Reading passage 1

A. IN THE world of business they call it the consumerisation of IT: employees who are used to powerful smart phones and tablet computers in their personal lives are now demanding similar tools in their professional ones. Now business schools are also coming to terms with students who are increasingly tech savvy. Some even see the way they integrate technology with pedagogy as an opportunity to differentiate themselves from the B-school pack. B. The beauty of MBA courses is that students can try out new technologies without fear of a serious backlash if the trials dont pay off. The threat level is just a grade, not a career, explains Michael Koenig, the director of MBA operations at the University of Virginias Darden Graduate School of Business, which is among the vanguard of schools incorporating new technologies in their programmes. Yet there are still concerns about whether new technology in the classroom will enhance the MBA experience or diminish it. Some professors fret that embracing gadgets for the sake of appearing wired will detract from the quality of classroom discussions. That has not deterred schools from experimenting. Innovations designed to help students manage information more efficiently, interact with their peers wherever they are and imbibe important business lessons via virtual simulations are all being tested. C. The pioneers are discovering that some technologies are not yet ready for prime time. Consider the experience of Darden. In a recent experiment the school gave a random sample of MBA students Kindle DX e-readers, as well as standard printed handouts and textbooks for their first-year courses. It then encouraged them to use the electronic versions instead of the paper ones. The students did just thatand many concluded that the Kindles limitations were too great to justify its widespread adoption on the programme. Switching between text, graphs and charts, they complained, took far longer than on paper-based alternatives. This made it hard for them to keep up with fast-paced class discussions. Nevertheless, some schools are toying with the idea of testing the Apple iPad to see if that has greater success. D. As well as trying out gizmos designed to help students handle large volumes of content, schools are also using technology that helps members of study teams to keep in touch with one another. Darden, for instance, has equipped some classrooms with widescreen TVs and software that allow students who are off campus to share data and opinions with those who are on it. Our job is to stretch skills as well as minds, says Mr Koenig, who points out that many executives now need to be able to influence virtual teams they rarely meet face-toface. E. Duke Universitys Fuqua School of Business has taken this a step further, installing a Cisco Telepresence system in one of its lecture theatres.

Giant plasma screens and cameras display life-size video images of people in remote locations to an entire class. The school reckons the new system allows professors seamlessly to include overseas participants in class discussions, although further refinement is needed before it can accommodate large numbers of folk joining all at once. F. INSEAD, which has campuses in France and Singapore, as well as an executive education centre in Abu Dhabi, has turned to Second Life, a popular virtual world, to help bring students together. It has constructed a cyber-campus in which its MBAs can interact and it has begun to integrate Second Life into a few of its courses. One elective, focusing on businessto-business marketing, requires students to roam around the virtual world assessing how firms are using its capabilities to market their wares. G. Schools are also using technology to bring academic theory to life in other ways. Some institutions use online trading rooms to give students a taste of how real financial markets work. Other web-based simulations that enhance the classroom experience are becoming popular. At Stanford, for instance, James Lattin, a marketing professor, has worked with the schools it team to create a web-based program that lets students work in, and run, a sales team touting a disruptive new product. Using the simulation to teach them about the challenges of sales forecasting has produced far better results than simply lecturing, he says. Source: The New York Times 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 paragraph. Write the appropriate numbers I ix in boxes 1 7 on your answer sheet.

i. ii. iii. iv. v. vi. vii. viii. ix.

The Darden model. The INSEAD. The demand of the hour. Fuqua School of Business. The strategy and its effect. The MBA experience. The technology not yet ready. Enthusiasm gap. Using technology by schools.

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 Other web-based simulations that enhance the classroom experience are A. B. C. D. 9 A. B. C. D. 10 A. B. C. D. Making studies worse. Becoming popular. Helping students a lot. Encouraging skips. Darden has equipped some classrooms with Widescreen TVs. Plasma TVs. CCTVs. Monitors. The pioneers are discovering that some technologies are Ready for prime time. Not yet ready for prime time. Overenthusiastic. Not up to date.

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 Duke Universitys Fuqua School of Business has taken this a step further, 12 INSEAD has campuses in France and 13 Using the simulation to teach them about the challenges of sales forecasting 14 Switching between text, graphs and charts took far longer than

A Singapore. B Silicon Valley. C Has produced far better results than simply lecturing. D Installing a Cisco Telepresence. E Is not going to win the race for them.

Reading passage 2 A. HUMANS are a gregarious lot. We appreciate company. And we appreciate our company appreciating us. One way to preserve this mutual appreciation is to emulate others. This gives rise to trends or, in a less charitable turn of phrase, herd mentality. We appear to be wired to find all manner of fads psychologically irresistible. Advertisers have long understood this. So have retailersin increasingly tech-savvy ways. Some have been developing smart trolleys, which relay information on their contents to digital displays on shelves. These, in turn, would inform passing shoppers how many other customers are about to plump for the same item. And no self-respecting online venture would be complete without a constantly updated "most recommended" box (just look at this screen, to the right of this blog post). B. It's likely that such ruses work because it made evolutionary sense to copy neighbours, to avoid danger or find food and shelter. Sometimes, this atavistic tendency ends in tears, when it prompts us to act contrary to what is, on reflection, our self-interest. (Witness stock-market crashes, stampedes and tamagotchi.) What made sense to a relatively homogeneous gaggle of several dozen nomads needn't hold for millions of strangers. C. As modern Homo sapiens migrates to the online savannah, trends have been spreading to ever greater numbers. So the wise men and women of our now-massive tribe have been tracking web versions of these ancient behaviours. However, most of the research (both on- and offline) to date has focused on either a small subset of users or the most successful herddriven behaviours. Now Felix Reed-Tsochas of Oxford University's Sad Business School and Jukka-Pekka Onnela from Harvard University have broached the subject with an admirably broad brush. D. As the pair report in the latest Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, they pored over (anonymous) data of the entire Facebook population in July and August 2007 (around 50m at the time), and at all but a few of the 2720 apps available for download in the same period (the 15 that didn't make the cut were partly corrupted). This amounted to a total of some 104m app installations. At that time, a Facebook user's apps

were all visible to friends, who were also notified when any new app was downloaded (a practice Facebook has since abandoned). This, along with a display of the total number of installations of each app, were the only ways apps were plugged, permitting the researchers to control for the effects of external advertising. Any effects observed would thus be wholly attributable to social influence, not canny ad men. E. Dr Reed-Tsochas and Dr Onnela duly discovered that the social networkers' herd mentality was intact, with popular apps doing best, and the trendiest reaching stratospheric levels. A typical app was installed around 1,000 times, but the highest-ranked notched up an astonishing 12m users. What did come as something of a surprise, though, was that our inner lemming only kicked in once the app had breached a clear threshold rate of about 55 installations a day. Any fewer than that and users seemed oblivious to their friends' preferences. Interestingly, after some serious number crunching, the researchers found that this cannot be put down purely to the network effect, ie, the idea that adopting a certain innovation only makes sense if enough other people have done so. Indeed, this effect appeared less pronounced than might have been expected. F. Moreover, the data suggest that the sudden spike in installations doesn't come about simply because a discovered threshold has been passed. This means the observed threshold rate is unlike an infectious disease's basic reproduction number. (This is what epidemiologists call the average number of secondary cases caused by a typical infected individual in a population lacking immunity, with no efforts to control the outbreak.) G. In other words, it would be inaccurate to speak of an epidemic of popularity. Rather, Dr Reed-Tsochas and Dr Onnela suggest that two discrete behavioural patterns emerged. Users appeared to treat any app with more than 55 daily installations differently to those with fewer downloads. Under 55 daily installations, friend behaviour was an instrumental part of the decision to install. Over 55 daily installations, and friend behaviour didn't matter one jot. Virtual lemmings are, it seems, discriminating in ways we still don't quite comprehend. As is, no doubt, the offline troop. Source: Wikipedia.com 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 FALSE if the statement agrees with the information if the statement contradicts the information

NOT GIVEN if there is no information on this 15. The humans love to have social gatherings. 16. Social networking is the new age addiction. 17. A Facebook user's apps were all visible to friends. 18. There are many social networking sites to make friends around the globe. 19. One way to preserve this mutual appreciation is to emulate others.

Question 20 23 Look at the following persons (questions 20 23) and the list of statements below. Match each person to the correct statement. Write the correct letter A G in boxes 1 4 on your answer sheet. 20. Dr Reed-Tsochas 21. Dr Onnela 22. Facebook population 23. The researchers A Oxford University's Sad Business School. B Is apprehensive about the new concept. C Harvard University. D This cannot be put down purely to the network effect. E Works on only outer space research.

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. A Facebook user's apps were 25. The sudden spike in installations doesn't come about simply because 26. It would be inaccurate to speak of 27. As modern Homo sapiens migrates to the online savannah,

A Preparing their own society. B All visible to friends. C Trends have been spreading to ever greater numbers. D A discovered threshold has been passed. E Bringing the friends back again.

Reading Passage 3 A. Herald Square is formed by the intersection of Broadway, Sixth Avenue (officially named Avenue of the Americas) and 34th Street in the borough of Manhattan in New York City. It was named for the New York Herald, a newspaper originally headquartered there. The Square also gives its name to the surrounding area. The intersection is a typical Manhattan bow-tie square that consists of two named sections: Herald Square to the north (uptown) and Greeley Square to the south (downtown). Most non-New Yorkers know of it from the song Give My Regards to Broadway where the singer asks "remember me to Herald Square", or from the fact that Herald Square is the terminus for the annual Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, broadcast nationally each year by NBC-TV. B. Greeley Square lies between West 32nd Street and West 33rd Street and between Broadway and Sixth Avenue, and is taken up almost entirely by a triangular park.[1] It is named after Horace Greeley, who was the publisher of the New York Tribune, the Herald's rival newspaper. (The two papers later merged to form the New York Herald Tribune.) There is a statue of Greeley inside the park, created in 1890 by Alexander Doyle [1] The small park has great deal of charm, it is planted with trees and shrubbery, enclosed by a wrought-iron fence, and provided with inviting chairs, tables and a restaurant kiosk. C. Herald Square itself is the north end of the square between West 34th Street and West 35th Street. The old New York Herald Building was located on the square. The square contains a huge mechanical clock whose mechanical structures were constructed in 1895 by the sculptor Antonin Jean Carles. D. Since 1992, Herald and Greeley Squares have been operated by the 34th Street Partnership, a Business Improvement District (BID) operating over 31 blocks in midtown Manhattan. The 34SP provides sanitary and security services, maintains a horticultural program that includes trees, gardens, and planters, and produces events, product launches, and photo shoots. 34SP also added movable chairs, tables, and umbrellas, to the parks. In 1999, the parks were completely renovated by 34SP. Since 2008, each park has had a food kiosk operated by 'wichcraft, the highly regarded sandwich, soup and salad purveyor owned by Tom Collichio of "Top Chef" fame. In 2009, 34SP converted the parks' Automated Pay Toilets into free public facilities, a rarity in New York City. E. With the introduction of "Broadway Boulevard", a project by the NYC Department of Transportation to close Broadway to vehicles on the stretch between 33rd and 35th Streets, the passive space provided by Herald and Greeley Squares more than doubled, radically changing the character of the area. The parks' operators, 34SP, filled the newly-pedestrianized space with chairs, tables, umbrellas, and free public programs such as chess tables, dance lessons, and exercise classes. F. Herald and Greeley Squares stand today as rest areas for the thousands of shoppers that flood the neighbourhood, as a lunchroom for thousands of midtown office workers, and as a stage for product launches, musical performances, and photo and film shoots.

G. The area around Herald Square along Broadway and 34th Street is a retail hub. The most notable attraction is the Macy's flagship department store, the largest in the United States (and according to Guinness World Records the largest in the world). In 2007, Macy's, Inc. moved its corporate headquarters to that store after renaming from Federated. Macy's archrival Gimbels was also located in the neighbourhood until 1984; in 1986 the building became the Manhattan Mall. Other past retailers in the area included E.J. Korvette, Stern's, and Abraham & Straus. J.C. Penney opened its first Manhattan flagship store in August 2009 at the former A&S location inside the Manhattan Mall. The square is roughly equidistant between Madison Square to the south, and Times Square to the north. Herald Square's south side borders Korea town, at West 32nd Street. 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. 30. The making of a battleship is very expensive. Sixth Avenue was officially named Avenue of the Americas. "Broadway Boulevard" was a project by the NYC Department of Transportation to close Broadway to vehicles on the stretch between 33rd and 35th Streets. Tom Collichio is a top chef of New York. Greeley Square lies between West 32nd Street and West 33rd Street.

31. 32.

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.

The Herald Square also gives its name to the .

34. 35. 36.

Herald and have been operated by the 34th Street Partnership. Macy's arch-rival Gimbels became the . 34SP converted the parks' Automated Pay Toilets into free public facilities . in New York City.

Questions 37 40 Complete the summary of the paragraphs D F below. Choose NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS for each answer. Write your answers in boxes 37-40 on your answer sheet. Since 1992, Herald and Greeley Squares have been operated by the 34th Street Partnership, a 37 ....... The park was completely 38 With the introduction of "Broadway Boulevard", the park got a 39 Herald and Greeley Squares stand today as 40 .