a possessive or no possessive

1. Please tell me how can a person make the right decision when confronted those ajectives with a plural 's' ending?

do phonics teaching

obtained a first-class honors degree -- For this, I think it need (subjunctive OK since the context allude to the notion that this is sort of a recommendation eventhough an explict phrase like "It is recommended" is there??) not be made possessive because 'honors degree' here is more of an idiomatic phrase that has been used without the use of the apostrophe.

2. Is the underlined part an adverb?

I can talk about 15 minutes non-stop.