HO CHI MINH CITY UNIVERSITY OF Test date: June 4, 2021

TECHNOLOGY
Office for International Study Programs SECTION: READING
PRELIMINARY TEST Allotted time: 60 mins
Full name: ……………………………………………..…. Student ID number: ……………....……
English class: …………………………………………..… Test room: ………………….…….
READING PASSAGE 1
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1 – 13, which are based on Reading Passage 1 below

Nature on display in American zoos

by Elizabeth Hanson
The first zoo in the United States opened in Philadelphia in 1874, followed by the Cincinnati Zoo the next
year. By 1940 there were zoos in more than one hundred American cities. The Philadelphia Zoo was more
thoroughly planned and better financed than most of the hundreds of zoos that would open later but in its
landscape and its mission – to both educate and entertain its embodied ideas about how to build a zoo that
stayed consistent for decades. The zoos came into existence in the late nineteenth century during the
transition of the United States from a rural and agricultural nation to an industrial one.
The population more than doubled between 1860 and 1900. As more middle class people lived in cities,
they began seeking new relationships with the natural world as a place for recreation, self-improvement,
and spiritual renewal. Cities established systems of public parks, and nature tourism – already popular –
became even more fashionable with the establishment of national parks. Nature was thought to be good
for people of all ages and classes. Nature study was incorporated into school curricula, and natural history
collecting became an increasingly popular pastime.
At the same time, the fields of study which were previously thought of as ‘natural history’ grew into
separate areas such as taxonomy, experimental embryology and genetics, each with its own experts and
structures. As laboratory research gained prestige in the zoology departments of American universities,
the gap between professional and amateur scientific activities widened. Previously, natural history had
been open to amateurs and was easily popularized, but research required access to microscopes and other
equipment in laboratories, as well as advanced education.
The new zoos set themselves apart from traveling animal shows by stating their mission as education and
the advancement of science, in addition to recreation. Zoos presented zoology for the non-specialist, at a
time when the intellectual distance between amateur naturalists and laboratory oriented zoologists was
increasing. They attracted wide audiences and quickly became a feature of every growing and forward

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thinking city. They were emblems of civic pride on a level of importance with art museums, natural
history museums and botanical gardens.
Most American zoos were founded and operated as part of the public parks administration. They were
dependent on municipal funds, and they charged no admission fee. They tended to assemble as many
different mammal and bird species as possible, along with a few reptiles, exhibiting one or two
specimens of each, and they competed with each other to become the first to display a rarity, like a
rhinoceros. In the constant effort to attract the public to make return visits, certain types of display came
in and out of fashion; for example, dozens of zoos built special Islands for their large populations
of monkeys. In the 1930s, the Works Progress Administration funded millions of dollars of construction
at dozens of zoos, for the most part, the collections of animals were organized by species in a combination
of enclosures according to a fairly loose classification scheme.
Although many histories of individual zoos describe the 1940s through the 1960s as a period of
stagnation, and in some cases there was neglect, new zoos continued to be set up all over the country. In
the 1940s and 1950s, the first zoos designed specifically for children were built, some with the appeal of
farm animals. An increasing number of zoos tried new ways of organizing their displays. In addition to
the traditional approach of exhibiting like kinds together, zoo planners had a new approach of putting
animals in groups according to their continent of origin and designing exhibits showing animals of
particular habitats, for example, polar, desert, or forest. During the 1960s, a few zoos arranged some
displays according to animal behavior; the Bronx Zoo, for instance, opened its World of Darkness exhibit
of nocturnal animals. Paradoxically, at the same time as zoo displays began incorporating ideas about the
ecological relationships between animals, big cats and primates continued to be displayed in bathroom
like cages lined with tiles.
By the 1970s, a new wave of reform was stirring. Popular movements for environmentalism and animal
welfare called attention to endangered species and to zoos that did not provide adequate care for their
animals. More projects were undertaken by research scientists and zoos began hiring full-time vets as they
stepped up captive breeding programs. Many zoos that had been supported entirely by municipal budgets
began recruiting private financial support and charging admission fees. In the prosperous 1980s and
1990s, zoos built realistic ‘landscape immersion’ exhibits, many of them around the theme of the tropical
rainforest and increasingly, conservation moved to the forefront of zoo agendas.
Although zoos were popular and proliferating institutions in the United States at the turn of the twentieth
century, historians have paid little attention to them. Perhaps zoos have been ignored because they were,
and remain still, multi-purpose institutions, and as such they fall between the categories of analysis that
historians often use. In addition, their stated goals of recreation, education, the advancement of science,

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and protection of endangered species have often conflicted. Zoos occupy a difficult middle ground
between science and showmanship, high culture and low, remote forests and the cement cityscape, and
wild animals and urban people.
A.

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READING PASSAGE 2
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 14 – 26, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Storytelling, From Prehistoric Caves to Modern Cinemas

A. It was told, we suppose, to people crouched around a fire: a tale of adventure, most likely - relating
some close encounter with death; a remarkable hunt, an escape from mortal danger; a vision, or
something else out of the ordinary. Whatever its thread, the weaving of this story was done with a
prime purpose. The listeners must be kept listening. They must not fall asleep. So, as the story went
on, its audience should be sustained by one question above all. What happens next?
B. The first fireside stories in human history can never be known. They were kept in the heads of those
who told them. This method of storage is not necessarily inefficient. From documented oral traditions
in Australia, the Balkans and other parts of the world we know that specialised storytellers and poets
can recite from memory literally thousands of lines, in verse or prose, verbatim – word for word. But
while memory is rightly considered an art in itself, it is clear that a primary purpose of making
symbols is to have a system of reminders or mnemonic cues – signs that assist us to recall certain
information in the mind’s eye.
C. In some Polynesian communities, a notched memory stick may help to guide a storyteller through
successive stages of recitation. But in other parts of the world, the activity of storytelling historically
resulted in the development or even the invention of writing systems. One theory about the arrival of
literacy in ancient Greece, for example, argues that the epic tales about the Trojan War and the
wanderings of Odysseus - traditionally attributed to Homer - were just so enchanting to hear that they
had to be preserved. So the Greeks, c. 750-700BC, borrowed an alphabet from their neighbors in the
eastern Mediterranean, the Phoenicians.
D. The custom of recording stories on parchment and other materials can be traced in many
manifestations around the world, from the priestly papyrus archive of ancient Egypt to the birch-bark
scrolls on which the North American Ojibway Indians set down their creation myth. It is a well-tried
and universal practice: so much so that to this day storytime is probably most often associated with
words on paper. The formal practice of narrating a story aloud would seem - so we assume - to have
given way to newspapers, novels and comic strips. This, however, is not the case. Statistically it is
doubtful that the majority of humans currently rely upon the written word to get access to stories. So
what is the alternative source?
E. Each year, over 7 billion people will go to watch the latest offering from Hollywood, Bollywood and
beyond. The supreme storyteller of today is cinema. The movies, as distinct from still photography,
seem to be an essentially modern phenomenon. This is an illusion, for there are, as we shall see,

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 certain ways in which the medium of film is indebted to very old precedents of arranging ‘sequences’
of images. But any account of visual storytelling must begin with the recognition that all storytelling
beats with a deeply atavistic pulse: that is, a ‘good story’ relies upon formal patterns of plot and
characterisation that have been embedded in the practice of storytelling over many generations.
F. Thousands of scripts arrive every week at the offices of the major film studios. But aspiring
screenwriters really need look no further for essential advice than the fourth-century BC Greek
Philosopher Aristotle. He left some incomplete lecture notes on the art of telling stories in various
literary and dramatic modes, a slim volume known as The Poetics. Though he can never have
envisaged the popcorn-fuelled actuality of a multiplex cinema, Aristotle is almost prescient about the
key elements required to get the crowds flocking to such a cultural hub. He analyzed the process with
cool rationalism. When a story enchants us, we lose the sense of where we arc; we are drawn into the
story so thoroughly that we forget it is a story being told. This is, in Aristotle’s phrase, ‘the suspension
of disbelief.
G. We know the feeling. If ever we have stayed in our seats, stunned with grief, as the credits roll by, or
for days after seeing that vivid evocation of horror have been nervous about taking a shower at home,
then we have suspended disbelief. We have been caught, or captivated, in the storyteller’s web. Did it
all really happen? We really thought so for a while. Aristotle must have witnessed often enough this
suspension of disbelief. He taught at Athens, the city where theater developed as a primary form of
civic ritual and recreation. Two theatrical types of storytelling, tragedy and comedy, caused Athenian
audiences to lose themselves in sadness and laughter respectively. Tragedy, for Aristotle, was
particularly potent in its capacity to enlist and then purge the emotions of those watching the story
unfold on the stage, so he tried to identify those factors in the storyteller’s art that brought about such
engagement. He had, as an obvious sample for analysis, not only the fifth-century BC masterpieces of
Classical Greek tragedy written by Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides. Beyond them stood Homer
whose stories even then had canonical status: The lliad and The Odyssey were already considered
literary landmarks-stories by which all other stories should he measured. So what was the secret of
Homer’s narrative art?
H. It was not hard to find. Homer created credible heroes. His heroes belonged to the past, they were
mighty and magnificent, yet they were not, in the end, fantasy figures. He made his heroes sulk,
bicker, cheat and cry. They were, in short, characters - protagonists of a story that an audience would
care about, would want to follow, would want to know what happens next. As Aristotle saw, the hero
who shows a human side some flaw or weakness to which mortals are prone - is intrinsically dramatic.
 

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READING PASSAGE 3
You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 27 – 40, which are based on Reading Passage 3 below.

Theory or Practice? —What is the point of research carried out

by biz schools?
Students go to universities and other academic institutions to prepare for their future. We pay tuition and
struggle through classes in the hopes that we can find a fulfilling and exciting career. But the choice of
your university has a large influence on your future. How can you know which university will prepare you
the best for your future? Like other academic institutions, business schools are judged by the quality of
the research carried out by their faculties. Professors must both teach students and also produce original
research in their own field. The quality of this research is assessed by academic publications. At the same
time, universities have another responsibility to equip their students for the real world, however that is
defined. Most students learning from professors will not go into academics themselves—so how do
academics best prepare them for their future careers, whatever that may be? Whether academic research
actually produces anything that is useful to the practice of business, or even whether it is its job to do so,
are questions that can provoke vigorous arguments on campus.
The debate, which first flared during the 1950s, was reignited in August, when AACSB International, the
most widely recognised global accrediting agency for business schools, announced it would consider
changing the way it evaluates research. The news followed rather damning criticism in 2002 from Jeffrey
Pfefler, a Stanford professor, and Christina Fong of Washington University, which questioned whether
business education in its current guise was sustainable. The study found that traditional modes of
academia were not adequately preparing students for the kind of careers they faced in current times. The
most controversial recommendation in AACSB’s draft report (which was sent round to administrators for
their comment) is that the schools should be required to demonstrate the value of their faculties’ research
not simply by listing its citations in journals, but by demonstrating the impact it has in the professional
world. New qualifiers, such as average incomes, student placement in top firms and business
collaborations would now be considered just as important as academic publications.
AACSB justifies its stance by saying that it wants schools and faculty to play to their strengths, whether
they be in pedagogy, in the research of practical applications, or in scholarly endeavor. Traditionally,
universities operate in a pyramid structure. Everyone enters and stays in an attempt to be successful in
their academic field. A psychology professor must publish competitive research in the top neuroscience
journals. A Cultural Studies professor must send graduate students on new field research expeditions to be
taken seriously. This research is the core of a university’s output. And research of any kind is expensive—

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AACSB points out that business schools in America alone spend more than $320m a year on it. So it
seems legitimate to ask for what purpose it is undertaken? 
If a school chose to specialise in professional outputs rather than academic outputs, it could use such a
large sum of money and redirect it into more fruitful programs. For example, if a business school wanted
a larger presence of employees at top financial firms, this money may be better spent on a career center
which focuses on building the skills of students, rather than paying for more high-level research to be
done through the effort of faculty. A change in evaluation could also open the door to inviting more
professionals from different fields to teach as adjuncts. Students could take accredited courses from
people who are currently working in their dream field. The AACSB insists that universities answer the
question as to why research is the most critical component of traditional education.
On one level, the question is simple to answer. Research in business schools, as anywhere else, is about
expanding the boundaries of knowledge; it thrives on answering unasked questions. Surely this pursuit of
knowledge is still important to the university system. Our society progresses because we learn how to do
things in new ways, a process which depends heavily on research and academics. But one cannot ignore
the other obvious practical uses of research publications. Research is also about cementing schools’—and
professors'—reputations. Schools gain kudos from their faculties’ record of publication: which journals
publish them, and how often. In some cases, such as with government-funded schools in Britain, it can
affect how much money they receive. For professors, the mantra is often "publish or perish”. Their careers
depend on being seen in the right journals.
But at a certain point, one has to wonder whether this research is being done for the benefit of the
university or for the students the university aims to teach. Greater publications will attract greater funding,
which will in turn be spent on better publications. Students seeking to enter professions out of academia
find this cycle frustrating, and often see their professors as being part of the "Ivory Tower” of academia,
operating in a self-contained community that has little influence on the outside world.
The research is almost universally unread by real-world managers. Part of the trouble is that the journals
labour under a similar ethos. They publish more than 20,000 articles each year. Most of the research is
highly quantitative, hypothesis-driven and esoteric. As a result, it is almost universally unread by real-
world managers. Much of the research criticises other published research. A paper in a 2006 issue of
Strategy & Leadership commented that "research is not designed with managers’ needs in mind, nor is it
communicated in the journals they read. For the most part, it has become a self-referential closed system
irrelevant to corporate performance." The AACSB demands that this segregation must change for the
future of higher education. If students must invest thousands of dollars for an education as part of their
career path, the academics which serve the students should be more fully incorporated into the

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professional world. This means that universities must focus on other strengths outside of research, such as
professional networks, technology skills, and connections with top business firms around the world.
Though many universities resisted the report, today’s world continues to change. The universities which
prepare students for our changing future have little choice but to change with new trends and new
standards.

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