Reading passage 1

A. On Nov. 8, the first phones running Microsoft's Windows Phone 7 will hit the U.S. The update to the venerable mobile operating system formerly known as Windows Mobile is bulging with fresh ideas a clever alternative to Apple's iPhone and handsets that run Google's Android, not a clone. Even so, with other contenders so well established and Windows Phone 7 missing key features such as cutting and pasting and full multitasking, Microsoft remains a decided underdog in the smart-phone wars. B. Hold on Microsoft an underdog? The company whose software has defined the PC industry for as long as there's been a PC industry? The one whose record results for its first quarter, announced last week, included $3.3 billion in profits for Windows and another $3.4 billion for business applications like Office? Yes, indeed. With Windows and Office maintaining their awe-inspiring market shares, Microsoft has the past of computing all sewn up. It's the future boom markets like Web services and mobile operating systems where its position is shaky. The arrival of Windows Phone 7 is one of several encouraging developments, but the company is still grappling with the odd conundrum of turning 35 years of wild success into an asset rather than an albatross. C. It wasn't always this way. Once upon a time, Microsoft used the dominance of Windows and Office to bulldoze its way into new territories, gleefully trammeling over any company that dared get in its way. In the mid-1990s, for instance, Netscape's free Web browser became the hottest software around; Microsoft responded by bundling its own Internet Explorer with Windows as a freebie and encouraging sites to add features that worked only in Internet Explorer. The strategy, replicated in multiple variations elsewhere, was known as embrace and extend. (Inside Microsoft, reportedly, it was sometimes called embrace, extend and extinguish that last step being what it let the company do to rivals.) D. But a funny thing happened in this century: embracing and extending turned out to be a deeply flawed business strategy, and not just because its use against Netscape led to the epic court case known as United States v. Microsoft. There were hints it was getting rusty as early as a decade ago, when Bill Gates declared that he believed tablet computers would outsell traditional laptops within half a decade. It was a visionary prediction, as if Gates could see the iPad era coming years before the iPad existed. However, Microsoft's Windows-centric recipe for tablets modify the operating system slightly for pen input, then cram a PC into a slatestyle case was profoundly unsatisfying. Consumers noticed and stayed away in droves. E. Looking at every new opportunity through Windows-colored glasses also hurt Microsoft on the Web. In 2006, it reacted to Google's Microsoftian

dominance of Web search by relaunching its MSN Search as Windows Live Search, a move that was more confusing than clarifying. It also announced plans to strip Hotmail of its name one of the best-known monikers on the Internet and redub it Windows Live Mail. (The company wisely reconsidered that one.) F. In retrospect, Microsoft's single worst month may have been January 2007. On Jan. 9, Apple's Steve Jobs unveiled the first iPhone, instantly turning then popular Windows Mobile phones into antiques. Then, on Jan. 29 of the same year, Microsoft rolled out Windows Vista, the successor to Windows XP. It was a bloated disaster, short on compelling new features and long on glitches. Throngs of consumers and businesses, largely satisfied with XP, showed the company who was boss by refusing to budge. G. The dawn of the iPhone, the ascent of Google, the failure of Vista: those were but a few of the wake-up calls that Microsoft got that its old ways weren't working in this new age. It took a while for it to answer them sleeping giants have a way of pressing the snooze button repeatedly but in 2009 and 2010, the company snapped back to attention. It's been replacing embrace and extend with something closer to regroup and reconsider, and the results have been surprisingly encouraging. Windows Phone 7 is so promising because it has little in common with Windows 7 beyond its name: rather than shoehorn the traditional Windows interface into a phone, Microsoft built something new. Windows 7, released a year ago in the wake of the Vista mess, is a hit because almost all its major changes involve eliminating long-standing annoyances that Vista ignored or exacerbated. Bing, the company's search engine under yet another new name, is Google's only true competitor in part because it's quite different, with a greater emphasis on shopping and research. Source: Time Questions You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1 to 14 which are based on Reading Passage 1 Questions 1 to 7 Reading Passage 1 has seven paragraphs A G. From the list of headings below, choose the most suitable heading for each i. United States v. Microsoft. paragraph. Write the appropriate numbers I ix in boxes 1 7 on your answer sheet. ii. Google's Microsoftian dominance. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix. Microsofts fight. The first phones. Microsoft an underdog. The first iPhone. The dawn of the iPhone. The dominance of Windows. The ascent of Google.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

Paragraph Paragraph Paragraph Paragraph Paragraph Paragraph Paragraph

A B C D E F G

Questions 8 10 Choose the correct letters, A, B, C or D Write your answers in boxes 8 10 on your answer sheet. 8 Windows Phone 7 is so promising because it has little in common with Windows 7 A. B. C. D. 9 Beyond Beyond Beyond Beyond its its its its structure. basics. features. name.

Microsoft reacted to Google's Microsoftian dominance of Web search by relaunching its MSN. Bing. Yahoo. Hotmail. Microsoft's single worst month may have been January 2007. February 2007. November 2007. December 2007.

A. B. C. D. 10 A. B. C. D.

Questions 11 14 Complete each of the following statements (questions 11 14) with the best endings A G from the box below Write the appropriate letters A G in boxes 11 14 on your answer sheet.

11 12 13 14

Bill Gates declared that he believed tablet computers would Windows 7 is a hit because almost all its major changes involve eliminating In the mid-1990s Netscape's free Web browser became Microsoft used the dominance of Windows and Office to A The hottest software around. B Long-standing annoyances that Vista ignored or exacerbated. C Bulldoze its way into new territories. D Outsell traditional laptops within half a decade. E Finding new markets.

Reading passage 2 A. One unquestioned article of faith in political thrillers is that the bad guy is a genius the supervillain as megamind. In reality, criminals are no smarter, maybe a lot dumber, than the rest of us. That's certainly true of the self-appointed jihadis who, in the wake of 9/11, concocted harebrained plots that hurt no one but themselves. We think of the Christmas Day airplane bomber who blew up his groin; the Times Square guerrilla who left the keys to his getaway vehicle in the car with the bombs; and Iyman Faris, who believed he could destroy the Brooklyn Bridge with a blowtorch. B. Chris Morris, the English satirist, is ever on watch for examples of toxic lunacy, and a few years ago he found a piquant news item. It was about "these Yemeni jihadis who were plotting to blow up a warship that was moored in a bay," Morris told Jesse Thorn last week on public radio's The Sound of Young America. "Their plan was to ram it with an exploding boat. So they assembled on the quayside at 3 in the morning. They put their launch in the water, and they filled it full of explosives. And it sank." C. There could be a similar crew of Islamic doofuses in the city of Sheffield in north England. What explosive mischief might they create? That's the premise of Morris' brilliantly incendiary new comedy Four Lions: a few radicalized English Muslims plan an attack on the London marathon while dressed in clown outfits. These guys really are clowns, wild and foolish but no less dangerous, at least to themselves, since they have dynamite strapped to their stomachs. Their incompetence is on display in the movie's first scene, as Omar (Riz Ahmed), the group's leader, is showing his pretty wife and sweet kid a video that he and his mates have made: arms cradling machine guns, they spit out death threats against the West. But the other guys keep tripping over their lines. "These are the outtakes, y' know, the bloopers," Omar says apologetically. He looks at the rest of the video and sighs, "They're all bloopers."

D. For a quarter-century, Morris, 45, has been lobbing comic grenades at the British media from deep inside it: first as a late-night DJ who muttered derisive comments about news headlines on the air while they were being read, then in 1991 as the host of BBC Radio 4's news-spoof show On the Hour. Morris presided in splendid arrogance over a team that included feckless sportscaster Alan Partridge (Steve Coogan), snooty business newsreader Collately Sisters (Doon MacKickan) and the serially incompetent correspondent Peter O'Hanraha-hanrahan (Patrick Marber). E. Produced by Armando Iannucci, later the mastermind of the fiendishly funny Whitehall sitcom The Thick of It (which spun off into the 2009 film In the Loop), On the Hour didn't deal in topical humor, like the '60s That Was the Week That Was or Saturday Night Live's "Weekend Update" segment. Instead, it meant to skewer the tone of TV news, by turns omniscient and truckling, in the production of what the show called "genutainment." F. In 1994, On the Hour transferred to TV as The Day Today. This news-show burlesque would lead with Morris' shouted headlines ("Exploded Cardinal Preaches Sermon from Fish Tank"), investigate some big story (a Buckingham Palace fistfight between the Queen and then Prime Minister John Major) and broadcast a disaster video sent in by viewers ("The unnamed woman had been pierced by a shaft of frozen urine which had fallen from the toilet facility of an overhead plane"). G. Morris and his team would also go on the street to interview prominent politicians and innocent citizens, whose comments would be aired blissfully out of context. Before The Daily Show, this show was mocking the news format in Morris' words, "hijacking the delivery system." Before Ali G, Morris was pranking the public. The Day Today also ran excerpts of a reality sitcom called The Office, seven years before Ricky Gervais did his show of the same name. Source: Time Questions You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15 27 which are based on Reading Passage 2 Questions 15 19 Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2? In boxes 15 -19 in your answer sheet write TRUE if the statement agrees with the information FALSE if the statement contradicts the information NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 15. 16. 17. A bad guy is believed to be a genius or a supervillain. Chris Morris is making a film on terrorism. Morris, 45, has been lobbing comic satires in the American films.

18. There are several TV shows that discuss a lot about the terrorist activities. 19. There could be a similar crew of Islamic doo fuses in New Castles.

Question 20 23 Look at the following persons or places (questions 20 23) and the list of statements below. Match each person or place to the correct statement. Write the correct letter A G in boxes 1 4 on your answer sheet. 20. Patrick Marber 21. Armando Iannucci 22. Riz Ahmed 23. Chris Morris A The serially incompetent correspondent. B Is an actor. C Is a film producer. D Is a character in Morriss film. E Is a TV show producer.

F Is acting as a terrorist in a movie. Questions 24 27 Complete the following statements with the correct alternative from the box. Write the correct letter A F in boxes 24 27 on your answer sheet. 24. Morris and his team would also go on the street to interview 25. In reality, criminals are no smarter, maybe a lot dumber, 26. Yemeni jihadis were plotting to blow up a warship that was moored in a bay 27. What explosive mischief they might create is the premise of A Morris' brilliantly incendiary new comedy Four Lions. B Canada. C That was moored in a bay. D Than the rest of us. E With significant potential hazards.

Reading Passage 3 A. Sweden's general election on Sept. 19 was an upheaval for a country known for its cozy, consensus politics. Despite having roots in the White Power movement and running a highly xenophobic campaign the Sweden Democrats became the first far-right party to enter Sweden's parliament when they won 6% of the vote. The result brought thousands onto the streets in anti-fascist protest marches, and sent national columnists into a heavy bout of Scandinavian soul-searching. But in the southeastern city of Malm where 30% of the population are immigrants or of immigrant descent ethnic tensions took a darker turn. B. On Nov. 7, police arrested a 38-year-old Swedish man in connection with a series of sniper attacks on Malm's non-white population. Following the arrest, police say they are working on up to 15 unsolved shootings that they believe may have deliberately targeted people with immigrant backgrounds. The suspect has been remanded in connection with eight of the cases. A motive for the attacks has not been released by the police, but the suspect's father was quoted by the Aftonbladet newspaper on Monday as saying that his son "lived in fear of immigrants taking over Swedish society." C. The attacks started in October last year when 20-year-old Trez West Persson (the only ethnic Swede targeted by the shooter) was killed while sitting in her parked car with a friend whose parents had moved to Sweden from Kosovo. Since then, individuals have been shot through the windows of a gym, at bus stops and in their cars. Persson was the only person killed, but seven others were injured. No one has admitted responsibility. Targets have included a mosque and a police station; in one incident, a group of African men were shot outside a swimming pool. In the latest shooting, at the end of last month, the gunman fled on a bicycle after shooting and then headbutting his target, an Iranian-born hairdresser. D. The alleged shooter, now detained on probable cause for one case of murder and seven other cases of attempted murder, has been labeled "the new Laserman" by the Swedish media. The former "Laserman," John Ausonius, targeted 11 people in the early '90s in Stockholm, killing one with his gun armed with laser sight. The killings were later found to racially motivated, and coincided with a rise in popularity of a far-right, populist and anti-migrant party called Ny Demokrati the forebear of the Swedish Democrats. E. The current shootings have shaken Malm, a former working-class city of 290,000 that is home to an estimated 170 different ethnicities, but which in some areas remains highly segregated between ethnic and non-ethnic Swedes. "It has been a long, traumatizing autumn, where many Malm residents have not dared to move around at night due to the fact that they

have dark hair," says Rakel Chukri, culture editor of the local paper Sydsvenska Dagbladet. "This horrid feeling won't go away that easily." F. Bejzat Becirov, the 72-year-old founder and leader of a mosque in Malm, says that his mosque has survived 300 hate attacks including fire bombs since it opened in 1983. In the early years, he had to whitewash swastikas from the building's faade. But he believes relations between Muslim migrants and Swedes have lately grown worse. On New Year's Eve last year, a shot was fired through a window of the mosque police are now re-evaluating whether the attack was linked to the more recent shootings. Becirov blames popular stereotypes of Muslims in the Swedish media for rising ethnic tensions. When he first issued the call to the faithful 30 years ago, "an Imam was associated with a rich Sheik," he says. "But now they are widely associated with terrorists." G. But despite Becirov's despair, it would seem that the bulk of Malm's population relishes the city's multi-ethnic mix. Sydsvenska Dagbladet recently launched a Facebook campaign "We Love Malm," which celebrated Malm's multiculturalism and gathered some 13,000 supporters. Along many streets, graffiti covers the walls with loving dedications to the city in its darkest hours. Monday night saw some 20,000 people celebrating the Malm FF soccer team victory, with street parties continuing late into the night. Of the 26 players in the main team, only six are ethnically Swedish. Many residents in this raw, wounded city hope Malm can now put this recent spate of violence behind it and follow the team's lead as a model of social cohesion and 21st century multiculturalism. Source: Time Questions You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 28 40 which are based on Reading Passage 3. Questions 28 32 The passage has seven paragraphs labelled AG. Which paragraph contains the following information? Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 28-32 on your answer sheet. NB: You may use any letter more than once. 28. 29. The Sweden Democrats became the first far-right party to enter Sweden's parliament. The alleged shooter has been labeled "the new Laserman" by the Swedish media.

30. 31. 32.

Persson was the only person killed, but seven others were injured. Rakel Chukri is culture editor of the local paper Sydsvenska Dagbladet. The suspect's father said that his son "lived in fear of immigrants taking over Swedish society.

Questions 33 36 Complete the sentences below with words taken from Reading Passage 3. Use NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 33-36 on your answer sheet.

33. 34. 35. 36.

Bejzat Becirov is the 72-year-old founder and leader of a . 20-year-old Trez West Persson was killed while sitting in her parked car . The attacks started in . The result brought thousands onto the streets in anti-fascist .

Questions 37 40 Complete the summary of the paragraphs E G below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet. Many Malm residents have not dared to move around at night due to the fact that they 37 the mosque is being attacked because of the ethnic groups 38 .. it would seem that the bulk of Malm's population relishes the 39 . Many residents in this raw, wounded city hope Malm can now put this recent spate of violence behind it and follow 40