Xin min sec prelims 23

XINMIN SECONDARY SCHOOL SEKOLAH MENENGAH XINMIN Preliminary Examination 2023 CANDIDATE’S NAME CLASS INDEX NUMBER ENGLISH LANGUAGE Paper 2 Comprehension Insert Secondary 4 Express Setter: Mrs Amy Chan Vetters: Ms Jasmine Lim, Ms Sharon Ong, Ms Charlene Chan, Mrs Belinda Goh INSERT 1184/02 18 August 2023 Duration: 1 hour 50 minutes READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST Do not open this booklet until you are told to do so. This Insert contains Text 1, Text 2, Text 3 and Text 4. This document consists of 6 printed pages.

2 Section A Study the poster (Text 1) and the social media post (Text 2) and answer Questions 1–4 in the Question Paper. Text 1 is a poster by Outward Bound Singapore (OBS). Text 2 is taken from a participant’s social media post after his experience at Outward Bound Singapore (OBS). My 5-day OBS Challenge changed my life! I overcame my fear of heights and developed a love for the culinary arts through outdoor cooking! OBS gave me a sense of belonging and also sparked my interest in becoming an OBS Instructor! I want to impact the youth as how OBS has impacted me. I also want to be someone who can connect with the youth and encourage them to be different from their peers.

3 Section B Text 3 The text below is the account of an English family who moved to Greece and were looking for a place to stay. Read the text carefully and answer Questions 5–14 in the Question Paper. 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 We climbed into the spacious car and our driver hoisted his bulk behind the steering wheel, engaging his gears with a terrifying sound. We shot through the twisted streets on the outskirts of the town, swerving in and out among the loaded donkeys, the carts, the groups of peasant women and innumerable dogs, our horn honking a deafening warning. Our knuckles turned white gripping the grab handles as our driver conversed with us. Each time he addressed us, he would twist his massive trunk round to see our reactions, and the car would swoop back and forth across the road like a drunken swallow. ‘Yous English? Thought so… My names’ Spiro… I likes the English … best kinds of peoples… Honest to Gods, ifs I wasn’t Greek, I likes to be English.’ We sped down a white road covered in a thick layer of silky dust that rose in a boiling cloud behind us, a road lined with prickly pears like a fence of green plates, each cleverly sitting on another's edges, and splashed with knobs of scarlet fruit. We were amazed to see vineyards where the tiny, stunted vines were laced in green leaves, olive groves where the pitted trunks made a hundred astonished faces at us out of the gloom of their own shadow, and great clumps o