ĐẠI HỌC QUỐC GIA TP. HỒ CHÍ MINH
HỘI ĐỒNG TUYỂN SINH LỚP 10
NĂM HỌC 2024 – 2025

Họ và tên thí sinh:......................................
Số báo danh:..................

TRƯỜNG PHỔ THÔNG NĂNG KHIẾU
ĐỀ THI TUYỂN SINH LỚP 10
Năm học 2024 - 2025
Môn thi: TIẾNG ANH (Chuyên)

Ngày thi: 26/05/2024
Đề thi gồm: 12 trang
Thời gian làm bài: 150 phút, không kể thời gian phát đề

* Thí sinh viết câu trả lời vào Phiếu làm bài (Answer Sheet).
* Chỉ những câu trả lời ghi ở ANSWER SHEET mới được chấm điểm.
* Thí sinh KHÔNG được sử dụng tài liệu, kể cả từ điển.
* Giám thị KHÔNG giải thích gì thêm.

INSTRUCTIONS TO CANDIDATES
Write your name, candidate number and exam room number on your Answer Sheet.
Read the instructions for each part of the paper carefully.
Answer all the questions. Write your answers on the Answer Sheet.
You MUST complete the Answer Sheet within the time limit.
At the end of the test, hand in both this question paper and your Answer Sheet.
INFORMATION FOR CANDIDATES
There are 130 questions in this paper.
• Questions 1-80 carry 0.05 marks each.
• Questions 81-120 carry 0.1 marks each.
• Questions 121-130 carry 0.2 marks each.
I. LANGUAGE USE (4.0 pts) - Questions 1-80
Questions 1 - 50 GRAMMAR AND VOCABULARY (2.5 pts)
Choose the answer (A, B, C, or D) which fits best. Write your answers on the Answer Sheet.
1. She had prepared extensively for the interview;…….she didn't get the job.
A. whereas
B. hence
C. albeit
D. nevertheless
2. He practiced his lines diligently, …….he forgot them during the performance.
A. even so
B. however
C. yet
D. still
3. John was determined to finish the marathon, even though he had injured his ankle early on in the
race, and he pushed through the pain.
A. regardless
B. irrespective
C. notwithstanding
D. however
4. I would rather you…….my message to him yesterday.
A. had delivered
B. delivered
C. have delivered
D. will deliver
5. Not only…….to the party, but he also brought a gift.
A. comes he
B. does he come
C. came he
D. did he come
6. Bananas are one of…….and they are believed to help raise serotonin levels.
A. the available fruits most nutritious
B. the fruits most nutritious available
C. the most nutritious fruits available
D. the most available nutritious fruits
7. In no way…….to be misunderstood.
A. she wants
B. wants she
C. does she want
D. she does want
8. The art exhibit featured a variety of sculptures, each.....with precision by a renowned artist.
A. crafted
B. to craft
C. craft
D. crafting
9. It is important that she…….her passport before traveling.
A. would renew
B. renew
C. renews
D. renewed
10. After the financial crisis, many families were reduced…….in temporary shelters, struggling to
rebuild their lives from scratch.
A. to living
B. to live
C. to be living
D. to be lived

11. Demands for tickets were high, …….inflating resell prices to 300%.
A. and so
B. thereby
C. resulting in
D. which consequently
12. One of the students was caught…….during the exam and was removed from the room.
A. having cheated
B. cheating
C. to cheat
D. to have cheated
13. The company is said…….victory over its rival through a smear campaign.
A. to having achieved
B. to achieve
c. to have been achieving
D. to have achieved
14. Nobody is really what they seem, …….?
A. is it
B. aren't they
C. isn't it
D. are they
15. ……., the acrobat couldn't make the final landing gracefully.
A. Disappointed as we were
B. Much to our disappointment
C. Greatly were we disappointed
D. Despite our disappointment
16. The cult leader, along with his 2 closest associates, …….a life sentence.
A. was receiving
B. were to receive
C. was to receive
D. were receiving
17. …….your school uniform? We're just going to the mall with our classmates.
A. Need you have worn
B. Have you to wear
C. Couldn't you have worn
D. Don't you wear
18. Max cheated his sister out of the inheritance money, …….she would never forgive him.
A. for that
B. for which
C. of that
D. of which
19. Your road to recovery is likely long. ……., you have the best healthcare service available right
now.
A. Saying that
B. Having said
C. That said
D. To say that
20. Potential delays……., this airline service isn't so bad.
A. notwithstanding
B. despite
C. regardless
D. though
21. After working for several hours straight, Sarah was…….and needed to take a break.
A. running out of steam
B. pulling her weight
C. hitting the nail on the head
D. burning the midnight oil
22. The politician's promise to lower taxes turned out to be nothing but........
A. a piece of cake
B. hot air
C. a bitter pill to swallow
D. a storm in a teacup
23. The chef prepared a.......feast, featuring a variety of delicious dishes.
A. tongue-in-cheek
B. fine-tooth
C. mouth-watering
D. lip-smacking
24. The media has been reporting non-stop about this scandal for weeks. It's time to stop......
A. flogging a dead horse
B. skinning a cat
C. crying wolf
D. counting sheep
25. Enjoy your holiday and keep me.......about anything exciting!
A. shared
B. signed
C. posted
D. framed
26. You have been having terrible luck, I suggest you.......and stop playing.
A. tighten your purse strings
B. cut your losses
c. lower the stakes
D. cash in your chips
27. These.......office cubicles are drab, plain, and depressing to work in.
A. cookie-cutter
B. bread-and-butter
C. vanilla
D. eye candy
28. That's not very prim and.......of her to chew with her mouth wide open.
A. proud
B. bright
C. polite
D. proper
29. I'm sorry, but 1 have to.......my plans for tonight due to unexpected circumstances.
A. turn down
B. put off
C. bring up
D. do without
30. The company decided to.......50 employees in order to reduce costs.
A. lay off
B. cut down
C. give up
D. turn away
31. The teacher asked the students to finish and.......their assignments by Friday.
A. give away
B. hand in
C. pass up
D. bring forth

32. She had to.......the courage to speak in front of such a large audience.
A. evoke
B. accrue
C. spend
D. summon
33. The board was unconvinced by the idea at first, but after the demonstration, most of them........
A. caved in
B. gave into
C. came round
D. keeled over
34. Mickey is not telling us the whole story. There's more than he........
A. showed off
B. let on
C. brought forth
D. put across
35. Even though the house was built just a year ago, we are starting to see signs of paint.......off.
A. tearing
B. cracking
C. dusting
D. chipping
36. The highway accident led to a terrible.......of over 50 vehicles and 100 casualties including
deaths.
A. pileup
B. turnover
C. gridlock
D. backlash
37. She.......her gratitude for the opportunity to work on such an important project.
A. espoused
B. extended
C. expanded
D. extorted
38. The students eagerly participated in a......., discussing various aspects of the novel.
A. lively debate
B. heated argument
C. casual conversation D. shop talk
39. The team's.......performance in the playoffs ended their tournament run prematurely.
A. lackluster
B. hideous
C. lukewarm
D. stale
40. A.I. is bringing about a........shift in what is normally considered 'skilled, intellectual, creative'
fields.
A. paragon
B. paradigm
C. paramount
D. paradox
41. It is.......normal to live with your parents. You don't have to move out if you don't have the
means.
A. utterly
B. absolutely
C. exceptionally
D. incredibly
42. Read your contract carefully before signing as the terms in there are legally........
A. secure
B. enforced
C. binding
D. obligatory
43. Skeptics.......to the view that 'alternative medicine' is just placebo without any medicinal
properties.
A. allude
B. amount
C. resign
D. subscribe
44. The company decided to.......a new marketing strategy to boost sales and attract more
customers.
A. enforce
B. instill
C. implement
D. mandate
45. The hiker had to.......a steep mountain to reach the summit.
A. ascend
B. descend
C. traverse
D. wander
46. The detective's keen observation skills helped him.......the mystery behind the missing diamond.
A. unearth
B. underpin
C. unravel
D. underline
47. The author's prose is......., so even first-time readers of the genre find it easy to follow the story.
A. lucid
B. explicit
C. cohesive
D. plain
48. The Amazon rainforest.......over 3 million species of plants and animals, many of which unique
to the region and under serious threat.
A. claims
B. gloats
C. boasts
D. enjoys
49. The striking labourers.......demands regarding their working conditions, healthcare, and paid
leave.
A. instigated
B. propagated
C. mitigated
D. stipulated
50. Most humans are instinctively.......to snakes, which are a danger to our primate ancestors.
A. averse
B. perverse
C. inverse
D. adverse
Questions 51-60 GUIDED CLOZE TEST (0.5 pts)
Choose the answer (A, B, C, or D) which fits best. Write your answers on the Answer Sheet.
'Divorced, Beheaded, Died, Divorced, Beheaded, Survived' goes the famous rhyme that
51.........the fates of King Henry Vin's six wives. The story of King Henry VIlI's six wives has been
told for centuries, but never before has it been heard in the way 'SIX' shares it. A new Broadway

musical show, 'SIX' gives 52. .......and tune to the women who served as queens in a modern and
upbeat way.
Telling the story of King Henry's wives, some of whom were killed by order of the king himself,
the show does not, however, feature a character playing the king. 53........, it is centered on the
women, allowing them to tell their own stories through music.
The entire 80-minute production takes place on a 54........that appears to be a concert stage. The
Tudor queens and the band, known as the 'Ladies in Waiting,' are on stage the entire time. Despite
being based on historical events and characters, 'Six's take on the Tudor era is heavily fictionalized.
55. .......is clear the moment the actresses stepped out in bejeweled and glittering outfits, and the
stage, with modern 56. ....... like bass guitar and keyboard, feels more at home at a pop concert than
a historical play.
"It can catch you off guard," said Sterlyn Termine, a band member. "As soon as the curtains open
and you see guitar, a drum set and keyboards, you will realize that this is going to sound a lot more
modern than you thought.” Still, 57. .......the era and region the storyline takes place in, there are
hints of the music from 500 years ago. "There is harpsichord, but it is a synthesized harpsichord,
and one of the songs is polka, German-folk inspired that is accompanied by dubstep and airhorn
sounds. It is a creative and clever fusion," Termine said. Each queen also has hints of modern-day
celebrities, dubbed 'Queenspirations,' with their music, intertwined into their characters and songs,
paying 58. .......to 'pop queens' the likes of Beyonce, Adele, and Ariana Grande.
The show is high energy from start to finish and does not include an intermission. Many of the
59. .......loved how it was fast-paced and shorter than some other productions, adding that though
they didn't know what to expect 60. .......the show, they left highly impressed. "We thought we
booked the wrong show, but as the curtains closed, me and my family were all clapping and
cheering." Said a member in attendance.
51. A. recounts
B. recalls
C. recollects
D. recants
52. A. sound
B. voice
C. music
D. tone
53. A. Presumably
B. Rather
C. Particularly
D. In turn
54. A. scenario
B. set
C. scenery
D. setting
55. A. So it
B. So much
C. As such
D. That much
56. A. devices
B. equipment
C. gadgets
D. instruments
57. A. in honour of
B. on behalf of
C. in relation to D. on account of
58. A. lip service
B. homage
C. respects
D. court
59. A. audience
B. spectators
C. viewers
D. participants
60. A. in the wake of
B. by the end of C. prior to
D. throughout
(Dillon Thomas, for CBS News)

Questions 61 - 70 OPEN CLOZE TEST 1 (0.5 pts)
Complete each blank with ONE most suitable word. Write your answers on the Answer Sheet.
Roughly two-thirds of the world's cocoa is grown in West Africa, 61.of it concentrating in Ivory
Coast and Ghana, and farmers there have faced extreme weather brought by changing climate
62.for a few years: heavy rains and flooding, high winds during the dry season. 63.has worsened
crop disease and road conditions, which disrupts bean deliveries to ports.
The International Cocoa Organization forecasts that global cocoa supply will decline by almost
11% this season. Other cocoa-growing countries have been unable to fill the 64. because ramping
up production is expensive and 65.......; it takes years for newly planted trees to produce cocoa
beans. This extensive shortfall of cocoa has 66......buyers scrambling, pushing prices up, and the
historic rally has drawn in speculators, exacerbating the price volatility. Normally, if prices are very
high, people start producing more of that commodity, but that is not the 67. .......with cocoa. Thus,
these prices are going to stay higher than they were for a while.
The damaging weather also compounded other ongoing problems. Trees in West Africa have been
aging and yielding less cocoa; farmers in Ghana and Ivory Coast have struggled to battle pests and

disease. In fact, those farmers rarely benefit from the surging cost of cocoa on the 68....... because
they typically pre-sell the beans at agreed-upon prices in 69....... Unfortunately, the amounts they
earn for selling their cocoa cannot 70. .......up for the costs to replant, buy fertilizers, buy pesticides,
etc. The sourcing of cocoa and the model for producing and trading cocoa in the world is not a
sustainable model.
Questions 71-80 OPEN CLOZE TEST 2 (0.5 pts)
Complete each blank with ONE most suitable word. Write your answers on the Answer Sheet.
If you've seen the movie or television show M*A*S*H, then you've seen an 'ambulance.' No, not
those trucks that bring patients to hospitals. Back then, the field hospital 71...was the ambulance. It
brought the care to patients, not the other way around. Just look at the word. It has the same
72…...as words like “ambulatory” or "amble." 73. .......essence, the word means "walking." The
French term from which the English 74........was "hôpital ambulant," but English dropped "hôpital."
The emphasis here was on walking and movement.
75. .......came the Crimean War (1853-1856). Sometimes considered the first “modern” war, this
struggle for control of the former Ottoman Empire was the first to use railroads and telegraphs
tactically. In 76. .......to that, the Crimean War was when people began to 77. ........to ambulances as
the conveyances moving troops from the field to places where their injuries were 78. .......This
change likely occurred because the war had so many different theaters. Field hospitals couldn't
possibly have 79. ......up with all of the battles. Thus, ambulances took you to the hospital instead of
being the hospital. Field hospitals still exist today, of 80. ......., but they're no longer called
ambulances.
II. READING (2.5 pts) - Questions 81-105
Questions 81 - 90 PASSAGE 1 (1.0 pts)
Read the passage below and answer the following questions.
A. Like a naturalist conducting a tour of the jungle, he led the way to a busy intersection in the
center of town, where several odd things immediately became clear. Not only was it virtually
naked, stripped of all lights, signs, and road markings, but there was no division between road and
sidewalk. It was, basically, a bare brick square.
But in spite of the apparently anarchical layout, the traffic, a steady stream of trucks, cars, buses,
motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians, moved along fluidly and easily, as if directed by an invisible
conductor. When Mr. Monderman, a traffic engineer and the intersection's proud designer,
deliberately failed to check for oncoming traffic before crossing the street, the drivers slowed for
him. No one honked or shouted rude words out of the window. (1)'Who has the right of way?" he
asked rhetorically. "I don't care. People here have to find their own wav, negotiate for
themselves, use their own brains."
B. Used by some 20,000 drivers a day, the intersection is part of a road-design revolution pioneered
by the 59-year-old Mr. Monderman. His work in Friesland, the district in northern Holland that
takes in Drachten, is increasingly seen as the way of the future in Europe.
His philosophy is simple, if counterintuitive. To make communities safer and more appealing, Mr.
Monderman argues, you should first remove the traditional paraphernalia of their roads-the traffic
lights and speed signs; the signs exhorting drivers to stop, slow down and merge; the center lines
separating lanes from one another; even the speed bumps, speed-limit signs, bicycle lanes, and
pedestrian crossings. In his view, it is only when the road is made more dangerous, when drivers
stop looking at signs and start looking at other people, that driving becomes safer.
"All those signs are saying to cars, 'This is your space, and we have organized your behavior so
that as long as you behave this way, nothing can happen to you,'" Mr. Monderman said. "That is the
wrong story." The Drachten intersection is an example of the concept of "shared space," a street
where cars and pedestrians are equal, and the design tells the driver what to do. "It's moving away
from regulated, legislated traffic toward space which, by the way it's designed and configured,

makes it clear what sort of behavior is anticipated," said Ben Hamilton-Baillie, a British specialist
in urban design and movement and a proponent of many of the same concepts.
Highways, where the car is naturally king, are part of the "traffic world" and another matter
altogether. In Mr. Monderman's view, shared-space schemes thrive only in conjunction with wellorganized, well-regulated highway systems. Variations on the shared-space theme are being tried in
Spain, Denmark, Austria, Sweden, and Britain, among other places. The European Union has
appointed a committee of experts, including Mr. Monderman, for a Europe-wide study,
C. Mr. Monderman is a man on a mission. On a daylong automotive tour of Friesland, he pointed
out places he had improved, including a town where he ripped out the sidewalks, signs, and
crossings and put in brick paving on the central shopping street. An elderly woman crossed slowly
in front of him. (2) "This is social space, so when Grandma is coming, you stop, because that's
what normal, courteous human beings do," he said.
Planners and curious journalists are increasingly making pilgrimages to meet Mr. Monderman,
considered one of the field's great innovators, although until a few years ago he was virtually
unknown outside Holland. Mr. Hamilton-Baillie, whose writings have helped bring Mr.
Monderman's work to wider attention, remembers with fondness his own first visit. Mr.
Monderman drove him to a small country road with cows in every direction. Their presence was
reinforced by a large, standard-issue European traffic sign with a picture of a cow on it.
He said: "What do you expect to find here? WallabiesTi" Mr. Hamilton-Baillie recalled. "They're
treating you like you're a complete idiot, and if people treat you like a complete idiot, you'll act like
one.”
D. Here was someone who had rethought a lot of issues from complete scratch. Essentially, what it
means is a transfer of power and responsibility from the state to the individual and the community.
Dressed in a beige jacket and patterned shirt, with scruffy facial hair and a stocky build, Mr.
Monderman has the appearance of a football hooligan, but the temperament of an engineer, which
indeed he trained to be. His father W'as the headmaster of the primary school in their small village;
Hans liked to fiddle with machines. "I was always the guy who repaired the TV sets in our village,"
he said. He was working as a civil engineer building highways in the 1970s when the Dutch
government, alarmed at a sharp increase in traffic accidents, set up a network of traffic safety
offices. Mr. Monderman was appointed Friesland's traffic safety officer.
In residential communities, Mr. Monderman began narrowing the roads and putting in design
features like trees and flowers, red brick paving stones, and even fountains to discourage people
from speeding, following the principle now known as psychological traffic calming, where
behavior follows design.
He made his first nervous foray into shared space in a small village whose residents were upset at
its being used as a daily thoroughfare for 6,000 speeding cars. When he took away the signs, lights,
and sidewalks, people drove more carefully. Within two weeks, speeds on the road had dropped by
more than half. In fact, he said, there has never been a fatal accident on any of his roads.
E. Several early studies bear out his contention that shared spaces are safer. In England, the district
of Wiltshire found that removing the center line from a stretch of road reduced drivers' speed
without any increase in accidents.
[...] Mr. Monderman concedes that road design can do only so much. It does not change the
behavior, for instance, of the 15 percent of drivers who will behave badly no matter what the rules
are. Nor are shared-space designs appropriate everywhere, like major urban centers, but only in
neighborhoods that meet particular criteria. Recently a group of well-to-do parents asked him to
widen the two-lane road leading to their children's school, saying it was too small to accommodate
what he derisively calls "their huge cars.” He refused, saying the fault was not with the road, but
with the cars. (3) "They can't wait for each other to pass?" he asked. [...]
For questions 81 - 85, choose the answer (A, B, C, or D) which fits best according to the text.
Write (A, B, C, or D) on your Answer Sheet.

81. What is the most appropriate title for the passage?
A. Traffic safety officer: Challenges and Opportunities
B. Road Safety without Road signs
C. Eliminating Europe's hidden traffic dangers
D. How cars have lost their status as 'king of the road'
82. What word means the CLOSEST to ''anarchical' (section A)?
A. confusing
B. orderly
C. empty
D. chaotic
83. According to the text, what is TRUE about the concept of 'shared space'?
A. It dictates certain behaviours from traffic participants.
B. It first gained popularity in some European countries.
C. It might need certain conditions to be used on highways.
D. It prioritizes pedestrians over vehicle drivers.
84. What can be inferred about Monderman from his comments (1), (2), and (3)?
A. He is passionate about his projects.
B. He is critical of the conventional traffic designs.
C. He is confident about the effectiveness of his designs.
D. He is curious about the behaviours of people in traffic.
85. What is NOT TRUE about Monderman's first experiment with the 'shared space' concept?
A. He was sure it would be a success.
B. It arose from complaints by local people.
C. Driving awareness increased as a result.
D. It did not take long to yield results.
For questions 86 - 90, choose the section (A - E) which contains the following information. Write
the correct letters (A - E) on the Answer Sheet.
86. a reference to reckless drivers
87. a concrete example of unnecessary signage
88. an authority's attempt to take the design to a larger scale
89. a description of strange traffic settings
90. influence of the engineer's background on his career choice
Questions 91-99 PASSAGE 2 (0.9 pts)
Read the passage below and answer the following questions.
'GOOD VIDEO GAMESAND GOOD LEARNING' - James P. Gee
Video games are a relatively new technology replete with important, and not yet fully understood,
implications. Scholars have historically viewed the human mind through the lens of a technology
they thought worked like the mind. Locke and Hume, for example, argued that the mind was like a
blank slate on which experience wrote ideas, taking the technology of literacy as their guide. Much
later, modern cognitive scientists argued that the mind worked like a digital program, calculating
generalizations and deductions via a logic-like rule system. More recently, some cognitive
scientists, inspired by distributed parallel-processing computers and complex adaptive networks,
have argued that the mind works by storing records of actual experiences and constructing intricate
patterns of connections among them.
Human societies get better through history at building technologies that more closely capture some
of what the human mind can do and getting these technologies to do mental work publicly. Writing,
digital computers, and networks each allow us to externalize some functions of the mind. Though
they are not commonly thought of in these terms, video games are a new technology in this same
line. They are a new tool with which to think about the mind and through which we can externalize
some of its functions. Video games of the sort I am concerned with—games like Half-Life 2, Rise of
Nations, Full Spectrum Warrior, The Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind, and World of WarCraft—are
what I would call “action-and-goal-directed preparations for, and simulations of, embodied
experience.”
Human understanding is not primarily a matter of storing general concepts in the head or applying
abstract rules to experience. Rather, humans think and understand best when they can imagine

(simulate) an experience in such a way that the simulation prepares them for actions they need and
want to take in order to accomplish their goals. Let's take weddings as an example, though we
could just as well have taken war, love, inertia, democracy, or anything. You don't understand the
word or the idea of weddings by meditating on some general definition of weddings. Rather, you
have had experiences of weddings, in real life and through texts and media. On the basis of these
experiences, you can simulate different wedding scenarios in your mind.
You construct these simulations differently for different occasions, based on what actions you
need to take to accomplish specific goals in specific situations. You can move around as a character
in the mental simulation as yourself, imagining your role in the wedding, or you can “play” other
characters at the wedding (e.g., the minister), imagining what it is like to be that person. You build
your simulations to understand and make sense of things, but also to help you prepare for action in
the world. You can act in the simulation and test out what consequences follow, before you act in
the real world. You can role-play another person in the model and try to see what motivates their
actions or might follow from them before you respond in the real world. So 1 am arguing that the
mind is a simulator, but one that builds simulations to purposely prepare for specific actions and to
achieve specific goals.
Video games turn out to be the perfect metaphor for what this view of the mind amounts to, just as
slates and computers were good metaphors for earlier views of the mind. Video games usually
involve a visual and auditory world in which the player manipulates a virtual character (or
characters). They often come with editors or other sorts of software with which the player can make
changes to the game world or even build a new game world. The player can make a new landscape,
a new set of buildings, or new characters. The player can set up the world so that certain sorts of
actions are allowed or disallowed. The player is building a new world, but is doing so by using and
modifying the original visual images that came with the game. One simple example of this is the
way in which players can build new skateboard parks in a game like Tony Hawk Pro Skater. The
player must place ramps, trees, grass, poles, and other things in space in such a way that players can
manipulate their virtual characters to skate the park in a fun and challenging way.
Even when players are not modifying games, they play them with goals in mind, the achievement
of which counts as their “win state,” and it's the existence of such win states that, in part,
distinguishes games from other simulations. These goals are set by the player, but certainly, in
collaboration with the world the game designers have created, and, at least in more open-ended
games, players don't just accept developer's goals, they make real choices of their own. Players
must carefully consider the design of the world and consider how it will or will not facilitate
specific actions they want to take to accomplish their goals. One technical way that psychologists
have talked about this sort of situation is through the notion of 'affordances'. An 'affordance' is a
feature of the world (real or virtual) that will allow for a certain action to be taken, but only if it is
matched by an ability in an actor who has the wherewithal to carry out such an action. For example,
in the massive multiplayer game World of WarCraft stags can be killed and skinned (for making
leather), but only by characters that have learned the 'Skinning' skill. So a stag is an affordance for
skinning for such a player, but not for one who has not acquired said skill. The large spiders in the
game are not an affordance for skinning for any players, since they cannot be skinned at all.
Affordances are relationships between the world and actors. Playing World of WarCraft, or any
other video game, is all about such affordances. The player must learn to see the game world—
designed by the developers, but set in motion in particular directions by the players, and, thus, codesigned by them—in terms of such affordances. Broadly speaking, players must utilize their
resources and think in terms of “What are the features of this world that can enable the actions 1 am
capable of carrying out and that I want to carry out in order to achieve my goals?”
The view of the mind I have sketched, in fact, argues that the mind works rather like a video
game. For humans, effective thinking is more like running a simulation than it is about forming
abstract generalizations cut off from experiential realities. Generalizations are formed, when they

are, bottom up from experience and imagination of experience. Video gam...