READING PASSAGE 1

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13, which are based on Reading Passage 1
on pages 2 and 3

Computer
games
The early days of the video game
business

It's not whether you win or lose, but how you play the game. In the age of
computers, that statement takes on new meanings: video game cannot ever
really be defeated because, no matter how high the score, It is always the
human who tires first or makes the fatal error. But millions of people
continue to play, because microelectronic technology has enabled game
designers to conveniently and inexpensively transform plain screens into
playfields of extraordinary capability. At the same time, a multi-billion
dollar industry has grown from very humble beginnings in just a few
decades.

The technological roots of video game can be traced back to 1962, when an
MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) graduate student demonstrated
Spacewar, a science-fiction fantasy game played on a mainframe computer
and a large screen. That game. immediately attracted a wide cult following
among computer buffs. The next important step came in 1968, when a console
was developed that could be used to play game on ordinary televisions. But it
was not until the early 1970s that a young University of Utah engine to the
point that adaptation of Spacewar from a large computer into coin-operated
from, for use in video game arcades, was becoming economically feasible.
Bushnell and his associates began working on such a machine in a converted
bedroom workshop, but were unsuccessful. What they ultimately developed
instead was a simple tennis-like game that they named Pong.

Pong took the industry by storm and quickly became the first coin-operated
video-game Hit. And soon thereafter commercial Pong - style home video
games also appeared. Yet despite early enthusiasm, consumer interest in
this area proved leas sustained than had been anticipated and, as prices
started to drop and losses mounted, most of the early manufacturers
withdrew from the field. Profits proved to be just as elusive at Bushnell's
company, Atari, where a rapidly growing market presence in coin-operated
machine and home video required greater injections of capital and more
professional management than the company was able to provide. In 1976,
the founders of Atari sold their share of the company for a sum that was
only equivalent to their sales in that year.

At that point, coin-operated video games seemed just another passing

fad. But the introduction of Space Invaders-an arcade model produced by
Japanese manufacture Taito-proved otherwise. With its vibrant graphics
it was so different from the previous black and white games that Space
Invaders immediately captured public interest. There soon followed a
rush of popular video that employed the same or better hardware and
even more imaginative software. Of these, Pac-Man (in 1908) was
especially significant, because now females began to take an interest.

By this time, the same software improvement and technological advances

(faster microprocessors and larger memories) that permitted designers to
produce spectacular audio and visual effects for coin-operated machines
were also being applied to home video units. It was thus only a short while
before the programmable consoles that had been unpopular for lack of
software suddenly began to sell in large numbers: consumers had discovered
that they could finally play a reasonable version of their favorite arcade
games in the comfort of their own home. The impact on Atari was
astounding. Unprofitable for the first three years, Atari had by the end of
1979, become a success. By either self-designing or licensing the most
popular arcade concepts for cartridge format for use at home, the company
had captured some 80 percent of the worldwide market for home video
games.

All of this, however, was too good to last. By late 1982, the public’s
fascination with arcade games had begun to low down, and fewer potential
best-sellers were becoming available for conversion to cartridges that could
be used on an Atari machine. At the same time, the market was flooded with
illegal software of all types. It was thus not until the late 1980s that the
unstructured nature of the industry, at least on the software side, had
stabilized and become restructured in a manner similar, in many respects, to
the book publishing business.
Until 1986, when Japan-based Nintendo introduced a more technologically
sophisticated and user-friendly game console, the hardware side was also in
disarray. But with tight control of software development and marketing,
Nintendo was able to revive and then capture up to 80 percent of a once-
again booming market in which no significant competition appeared until the
early 1990s. By that point, the annual operating profits of Nintendo had
already grown to over $1 billion-an amount exceeding the 1991 profits of all
the major Hollywood film studios combined. In 1999, sales of game hardware
and software, led by PlayStation, were equal in size (around s7 billion) to US
domestic box-office revenues.
With change the only constant, the game industry has moved on to become
what it is today. However, no matter what the technology or the format, the
essence of a successful game will always be the same: it is simple to
understand and to play on an elementary level, but it is compulsive and
maddeningly difficult- in fact, forever impossible-to master fully.

Questions 1-6

Complete the notes below.

Choose ONE WORD ONLY from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

A history of video
games

1960s
 Spacewar was first played on a computer and special
screen.
1970s
 Advances in technology led to cheaper 1………….and the possibility of
coin-operated video games.
 The first successful coin-operated video game
was 2 ................... 3……………was bought
from its original owners.
 Space Invaders was successful because of its colourful
4......
1980s
 Pac-Man was the first game to attract
5............
1990s
 At first one company dominated the market.
 By the end of the decade 6................ had become the biggest
selling home. entertainment product.

Questions 7-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 1? In boxes 7-
13 on 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

7. Spacewar was unpopular at first.

8. Bushnell and his team failed to create a coin-operated version of
Spacewar.
9. From the beginning the home video game market has been commercially
10. Atan was successful for the first time in 1979.
11. Video arcade game usage continued strongly in the 1980s.
12. The time taken to produce a video game can be compared to producing a
book.
13. The qualities needed for a video game to become successful have been.
researched thoroughly.

READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14-26, which are based on Reading
Passage 2 on pages 6 and 7.

Art and engineering

A. Work of engineering and technology are sometime viewed as having

nothing to do with art and humanity. Think of the connotation of assembly
lines, robots and computer. The positive values associated with these
creation can be overwhelmed by the negative associations of repetitive,
stressful work and threatened jobs. Critics of technology protest against
what they see as the same time, megastructures such as the Brooklyn and
 Golden Gate Bridges in the US are hailed as majestic human achievements,
as well as great engineering monuments that have come to embody the
spirit of their respective cities. The relationship between art and
engineering has seldom been easy or consistent.
B. Arguably, the assembly line process associated with Henry Ford made
workers tools of the system. The human worker may have appeared to be
only a cog in the wheel of industry, yet photographers such as Lewis Hine
revealed the beauty of line and composition in his study of a worker using
a wrench to turn a bolt. Hine focused on the individuals engaged in the
work. In the period around World War I, he visited New York and was
given the opportunity to record the construction of the famous Empire
State Building, the tallest building of its time. This resulted in a series of
striking photographs which have become familiar images of daring. Hine
put his own life at risk to photograph workers suspended on cables
hundreds of feet in the air or sitting on a high girder eating lunch.
C. When Ford's enormous River Rouge plant opened in 1927, the
painter/photographer Charles Sheeler was chosen to photograph it. The
world's largest car plant captured the imagination of Sheeler, who
described it as the most thrilling subject he had ever had to work with.
D. Long before Hine and Sheeler, other photographers and painters had
seen the art and humanity in works of engineering and technology.
This is perhaps nowhere more evident than in the Coalbrookdale
Museum of Iron, at Ironbridge in Shropshire in the UK. In the late
18th century, Abraham Darby cast the large iron ribs that formed the
world's first iron bridge, a dramatic departure from the classic stone
and timber bridges that dotted the countryside and had been captured
in numerous landscape paintings. This structure still spans the River
Severn, and the Coalbrookdale Museum is crowded with its portraits,
showing the iron structure not as a blight on the landscape, but as its
focal point. This is how Michael Rooker shows the iron bridge in his
late 18th-century painting, in which the surrounding area radiates out
from the bridge and pales behind it. Countless other contemporary
representations of the bridge hang in the nearby museum.

E. In the 19th century, the railways were another feat of engineering which
captured the imagination of painters, and the steam engine in the distance
of a landscape became as much a part of it as the herd of cows in the
foreground. The Impressionist Claude Monet painted railway stations -
such as the Gare St-Lazare in Parin - as well as flower and gardens. By
the 20th century, engineenng. technology and industry were very well
established as subjects for artists.
F. American-born artist Joseph Pennell portrayed buildings under
construction and shrouded in scaffolding, and recorded scenes of industry
during World War I. He is perhaps best known for his prints of the
Panama Canal as it neared completion and of the partially completed Hell
Gate and Delaware River Bridges. Pennell has often been quoted as
 saying, "Great engineering is great art', a sentiment that he expressed
repeatedly. He wrote of his contemporaries: I understand nothing of
engineering, but I know that engineers are the greatest architects and the
most pictorial builders since the (ancient) Greeks. Pennell called the
sensation that he felt when he looked at a great construction project "the
Wonder of Work". He saw engineering as a process memorialized in
every completed dam, skyscraper, bridge or other great engineering feat.
G. Today, one of the most innovative and influential engineers is Santiago
Calatrava, who also trained as an architect. His bridges and other
structures provide public spaces on a human scale, and stand as pieces of
sculpture in their own right. Increasingly, commissioners of bridges in
the US are looking to such individuals, to teams of engineers and
architects who work with artists. The growing awareness of the
intangible added value of art is sure to give us more masterpieces like
the Brooklyn Bridge. They in turn will continue to be noble monuments
to civilization, and will be welcome subjects for artists of all kinds.

Questions 14-19
Reading Passage 2 has seven paragraphs, A-G
Which paragraph contains the following information?
Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 14-19 on your answer sheet.
NB You may use any fetter more than once.
14. a time when a transport system became an inspiration for artists
15. a reference to the current trend of including artists in engineering
projects
16. reasons for the idea that art and engineering are difficult to combine
17. how the depiction of human labour involved danger to an artist
18. a reference to an artist who celebrated a number of unfinished structures
19. a reference to two large engineering works that are symbols of their
locations.

Questions 20-22
Look at the following statements (Questions 20-22) and the list of people below.
Match each statement with the correct person, A-G
Write the correct letter, A-G, in boxes 20-22 on your answer sheet.

20. His engineering constructions are also regarded as works of art.

21. He created images of builders constructing an conic American skyscraper
22. He painted a building connected with a significant innovation in
transport.

List of people
A. Lewis Hine
B. Charles Sheeler
C. Abraham Darby
D. Michael Rooker
E. Claude Monet
F. Joseph Pannell
G. Santiago Calatrava

Questions 23-26

Complete the summary below.

Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
White your answers in boxes 23-28 on your answer sheet.
The iron bridge

Before the late 18th century. bridges were traditionally constructed of

wood and 23………. Then the engineer 24…………. manufactured the
elements of an innovative bridge across the 25…………. This iron bridge was
the subject of a number of artworks, including a notable one by 26.............
While some may have viewed it as ugly. artists regarded the bridge as a
central feature of the landscape.
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based Reading Passage 3 on
pages 10 and 11.

Charles Darwin, the brilliant anthropologist and creator of the theory of

evolution, is not normally associated with the modern business world.
Nevertheless, Darwinian evolutionary theory is the foundation of a new
wave of ideas about human behavior in general and particularly the way
people behave in the workplace; these ideas have given the title of
evolutionary psychology' Evolutionary psychology revolves around the
notion that our brains, like our bodies, have an inherited evolutionary
design that has scarcely changed for 10,000 years, As respected
evolutionary psychology experts Leda Cosmides and John Tooby comment,
our modern skulls house a Stone Age mind. The US biologist Edward O
Wilson sees evolutionary psychology as being a discipline which is based
on both socio-biology, which is the study of the biological basis of social
behavior, and psychology, which is the systematic study of human
behavior.

Nigel Nicholson, an organisational psychologist from the London Business

School, is a strong supporter of evolutionary psychology and on this subject
has published Managing the Human. Animal. His book takes the reader on a
journey from the Stonc Age plains of the savannah to the modern office, and
includes a discussion of Darwinism and behavioural psychology together
with a dissection of dysfunctional organisational behavior. It is an effective
approach explaining why people behave as they do, particularly at work.
Evolutionary psychology is increasingly being cited in management circles,
where managers are trying to understand puzzling aspects of human
behaviour and by doing so improve the workplace. Nicholson believes that
evolutionary psychology can help managers understand what goes wrong in
organisational life and what they can do about it.

Nicholson maintains that evolutionary psychology dismisses the long-held

assumption that our minds are like blank pages just waiting for culture and
experience to write on them and shape our nature. He points out that
sophisticated research shows the brain actually houses a store of knowledge
when we are born, and now genetic research is establishing there are certain
genes that account for abilities, tastes and tendencies. The stored knowledge
in the human brain has not changed much since the Stone Age. As Tooby
and Cosmides stress, there have not been enough generations for a brain that
is well adapted to our post-industrial life to evolve through
natural selection.

The evolutionary psychology version of human nature revolves around

some key elements which we have inherited from our hunter-gatherer
minds. One key element is emotion. Emotion was originally essential to
keep early man alive and safe from predators. Emotion was, and
continues to be our radar, guiding us throughout today's techno-defined
business world. Despite this, the business world emphasises rational not
emotional behaviour, and does not admit the importance of emotion. We
still use the emotional part of our minds to make sense of other people's
behaviour and to create an impression, so we can often be taken in by
appearances. This mental predisposition actually works best in small
communities (the tribe), not in much larger environments filled with
people we barely know (the modern workplace). Our minds naturally try
to re-create our ancestral communities with networks of no more than 150
people, where there are clear hierarchies and leaders. As a consequence,
it takes very little to trigger people's innate distrust of others because
our safety in antiquity depended on supporting our near family and
friends whom we valued more than other people.

So what advice does Nicholson have for the corporate world? He thinks that
by knowing the reasons for people's behaviour it is possible to mould
corporate environments into places that have more chance of working
efficiently and being pleasant places to work in. Nicholson admits that not
everybody in the business word agrees with his belief in the effectiveness of
evolutionary psychology in the workplace. One group that resist the theory of
evolutionary psychology is young MBA graduates who are just beginning
their careers and feel that evolutionary psychology will make their lives at
work more difficult. Older and wiser executives points out that they still tend
to cling to the idea of a magic formula to bring people into line with
corporate strategy. But that is back-to-front thinking according to Nicholson,
who contends that we should be reinventing our business structures not our
fundamental human nature.
At the end of his book, Nicholson gives his forecast of what will and will
not change in the business world. He believes that most people will still
prefer more traditional forms of work and throughout their lives will
continue to aim at lifelong status advancement. He also maintains that the
line between work and home will be less defined, but that people will
prefer traditional working patterns if working from home leaves them
isolated from their work community. He doubts that the high- tech ideas of
virtual companies will ever be very successful because people will still
want to meet each other face-to-face. Nicholson describes his ideal
organisation in the future: it would be decentralized, with small sub-units:
the staff would be from diverse backgrounds and be allowed a high degree
of self-determination. New endeavors and creativity would replace systems
and rationality. Nicholson. acknowledges that there is a long way to go in
terms of the translation of his ideas of evolutionary psychology into
practical propositions, but he is confident more and more people will come
round to his way of thinking.

Questions 27-31

Choose the correct letter A, B, C or D

Write the correct letter boxes 27-31 on your answer sheet.

27. The writers purpose in the first paragraph is to

A. oppose the views of Charkes Darwin
B. compare experts'opinions of Darwin's theory.
C. explain the theory of evolutionary psychology.
D. name experts in the field of evolutionary psychology.

28. In the third paragraph which view about evolutionary psychology

matches. nicholson's opinion?

A. Our characters determine our career choices.

B. We begin life without any preconceived notions.
C. Our interests and skills depend on our environment.
D. We inherit ideas and characteristics from our ancestors.
29. The writer discusses the key element of emotion in order
to

A. criticise primitive survival strategies.

B. explain attitudes and actions at work.
C. demonstrate the slowness of evolution.
D. suggest companies today are poorly structured.

30. Which of the following does Nicholson predict will happen in the
business world?

A. Companies will remain in city centres.

B. Promotion will no longer motivate people.
C. Employees will be less independent than now .
D. Social interaction will remain important to workers.

31. Which of the following is the most suitable title for Reading Passage
3?

A. How successful companies manage change.

B. Understanding the origins of workplace behavior
C. Darwin's theories rejected by modern management.
D. Why post-industrial organisations need to evolve more quickly.

Questions 32-35
Do the following statements agree with the views of the writer in Reading Passage 3? In
boxes 32-36 on your answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement agrees with the views of the writer
FALSE if the statement contradicts the views of the writer
NOT GIVEN if it is impossible to say what the writer thinks about this

32. Nicholson makes a persuasive argument in his book.

33. Tooby and Cosmides believe natural selection through the generations
has prepared.
34. Our reliance on technology causes emotional problems in the workplace.
35. People today are more trusting than they used to be.

Questions 36-40
Complete the summary using the list of words, A-I below.
Write the correct letter, A-I, in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.

Nicholson's advice to the corporate

world

Nicholson believes that if we know why people act the way

they do, we can. change 36…………. so employees will
work more efficiently. Nicholson's ideas are unwelcome to
37...............but some executives are more open to what
evolutionary psychology says. However, these executives
still believe that there is a 38............ that will make
employees act according to the company's practices.
According to Nicholson, these senior executives are
engaging in 39................. and we should not try to change
40…………. but instead, we should change our business
structures.

A. business leaders B. MBA graduates

C. promotion structures D. reward strategy
E. magic formula F. strategic planning
G. back-to-front thinking H. business environments
I. human nature