TOEFL iBT Reading Practice 2

TOEFL Reading Exercise: Cultural Competence

TOEFL iBT Reading Practice: Cultural Competence

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The Critical Imperative of Cultural Competence

[Paragraph 1] In an increasingly interconnected and globalized world, the ability to interact effectively and appropriately with people from different cultural backgrounds, a skill known as cultural competence, has transitioned from a desirable trait to a critical imperative. This skill set is not merely about appreciating foreign holidays or cuisines; it is a deep-seated proficiency that encompasses awareness of one's own cultural worldview, a positive attitude towards cultural differences, knowledge of different cultural practices and worldviews, and the skills to develop and apply this understanding in cross-cultural situations. The demand for cultural competence is rapidly growing across numerous sectors, including business, healthcare, education, and diplomacy, as organizations and individuals recognize that monocultural perspectives are insufficient to navigate the complexities of modern global interactions.

[Paragraph 2] In the corporate sphere, the benefits of a culturally competent workforce are manifold. For multinational corporations, employees who possess high levels of cultural competence are invaluable assets in negotiating international contracts, managing diverse teams, and marketing products to a global consumer base. Misunderstandings arising from a lack of cultural awareness can lead to failed negotiations, decreased team productivity, and marketing campaigns that are not just ineffective but potentially offensive. For instance, a marketing slogan that resonates powerfully in one culture might be nonsensical or even insulting in another. A culturally competent manager, however, can foster an inclusive environment that leverages the diverse perspectives of team members, leading to greater innovation and a more robust bottom line. This ability to bridge cultural divides is a significant competitive advantage.

[Paragraph 3] The healthcare sector provides another powerful illustration of the necessity of cultural competence. A patient's cultural background can significantly influence their understanding of health, illness, and treatment. Beliefs about the causes of illness, the role of family in medical decisions, and the acceptability of certain medical procedures vary widely across cultures. Healthcare providers who lack cultural competence may inadvertently create barriers to effective care. They might struggle to build trust with patients, fail to take a complete and accurate medical history, or prescribe treatment plans that a patient is culturally or religiously unwilling to follow. Conversely, culturally competent medical professionals are better equipped to provide patient-centered care. They can communicate more effectively, understand the non-verbal cues that differ across cultures, and collaborate with patients to develop treatment plans that respect their values and beliefs, ultimately leading to improved health outcomes.

[Paragraph 4] Developing cultural competence is an ongoing process, not a final destination. It begins with introspection—a critical examination of one's own biases, prejudices, and stereotypes. ■ This self-awareness is the foundation upon which all other aspects of cultural competence are built. ■ Following this, individuals must actively seek out knowledge about other cultures, not through superficial exposure, but through genuine engagement, such as reading literature, learning a language, or building relationships with people from different backgrounds. ■ Finally, this knowledge must be translated into practical skills, such as active listening, empathy, and the ability to adapt one's communication style to suit different cultural contexts. ■ Educational institutions are increasingly integrating curricula designed to foster these skills, recognizing that they are essential for the success of future graduates in any field. The journey towards cultural competence requires humility, openness, and a lifelong commitment to learning.

1. The word "imperative" in paragraph 1 is closest in meaning to:

(A) advantage (B) option (C) necessity (D) concept

English: The sentence structure "transitioned from a desirable trait to a critical imperative" suggests a change from something nice-to-have to something essential. Which word means "essential" or "required"?

မြန်မာ: "desirable trait မှ critical imperative သို့ ပြောင်းလဲသွားသည်" ဟူသော ဝါကျဖွဲ့စည်းပုံသည် ရှိလျှင်ကောင်းသည့်အရာမှ မရှိမဖြစ်လိုအပ်သည့်အရာသို့ ပြောင်းလဲခြင်းကို ညွှန်ပြသည်။ မည်သည့်စကားလုံးက "မရှိမဖြစ်" သို့မဟုတ် "လိုအပ်သော" ဟု အဓိပ္ပာယ်ရသနည်း။

2. According to paragraph 1, which of the following is NOT mentioned as a component of cultural competence?

(A) Awareness of one's own cultural views (B) Skills for applying cross-cultural understanding (C) Fluency in multiple foreign languages (D) A positive attitude toward cultural differences

English: This is a "NOT" question. Carefully read the list of components in paragraph 1: "awareness," "positive attitude," "knowledge," and "skills." Find the answer choice that is NOT on this list.

မြန်မာ: ဤမေးခွန်းသည် "NOT" မေးခွန်းဖြစ်သည်။ စာပိုဒ် ၁ ရှိ အစိတ်အပိုင်းများစာရင်းကို ဂရုတစိုက်ဖတ်ပါ- "awareness," "positive attitude," "knowledge," နှင့် "skills"။ ဤစာရင်းတွင်မပါသော အဖြေကိုရှာပါ။

3. In paragraph 2, the author discusses marketing slogans in order to:

(A) argue that marketing is the most important skill in international business. (B) provide a specific example of a potential cross-cultural misunderstanding. (C) show that some cultures are more sensitive than others. (D) criticize companies that have made marketing mistakes.

English: Ask yourself the purpose of the example. The sentence before mentions "marketing campaigns that are...potentially offensive." The slogan example directly illustrates this general point.

မြန်မာ: ဥပမာ၏ ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ကို ကိုယ့်ကိုယ်ကိုယ်မေးပါ။ ရှေ့ဝါကျတွင် "ဖြစ်နိုင်ခြေရှိသော စော်ကားမှုဖြစ်စေနိုင်သည့် ကြော်ငြာလှုံ့ဆော်မှုများ" ဟု ဖော်ပြထားသည်။ ဆောင်ပုဒ်ဥပမာသည် ဤအထွေထွေအချက်ကို တိုက်ရိုက်သရုပ်ဖော်သည်။

4. Which of the sentences below best expresses the essential information in the highlighted sentence in paragraph 2?

(A) Businesses with cultural connections have a major lead over their rivals. (B) Gaining a competitive advantage requires businesses to overcome cultural problems. (C) The capacity to connect with and understand different cultures provides a key edge in the marketplace. (D) A company’s main advantage is its ability to sell products to people from different cultures.

English: Break down the original sentence: "This ability to bridge cultural divides" means the skill to connect across cultures. "A significant competitive advantage" means a key edge. Find the option that captures both of these core ideas.

မြန်မာ: မူရင်းဝါကျကို ခွဲခြမ်းစိတ်ဖြာပါ- "This ability to bridge cultural divides" ဆိုသည်မှာ ယဉ်ကျေးမှုများကို ဆက်သွယ်နိုင်သည့် စွမ်းရည်ကို ဆိုလိုသည်။ "A significant competitive advantage" ဆိုသည်မှာ အဓိကအားသာချက်ကို ဆိုလိုသည်။ ဤအဓိကအချက်နှစ်ခုလုံးကို ဖမ်းယူနိုင်သော ရွေးချယ်မှုကို ရှာပါ။

5. From paragraph 3, it can be inferred that a culturally competent healthcare provider would:

(A) insist that all patients accept the most scientifically advanced treatment. (B) be more likely to involve a patient's family in healthcare decisions if it aligns with the patient's cultural norms. (C) treat all patients identically, regardless of their background, to ensure fairness. (D) be able to cure diseases that other providers cannot.

English: The paragraph emphasizes respecting a patient's cultural background, including "the role of family in medical decisions." A competent provider would apply this knowledge. What is the logical application of this idea?

မြန်မာ: စာပိုဒ်သည် "ဆေးဘက်ဆိုင်ရာ ဆုံးဖြတ်ချက်များတွင် မိသားစု၏အခန်းကဏ္ဍ" အပါအဝင် လူနာ၏ယဉ်ကျေးမှုနောက်ခံကို လေးစားရန် အလေးပေးထားသည်။ အရည်အချင်းရှိသော ဝန်ဆောင်မှုပေးသူသည် ဤအသိပညာကို အသုံးချမည်ဖြစ်သည်။ ဤအတွေးအခေါ်၏ ယုတ္တိတန်သော အသုံးချမှုကား အဘယ်နည်း။

6. The word "inadvertently" in paragraph 3 is closest in meaning to:

(A) deliberately (B) quickly (C) secretly (D) unintentionally

English: The sentence says providers who "lack" competence might create barriers. This implies they are not doing it on purpose, but because they don't know any better. Which word means "not on purpose"?

မြန်မာ: ဝါကျတွင် အရည်အချင်း "မရှိသော" ဝန်ဆောင်မှုပေးသူများသည် အတားအဆီးများ ဖန်တီးနိုင်သည်ဟု ဆိုထားသည်။ ၎င်းတို့သည် ရည်ရွယ်ချက်ရှိရှိ လုပ်ဆောင်ခြင်းမဟုတ်ဘဲ ပိုမိုကောင်းမွန်စွာ မသိသောကြောင့် ဖြစ်သည်ဟု ဆိုလိုသည်။ မည်သည့်စကားလုံးက "ရည်ရွယ်ချက်မရှိဘဲ" ဟု အဓိပ္ပာယ်ရသနည်း။

7. According to paragraph 4, what is the foundational first step in developing cultural competence?

(A) Learning about other cultures (B) Examining one's own personal biases (C) Traveling to as many countries as possible (D) Adapting one's communication style

English: Look for sequence words in paragraph 4. The passage says the process "begins with introspection—a critical examination of one's own biases..." This is explicitly stated as the first step.

မြန်မာ: စာပိုဒ် ၄ ရှိ အစီအစဉ်ပြစကားလုံးများကို ရှာပါ။ စာပိုဒ်တွင် လုပ်ငန်းစဉ်သည် "introspection—a critical examination of one's own biases..." ဖြင့် စတင်သည်ဟု ဆိုထားသည်။ ဤသည်မှာ ပထမအဆင့်အဖြစ် တိတိကျကျ ဖော်ပြထားသည်။

8. Why does the author mention "educational institutions" in the final paragraph?

(A) To argue that cultural competence can only be learned in a formal school setting. (B) To provide an example of a sector that is recognizing the value of teaching cultural competence. (C) To suggest that graduates are not prepared for the modern workforce. (D) To criticize the slow pace of curriculum change in universities.

English: This is a "purpose" question. The author mentions educational institutions to show that the importance of these skills is being formally recognized and implemented in the real world.

မြန်မာ: ဤမေးခွန်းသည် "ရည်ရွယ်ချက်" မေးခွန်းဖြစ်သည်။ စာရေးသူသည် ဤကျွမ်းကျင်မှုများ၏ အရေးပါမှုကို တရားဝင်အသိအမှတ်ပြုပြီး လက်တွေ့ကမ္ဘာတွင် အကောင်အထည်ဖော်နေကြောင်း ပြသရန် ပညာရေးအဖွဲ့အစည်းများကို ဖော်ပြသည်။

9. Look at the four squares [■] in paragraph 4 that indicate where the following sentence could be added to the passage.

"This requires an honest assessment of the assumptions one makes about the world."

Click on the square in the passage where the sentence would best fit.

English: The sentence to be added explains *what* introspection is. It should logically follow the sentence that introduces the term "introspection."

မြန်မာ: ထည့်သွင်းရမည့် ဝါကျသည် introspection ဆိုသည်မှာ *ဘာလဲ* ဆိုတာကို ရှင်းပြသည်။ ၎င်းသည် "introspection" ဟူသော ဝေါဟာရကို မိတ်ဆက်သည့် ဝါကျနောက်တွင် ယုတ္တိတန်စွာ လိုက်သင့်သည်။

10. Directions: An introductory sentence for a brief summary of the passage is provided below. Complete the summary by selecting the THREE answer choices that express the most important ideas in the passage.

Cultural competence is an essential skill in today's interconnected world, with significant applications across various professional sectors.

(A) In business, cultural competence enhances team innovation, improves marketing, and is a key competitive advantage. (B) Cultural beliefs, such as the role of family in decisions, can greatly affect a patient's approach to medicine. (C) In the healthcare field, cultural competence is crucial for building trust and providing effective, patient-centered care that leads to better health outcomes. (D) Becoming culturally competent is a continuous process that involves self-examination, learning about others, and developing practical skills. (E) A marketing slogan that is successful in one country might fail completely in a different cultural context. (F) Many people begin their journey to cultural competence by celebrating foreign holidays and trying new foods.

English: A good summary captures the main ideas from the major sections of the passage. Look for one choice that summarizes the business paragraph, one for the healthcare paragraph, and one for the development process paragraph.

မြန်မာ: ကောင်းမွန်သော အကျဉ်းချုပ်သည် စာပိုဒ်၏ အဓိကကဏ္ဍများမှ အဓိကအချက်အလက်များကို ဖမ်းယူသည်။ စီးပွားရေးစာပိုဒ်ကို အကျဉ်းချုပ်သည့် ရွေးချယ်မှုတစ်ခု၊ ကျန်းမာရေးစောင့်ရှောက်မှုစာပိုဒ်အတွက် တစ်ခု၊ နှင့် ဖွံ့ဖြိုးတိုးတက်မှုလုပ်ငန်းစဉ်စာပိုဒ်အတွက် တစ်ခုကို ရှာပါ။

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Correct Answers: 0 / 10

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Correct Answers

1. (C) necessity

2. (C) Fluency in multiple foreign languages

3. (B) provide a specific example of a potential cross-cultural misunderstanding.

4. (C) The capacity to connect with and understand different cultures provides a key edge in the marketplace.

5. (B) be more likely to involve a patient's family in healthcare decisions if it aligns with the patient's cultural norms.

6. (D) unintentionally

7. (B) Examining one's own personal biases

8. (B) To provide an example of a sector that is recognizing the value of teaching cultural competence.

9. The sentence best fits at the first square [■].

10. Correct choices are (A), (C), and (D).