2023 JSS PRELIM P2 INSERT

1184/2/GE/23 O JURONG SECONDARY SCHOOL2023 GRADUATION EXAMINATIONSECONDARY 4 EXPRESS CANDIDATE NAMECLASS INDEX NUMBERENGLISH LANGUAGE 1184/02PAPER 2 COMPREHENSIONINSERT 15 August 2023 1 hour 50 minutesREAD THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRSTThis Insert contains Text 1, Text 2, Text 3, and Text 4. This document consists of 6 printed pages including this page.

2 1184/2/GE/23 [Turn overSection AStudy the online advertisement (Text 1) and the social media post (Text 2) and answer Questions 1 – 4 in the Question Booklet.Text 1 is taken from an online advertisement for CARE’s campaign to fight against poverty. Text 2 is taken from a social media post on World Women’s Day.“Investing in girls is smart. It is central to boosting development, breaking the cycle ofintergenerational poverty, and allowing girls, and then women—50 percent of theworld’s population—to lead better, fairer, and more productive lives. With complexissues like deep poverty, you can’t tackle everything at once. So as volunteers, weshould look for influential and significant points, where a small effort can have a big impact and start to shift the system now. Helping girls gain confidence in themselves and pursue their dreams is significant in reshaping the world of tomorrow.’ Find out how CARE is working with girls to fight poverty, and what you can do to help. Make a difference today.

3 1184/2/GE/23 Section BText 3The text below describes the attempt of a young Boy Scout to prove himself and move up the ranks. Read the text carefully and answer Questions 5 – 12 in the Question Booklet.1Back in 1946, when I was nine, I was worried that I wasn’t tough enough. That was why I became a Boy Scout. Scouting, I thought, would make a man of me. It didn’t take long to reach Tenderfoot rank. You got that for joining. To move up to Second Class, however, you had to meet three requirements. Scout Spirit and Scout Participation had been a piece of cake. The third requirement, Scout Craft, meant I had to go on an overnight hike in the countryside, a thought I grappled with for a long while. 52Since I grew up in Brooklyn in the 1940’s, the only grass I knew was in Ebbets Field where the Dodgers1 played. Otherwise, my world was made of meticulously laid slate pavements, endless maze of asphalt roads, and skies of towering buildings. Discovering a new building or road was practically a daily affair as I whizzed past on my prized two-wheeler. The only thing “country” was a puny Pin Oak tree at our curb, which was noticed, mostly, by dogs.103I asked the esteemed and knowledgeable Scoutmaster Brenkman where I could find some country. Now, whenever I saw Mr. Brenkman, who was a church pastor, he was dressed either in church black or Scout khaki. When he wore black, he would warn us against hellfire. When he wore khaki, he would teach us how to build fires. He was two sides of the same coin but one of which I much prefer, and that day I was in luck. 154“Country,” Scoutmaster Brenkman said passionately in response to my question, “is anywhere that has a lot of trees and is not in the city. Many Boy Scouts camp in the Palisades. I, myself, went out there when I was a boy.”The gears in my brains started whirring before I asked, “How would they know I went?” Mr. Brenkman looked deeply shocked. “Is that a real question? What about Scout’s honour?” “Yes, sir,” I replied, flushing red. 205I decided to rope in my best friends for this endeavour. My two best friends were Philip Hossfender, whom we nicknamed Horse, and Richard Macht, called Max because we were not great spellers. They were also Scouts, Tenderfoots like me. Horse was a skinny little kid about half my size but his response to everything was to ball up his fist and say, “Are you saying….?” in his most threatening tone. Max looked like he could lift me off the ground with one arm and he could talk his way out of a locked room anytime while I always seem to be stuttering over my responses. I wasn’t sure why, but being best friends meant we were rivals too. One of the reasons for my wanting to be tougher was a feeling that Horse was harder to challenge than I was, and that Max was already hard to beat in many ways. 25306“I’m going camping in the Palisades next weekend,” I casually informed them. “Scout Craft,” I added. “Oh, that,” Horse said with a shrug. “Look,” I said, “I don’t know about you, but I don’t intend to be a Tenderfoot all my life. 35

4 1184/2/GE/23 [Turn overAnyway, doing stuff in the city is for sissies. Scouting is real camping. Besides, I like roughing it.” “You saying I don’t?” Horse snapped. “I’m not saying anything,” I stuttered. They considered my idea. Finally, Horse said, “Yeah, well I was going to do that, but I didn’t think you guys were ready for it.” Max looked around at me. “If you can do it, I can do it,” Max said. “Yeah,” Horse said thoughtfully. 40457The way they agreed made me nervous. Now I really was going to have to be tough.8We informed our parents that we were going camping overnight (which was true) and that the Scoutmaster was going with us – which was a lie. We did remember what Mr. Brenkman said about honesty, but we were baseball fans too, and since we were prepared to follow Scout law – being loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient, cheerful, thrifty, brave, clean, and reverent – we figured a 900-batting average2 was not bad. Steeling my heart, I trudged on that morning with my best friends, looking for a piece of country that would make men of us. 50 1The Dodgers is an American professional baseball team.2batting average measures the performance of batters in a season. Batting 1000 is the perfect score. Adapted short story ‘A Scout’s Honor’ by Avi

5 1184/2/GE/23 Section CText 4The article below is about the origins of tea drinking. Read it carefully and answer Questions 13 – 18 in the Question Booklet.1After water, tea is the most widely consumed beverage of choice in the world and, by the time you have read this passage, hundreds of thousands of cups of tea will have been drunk globally. But how many of us ever stop to consider the origins of this much-loved beverage or the reasons for its continuing popularity through the ages?2There is plenty of evidence to show that tea was popular thousands of years ago in China because it was drunk for its medicinal properties. There were many myths surrounding the origins of tea and, as these myths spread, the popularity of tea increased. For example, one influential myth concerns Emperor Shennong: taking a sip from a bowl of boiling water into which some leaves from a nearby bush had been blown, he was pleasantly surprised by its flavour. This delicious drink began to be drunk as a stimulant because of its restorative powers; there’s no better pick-me-up than a good cup of tea. Use of tea for this purpose was supported by another myth about a prince who developed the habit of chewing leaves from the tea shrub to keep himself awake for prayer. Tea drinking spread when tea leaves were formed into the shape of bricks because they were easy to trade and transport; they were even used as a form of currency instead of metal coins. A book entitled ‘The Tea Classic’, written by scholar Lu Yu, was the single greatest influence in developing the popularity of tea in China. ‘The Tea Classic’ is fascinating to read, describing the weather conditions in which tea should be picked and even the best water to be used to make the drink. 510153By the 6th century, tea had spread to Japan, where at first it was the drink of the aristocracy, before becoming widely accessible to ordinary people when production grew. Tea in Japan took on religious significance with the Tea Ceremony, in which the making of tea expresses the quest for greatness in the smallest details of life. Thus, the link in Japan between tea and religious observance increased the importance and popularity of tea. Through time, tea drinking extended to other Asian countries, for example Vietnam, Korea, and Tai