger menace,” says David Willis, president of the AAA Foundation of Traffic Safety. “But the average motorist doesn’t encounter a drunk very often, while in a place like Washington, D.C., at least once a week you’ll have an encounter with some crazy guy on the road.”

Naturally, the phenomenon has given rise to its own therapeutic movement, whose leading practitioner is a Whittier, California, psychologist named Arnold Nerenburg. Nerenburg, who calls himself “America’s Road Rage Therapist”, has identified four stimuli that provoked road rage. The most common is feeling endangered by someone else’s driving --- for example, when another driver cuts you off or follows too closely. Others are resentment at being forced to slow down, righteous indignation at someone who breaks traffic rules or steals your parking space and ----perhaps the most dangerous, because it opens the door to an escalating exchange of hostilities ----anger at another driver who takes his own road rage out on you.

The fact that most drivers are mutual strangers contributes to the volatility of highway confrontations. “There’s a deep psychological urge to release aggression against an anonymous other,” Nerenburg says.

Road-rage therapy tends toward the common-sensical---- “Take a deep breath and just let it go,” Nerenburg recommends. But it might help to consider that you might not be all that anonymous to the other driver. One of his patients realized the depth of his problem after he yelled an obscenity at the woman in the next car ----who turned out to be his boss s wife.

16 .Which of the following statements is true according to the passage?

[A] More and more Americans are using their cars to express their anger.

[B] Old people and women are milder in temperament during driving.

[C] Common sense might be the basis for overcoming road rage.

[D] If people know each other, road rage would not happen.

17. According to American Automobile Association, people are more likely than all the others to be road-angered.

[A] young [B] middle-aged

[C]old [D] handicapped

18. Which of the following is a justifiable cause for road rage, according to Dr. Nerenburg?

[A] Another driver fails to observe a traffic law.

[B] The parking space is occupied by another car.

[C] The lane is taken by a slowly-moving car.

[D] Another driver flashes the head-light.

19. The underlined word “lethal” in the first paragraph means:

[A] powerful [B] illegal

[C] dangerous [D] deadly

20. What might be the deep problem that one of Nerenburg’s patients had realized?

[A] He faces a lawsuit of sex harassment.

[B] He is in danger of being fired.
[C] He will be fined by traffic police.

[D] He falls ill and has to see a doctor.

Passage Five

asked if they can think without -speech, would probably answer, “Yes, but it is not easy for me to do so. Still I know it can be done.” Language is but a garment! But what if language is not so much a garment as a prepared road or ? It is, indeed, in the highest degree likely that language is an instrument originally put to uses lower than the conceptual plane and that thought arises as a refined interpretation of its content. The product grows, in other words, with the instrument and the thought may be no more conceivable, in its genesis and daily practice, without speech than is mathematical reasoning practicable without the lever of an appropriate mathematically symbolism. No one believes that even the most difficult mathematical proposition is inherently dependent on an arbitrary set of symbols, but it is impossible to suppose that the human mind is capable of arriving at or holding such a proposition without the symbolism.

The writer, for one, is strongly of the opinion that the feeling entertained by so many that they can think, or even reason, without language is an illusion. The illusion seems to be due to a number of factors. The simplest of these is the failure to distinguish between imagery and thought. As a matter of fact, no sooner do we try to put an image into conscious relation with another than we find ourselves slipping into a silent flow of words. Thought may be a natural domain apart from the artificial one of speech, but speech would seem to the only road we know of that leads to it.

[A] most of the people [B] more people

[C] more than one people [D] many people

22. In line 3, the word ‘groove” is probably closest in meaning to

[A] later growth [B] designated slot

[C] particular path [D] ready-made viaduct

23. Which of the following statements would the author of the passage agree?

[A] Thought came into being earlier than language

[B] It is language that makes conceptual thought possible

[C] Thought is no different from mathematics because it depends on symbolism

[D] Both thought and language are the interpretation of propositions.