You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 1-13

The end of the email?

More than I 07 trillion emails are sent every year but its grip on your lives is
loosening …

[A] For several years students of the internet have noticed that young people are
abandoning email in favor of alternative electronic ways of staying in touch. A
leading US internet research firm, ComScore, recently reported a 59% decline in
the use of internet-based email services by 12 to 17 year-olds, an 18% decline
among 25 to 35 year-olds, and an 8% fall among 35 to 44 year-olds. There are even
signs that email is beginning to lose favor in the workplace too.

[B] Europe’s largest IT company, Atos Origin, intends to scrap internal emails
altogether. Its staff will still use email to correspond with clients and other
businesses but to talk among themselves they will adopt a variety of newer services
such as instant messaging services and older methods – namely talking face to face.
The company’s chairman prompted headlines around the world when he mentioned
he had not sent an email in more than three years. But in fact, a number of
companies have been quietly moving away from using email as the primary way of
communicating within the company. Intel, for example, has been experimenting
with ‘no-email Fridays’ encouraging its engineers to solve problems by phone or
face to face instead.

[C] The move, in part, reflects the preferences of its workers, many of whom are
under the age of 30. However, it is also happening because the volume of emails is
becoming unsustainable. Employees who usually get 200 emails a day, spend
between five and 20 hours a week just clearing their inboxes. The distraction and
time-wasting of email have been a regular part of office life for more than a decade.
More than I 07 trillion are now sent each year, of which half are spam. The rest are
a mix of round robins, personal messages and badly written memos that pile up in
archives and do little to boost productivity. Research shows that it takes 64 seconds
to regain concentration after reading an email and when you consider that US office
workers have been measured

checking their emails and swapping windows on their computer screens an average
of 37 times an hour, that adds up to major distraction.

[D] Employees will be expected to use collaboration and social media tools instead
of email to communicate with co-workers. In English, that means newer types of
electronic messaging services. One such service is instant messaging. Devised in
the 1990s by people playing games on the net, instant messaging or IM is much
simpler and more responsive than email. IM users can see when colleagues are
online and· then communicate in small, continuous trails of dialogues on their
screens, much more like a phone call. These messages tend to be deleted as they go,
thus avoiding clogged up email inboxes and archives. Less formal than email, they
are also a far more efficient way of, for example, trying to arrange a meeting. lM or
‘chat’ facilities often form part of larger social networks, such as Facebook and
Twitter.

[E] The immediacy of these synchronous messaging systems enable people to stay
in touch and broadcast information to each other – their location, activities, plans
and daily schedules without the need for constant emailing. ‘Status updates’ in
which users post a simple message that can be read by all their contacts, enable
people to see and share information that might not be worth an email but can be
useful nonetheless. All such ‘easy chat’ services were born of engagement with the
internet that just didn’t exist when email overtook the world of communication in
the early 1990s.

[F] Until about a decade ago, most neuroscientists thought the brain stopped
developing after childhood. But the constant distraction and torrent of information
that we subject ourselves to – via email, surfing the web, TY, multi-tasking – is
now thought to alter the way we think. The new technology is, in effect, rewiring
our brains. Scientists have drawn parallels between the use of electronic
communication and addiction to food stimulants that release small amounts of
dopamine in the brain. We feel a buzz of excitement when a message arrives, which
then fades, leaving us feeling flat and bored until the next one comes. But whether
this makes us less productive is open to question. Research has

found that people work better in bursts of concentration interrupted by breaks even
for pointless emails – then long sustained spells.

[G] There are still an estimated three billion email accounts in the world, a figure
that dwarfs any other form of communication. Email also retains several
distinguishing qualities. Unlike the galaxy of social networks and IM services on
the internet – all requiring different accounts and often their own software – email
systems are all fundamentally compatible. It doesn’t matter which program you
send it from. And even its annoyances contain advantages: email archives have
proved to be hugely valuable, and because it is an asynchronous medium (the
recipients choose when to open their messages) this means we can try and preserve
some control over our time. This is not the end of the email – it will remain a
bedrock of businesses for some time to come. It’s simply the end of its monopoly.

Questions 1-6

The reading passage has seven paragraphs labeled A-G.

Which paragraph contains the following information?

Write the correct letter A-G in boxes 1-6 on your answer sheet.

NB You may use any letter more than once.

[1] reasons for the appeal of social networking tools over email E

[2] a description of alternatives to email as a form of communication in the

workplace D

[3] a reference to why one business plans to reduce its flow of internal email B

[4] a brief conclusion of findings on the effects technology has on our attention
span F

[5] Evidence of a decline in the popularity of email A

[6] a reference to some positive features of email as a form of communication G

Questions 7-10

Write your answers in boxes 7-10 of your answer sheet.

List FOUR examples of information that can be communicated using the medium
of Instant Messaging.

[7] …LOCATION……………..

[8] …ACTIVITIES……………..

[9] …PLAN……………..

[10 …DAIY SCHEDULES……………..

Questions 11-13

Complete the sentences below with words taken from the reading passage.

Use NO MORE THAN TWO WORDS for each answer.

Write your answers in boxes 11-13 of your answer sheet.

[11 Young people use social networking tools that provide the level of …
IMEDIACY……….. they want.

[12] The advantage of social networking is that it puts people in control of the …
information ……. …..they see.

[13] Email is an… asynchronous medium …………….., so you don’t know if

someone has read your message.
Scrap : loại bỏ
Neuroscientist : the person who studies the nervous system and the brain