RAT09
RAT09
When students graduate and first enter the workforce, the most common choice is to
find an entry-level position. This can be a job such as an unpaid internship, an assistant, a
secretary, or a junior partner position. Traditionally, we start with simpler jobs and work our
way up. Young professionals start out with a plan to become senior partners, associates, or
even managers of a workplace. However, these promotions can be few and far between,
leaving many young professionals unfamiliar with management experience. An important
step is understanding the role and responsibilities of a person in a managing position.
Managers are organisational members who are responsible for the work performance of other
organisational members. Managers have formal authority to use organisational resources and
to make decisions. Managers at different levels of the organisation engage in different
amounts of time on the four managerial functions of planning, organising, leading, and
controlling.
However, as many professionals already know, managing styles can be very different
depending on where you work. Some managing styles are strictly hierarchical. Other
managing styles can be more casual and relaxed, where the manager may act more like a
team member rather than a strict boss. Many researchers have created a more scientific
approach in studying these different approaches to managing. In the 1960s, researcher Henry
Mintzberg created a seminal organisational model using three categories. These categories
represent three major functional approaches, which are designated as interpersonal,
informational and decisional.
While Mintzberg’s initial research was helpful in starting the conversation, there has
since been criticism of his methods from other researchers. Some criticisms of the work were
that even though there were multiple categories, the role of manager is still more complex.
There are still many manager roles that are not as traditional and are not captured in
Mintzberg’s original three categories. In addition, sometimes, Mintzberg’s research was not
always effective. The research, when applied to real-life situations, did not always improve
the management process in real-life practice.
These two criticisms against Mintzberg’s research method raised some questions
about whether or not the research was useful to how we understand “managers” in today’s
world. However, even if the criticisms against Mintzberg’s work are true, it does not mean
that the original research from the 1960s is completely useless. Those researchers did not say
Mintzberg’s research is invalid. His research has two positive functions to the further
research.
The first positive function is Mintzberg provided a useful functional approach to
analyse management. And he used this approach to provide a clear concept of the role of
manager to the researcher. When researching human behavior, it is important to be concise
about the subject of the research. Mintzberg’s research has helped other researchers clearly
define what a “manager” is, because in real-life situations, the “manager” is not always the
same position title. Mintzberg’s definitions added clarity and precision to future research on
the topic.
Questions 7-8
Choose TWO letters, A-E.
Write the correct letters in boxes 7-8 on your answer sheet.
Which TWO positive functions about Mintzberg’s research are
mentioned in the last two paragraphs?
A offers waterproof categories of managers
B provides a clear concept to define the role of a manager
C helps new graduates to design their career
D suggests ways for managers to do their job better
E makes a fresh way for further research
Questions 9-13
Do the following statements agree with the information given in
Reading Passage 1?
In boxes 9-13 on you answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
B
Back in the days when rivers took a more tortuous path to the sea, flood waters lost
impetus and volume while meandering across flood plains and idling through wetlands
and inland deltas. But today the water tends to have an unimpeded journey to the sea.
And this means that when it rains in the uplands, the water comes down all at once.
Worse, whenever we close off more flood plains, the river’s flow farther downstream
becomes more violent and uncontrollable. Dykes are only as good as their weakest link
—-and the water will unerringly find it. By trying to turn the complex hydrology of rivers
into the simple mechanics of a water pipe, engineers have often created danger where
they promised safety, and intensified the floods they meant to end. Take the Rhine,
Europe’s most engineered river. For two centuries, German engineers have erased its
backwaters and cut it off from its flood plain.
C
Today, the river has lost 7 percent of its original length and runs up to a third faster. When
it rains hard in the Alps, the peak flows from several tributaries coincide in the main river,
where once they arrived separately. And with four-fifths of the lower Rhine’s flood plain
barricaded off, the waters rise ever higher. The result is more frequent flooding that does
ever-greater damage to the homes, offices and roads that sit on the flood plain. Much the
same has happened in the US on the mighty Mississippi, which drains the world’s second
largest river catchment into the Gulf of Mexico.
D
The European Union is trying to improve rain forecasts and more accurately model how
intense rains swell rivers. That may help cities prepare, but it won’t stop the floods. To do
that, say hydrologists, you need a new approach to engineering not just rivers, but the
whole landscape. The UK’s Environment Agency -which has been granted an extra £150
million a year to spend in the wake of floods in 2000 that cost the country £1 billion- puts
it like this: “The focus is now on working with the forces of nature. Towering concrete
walks are out, and new wetlands : are in.” To help keep London’s feet dry, the agency is
breaking the Thames’s banks upstream and reflooding 10 square kilometres of ancient
flood plain at Otmoor outside Oxford. Nearer to London it has spent £100 million creating
new wetlands and a relief channel across 16 kilometres of flood plain to protect the town
of Maidenhead, as well as the ancient playing fields of Eton College. And near the south
coast, the agency is digging out channels to reconnect old meanders on the river
Cuckmere in East Sussex that were cut off by flood banks 150 years ago.
E
The same is taking place on a much grander scale in Austria, in one of Europe’s largest
river restorations to date. Engineers are regenerating flood plains along 60 kilometres of
the river Drava as it exits the Alps. They are also widening the river bed and channelling it
back into abandoned meanders, oxbow lakes and backwaters overhung with willows. The
engineers calculate that the restored flood plain can now store up to 10 million cubic
metres of flood waters and slow storm surges coming out of the Alps by more than an
hour, protecting towns as far downstream as Slovenia and Croatia.
F
“Rivers have to be allowed to take more space. They have to be turned from flood-chutes
into flood-foilers,” says Nienhuis. And the Dutch, for whom preventing floods is a matter of
survival, have gone furthest. A nation built largely on drained marshes and seabed had
the fright of its life in 1993 when the Rhine almost overwhelmed it. The same happened
again in 1995, when a quarter of a million people were evacuated from the Netherlands.
But a new breed of “soft engineers” wants our cities to become porous, and Berlin is their
shining example. Since reunification, the city’s massive redevelopment has been
governed by tough new rules to prevent its drains becoming overloaded after heavy rains.
Harald Kraft, an architect working in the city, says: “We now see rainwater as a resource
to be kept rather than got rid of at great cost.” A good illustration is the giant Potsdamer
Platz, a huge new commercial redevelopment by Daimler Chrysler in the heart of the city.
G
Los Angeles has spent billions of dollars digging huge drains and concreting river beds to
carry away the water from occasional intense storms. The latest plan is to spend a cool
$280 million raising the concrete walls on the Los Angeles river by another 2 metres. Yet
many communities still flood regularly. Meanwhile this desert city is shipping in water from
hundreds of kilometres away in northern California and from the Colorado river in Arizona
to fill its taps and swimming pools, and irrigate its green spaces. It all sounds like bad
planning. “In LA we receive half the water we need in rainfall, and we throw it away. Then
we spend hundreds of millions to import water,” says Andy Lipkis, an LA environmentalist,
along with citizen groups like Friends of the Los Angeles River and Unpaved LA, want to
beat the urban flood hazard and fill the taps by holding onto the city’s flood water. And it’s
not just a pipe dream. The authorities this year launched a $100 million scheme to road-
test the porous city in one flood-hit community in Sun Valley. The plan is to catch the rain
that falls on thousands of driveways, parking lots and rooftops in the valley. Trees will
soak up water from parking lots. Homes and public buildings will capture roof water to
irrigate gardens and parks. And road drains will empty into old gravel pits and other leaky
places that should recharge the city’s underground water reserves. Result: less flooding
and more water for the city. Plan B says every city should be porous, every river should
have room to flood naturally and every coastline should be left to build its own defences.
It sounds expensive and utopian, until you realise how much we spend trying to drain
cities and protect our watery margins -and how bad we are at it.
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.
Questions 20-23
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading Passage 2?
In boxes 20-23 on you answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
20 In the ancient times, the people in Europe made their efforts to improve the river
banks, so the flood was becoming less severe than before.
21 Flood makes river shorter than it used to be, which means faster speed and more
damage to the constructions on flood plain.
22 The new approach in the UK is better than that in Austria.
23 At least 300,000 people left from Netherlands in 1995.
Questions 24-26
Complete the sentences below.
Choose NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS from the passage for each answer.
Write your answers in boxes 24-26 on your answer sheet.
24 UK’s Environment Agency carried out one innovative approach: a wetland is
generated not far from the city of ……………………… to protect it from flooding.
25 ………………………. suggested that cities should be porous, and Berlin set a good
example.
26 Another city devastated by heavy storms casually is …………………………..,
though government pours billions of dollars each year in order to solve the problem.
READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27-40 which are based on Reading
Passage 3 below.
Of the world’s 6,500 living languages, about half of them are expected to be
extinct. Most of the world’s languages are spoken by a 27…………………. of
people. However, Professor Turin set up a project WOLP to
prevent 28…………………… of the languages. The project provides the
community with 29……………………. to enable people to record their
endangered languages. The oral tradition has great
cultural 30…………………….. An important 31…………………… between
languages spoken by few people and languages with celebrated written
documents existed in many communities.
A similarity
B significance
C funding
D minority
E education
F difference
G education
H diversity
I majority
J disappearance
Questions 32-35
Do the following statements agree with the information given in Reading
Passage 3?
In boxes 32-35 on you answer sheet, write
TRUE if the statement is true
FALSE if the statement is false
NOT GIVEN if the information is not given in the passage
32 Turin argued that anthropologists and linguists usually think carefully
before selecting an area to research.
33 Turin concluded that the Thangmi language had few similarities with other
languages.
34 Turin has written that 1000-page document was inappropriate for Thangmi
community;
35 Some Nepalese schools lack resources to devote to language teaching.
Questions 36-40
Choose the correct letter, A, B, C or D.
Write the correct letter in boxes 36-40 on your answer sheet.
36 Why does Turin say people do PhDs on the apostrophe in French?
A He believes that researchers have limited role in the research of languages.
B He compares the methods of research into languages.
C He thinks research should result in a diverse cultural outlook.
D He holds that research into French should focus on more general aspects.