2024 EJC JC2 GP Prelim P2 Insert_FINAL14082024

1 EUNOIA JUNIOR COLLEGE JC2 Preliminary Examination 2024 General Certificate of Education Advanced Level Higher 1 GENERAL PAPER Paper 2 INSERT 8881/02 28 August 2024 1 hour 30 minutes READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST This Insert contains the passages for comprehension. This document consists of 4 printed pages. [Turn over

2 Passage 1. Maura Kelly questions the value of modern-day travel. 1 If anything makes me feel like a stranger in modern life, it is a resolution I made after turning thirty: I will travel only when exceptional circumstances arise. When I did fly frequently, in my twenties, it was not because I was seeking ‘enjoyment’ or to ‘escape’. What I wanted was education and experience: some sense of the peoples and cultures of different places. However, I was instead disappointed by how familiar many cities were, with ubiquitous coffeehouse chains like Starbucks, and the same collection of fast fashion outlets. 5 2 This is not to say that travel is devoid of benefits. Indeed, travelling to places remote enough (like a rainforest in Belize or the exotic Amazon) would affect one powerfully. Looking up at trees that seem to reach straight through the clouds to the heavens would not only make one feel the transcendent majesty of nature but also one's own insignificance in a universe vast in space and time. Yet, it is also common for travellers who visit places as exotic as the Amazon to be troubled by guilt, as if simply by being in these pristine places, they would have played a role in degrading them. As David Foster Walla ce puts it in his book, Consider the Lobster : "To be a mass tourist is to spoil the very unspoiledness you are there to experience." 10 15 3 Another often cited reason for travelling is to gain knowledge. However, travelling no longer seems like a very efficient method of education as one can learn far more through regular trips to the library. For example, a single audiobook, The Meaning of Life, can offer a philosophy course that enables one to learn about texts as diverse as The Bhagavad -Gita, and the Meditations of Marcus Aurelius; about spiritual leaders like the Dalai Lama and the Native American medicine man Lame Deer; and about belief systems like Confucianism, and Jainism. No single destination can offer this (at the comfort of our li ving room, no less) . While learning from books may be less visceral than seeing the ruins of Greece or the temples of Sri Lanka, it is no less worthwhile. 20 25 4 Indeed, the modern obsession with travelling is ludicrous . In a month, in just the United States alone, companies cancelled 49,000 flights and delayed 30,000, affecting 30 million travellers who racked up $2.5 billion in related expenses — presumably for hotel rooms, cabs and emergency phone sessions with counsellors in order to maintain their basic sanity. There is nothing calming about travel