SJI 2026 P2 INS

8 [Turn Over [Turn Over ST JOSEPH’S INSTITUTION PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION 2026 (YEAR 4) CANDIDATE NAME CLASS INDEX NUMBER ENGLISH LANGUAGE Paper 2 Comprehension INSERT Additional Materials: Question Booklet 1184/02 14 August 2026 1 hour 50 minutes (11:00 – 12:50) READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST This Insert contains Text 1, Text 2, Text 3 and Text 4. This document consists of 7 printed pages and 1 blank page.

2 [Turn Over 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 taken from a poster about BeatLab Drum Studio.

3 [Turn Over Text 2 is taken from an online review of the school.

4 [Turn Over Section B Text 3 In the text below, the writer describes Nora’s expedition in one of the harsh est mountains in Central Asia. Read the text carefully and answer Questions 5 - 14 in the Question Paper. 1 For three days, Nora’s team moved steadily upward, establishing a chain of small camps along the mountain's north -eastern ridge. The work was slow and repetitive — carrying loads, fixing rope on the steeper sections, acclimatising to air that grew thinner with every hundred metres of height gained. By the fourth day, they had reached six thousand metres, and the weather, which had held fair with almost suspicious generosity, finally broke. 5 2 It began as a haze on the horizon and became, within two hours, a full - scale storm. The wind did not simply blow: it screamed across the exposed ridge, flinging ice crystals that stung any patch of unprotected skin. Nora's world dissolved into a blinding, textureless white in which going up and down seemed to lose its meaning. 10 3 "Rope up! Stay close!" she shouted into the wind, though she doubted anyone could hear her over its roar. Behind her, Tom, Priya, and their remaining teammate, a Kazakh climber named Yerlan, moved like indistinct shapes in the mist, each one a lifeline awa y from the others. Peering down, Nora watched as the rope attaching each one of them together swayed violently in the wind. 15 4 Nora checked her handheld GPS for direction, but the satellite signal flickered erratically, defeated by the storm. There was nothing for it but instinct, memory of the route they had taken and the compass bearing of 045 degrees she had fixed towards the r idge's north -eastern shoulder, taken at their last camp before the whiteout swallowed every landmark. She had navigated by less, once, on a smaller mountain — but never with three other lives depending on the accuracy of her judgement. 20 25 5 It was Yerlan who first noticed the change in the snow's texture beneath his boots. Something was wrong. There was a hint of hollowness where solid ground should have been. He had felt this before, once, on another mountain. Don't move. Warn them. He called out, and the surface gave way entirely beneath Nora's lead foot with a sound like a muffled drumbeat. Instantly, Nora dropped downwards. 30 6 "Hold!" she yelled, throwing herself forward and driving the pick of her ice axe deep into the crust. A crevasse*, an ancient fracture in the glacier, concealed beneath a bridge of wind -packed snow, had opened directly beneath her. Her right leg swung freely over a drop she could not see the 35

5 [Turn Over Section C bottom of; below the thin crust, the ice glowed an impossible, luminous blue. For a moment, the only sound in Nora's world was her own heartbeat, absurdly loud against the wind. She did not allow herself to imagine the fall. Instead, with a controlled effort that drew on every hour of the strength training she had undergone, she hauled herself back onto the solid shelf of the ridge. 40 7 Once the immediate danger had passed, a sense of purpose replaced her fear. She hammered a snow picket into the hard -packed ice and clipped the team's rope to it, creating a secure anchor. She checked the small thermometer on her wrist: minus thirty -two degrees Celsius, and falling. "We can't go up in this, and we can't stay exposed," she told Tom, raising her voice against the wind. "We dig in." 45 8 For the next hour, the team hacked a shallow cave into the leeward face of the ridge, working in shifts as the cold numbed their hands within minutes. That night, packed into insulated tents inside their makeshift shelter, their teeth chattered involuntari ly. They listened to the storm hurl itself against the mountain, their breath crystallising into fine white patterns on the fabric above their faces. No one spoke much. There was little to say that the wind was not already saying, more eloquently, outside. 50 9 The storm broke, as storms often do, without warning — one moment a wall of noise, the next an almost unnatural stillness. Nora woke at four in the morning to silence and crawled out of the snow cave into a sky of impossible clarity. Below the ridge, a sea of cloud had settled over the lower valleys, isolating the summit pyramid in a strange, floating solitude above the world. 55 60 10 Ahead of them lay the final obstacle: a narrow, corniced ridge of blue ice leading directly to the summit, dropping away on either side into shadowed void. There would be no margin for error here, and no possibility of retreat once committed. "Last push," Nora said quietly, more to herself than to the others. 65 Adapted from The Guardian. (2026, April 15). Moment that changed me: Desperate to get off mountain. https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2026/apr/15/moment-that-changed-me- desperate-get-off-mountain Text 4

6 [Turn Over In the text below, the writer explains how attention works and examines how it affects our ability to concentrate and multitask. Read the text carefully and answer Questions 15—21 in the Question Paper. 1 In his 1890 seminal book, “The Principles of Psychology”, psychologist and philosopher William James wrote that attention is "the taking possession by the mind, in clear and vivid form, of one out of what may seem several simultaneously possible objects or trains of thought.” Considering how important attention is, there has been such a great deal of interest and research. Attention is a basic component of our biology, present even at birth. One of the earliest ways in which attention operates is through our orienting reflexes, whic h help us focus on important events in our environment, aiding our survival. Newborns attend to environmental stimuli such as loud noises. A touch against the cheek triggers the rooting reflex, causing the infant to turn their head towards the source to nur se and receive nourishment. 5 10 2 Attention can be categorised into two main types. Attention that is automatic happens when we react involuntarily to a loud noise or a jarringly bright light, for instance, while focalised attention, by contrast, is the ability to intentionally concentrate on a specific task. The latter is what scientists measure when researching attention spans. Since entering the digital age in the early 2000s, the research method has changed. There was a seamless transition from in -person office observations of participa nts’ task-switching behaviour to software -based monitoring of their computer activity. The general finding is that sustained attention spans have declined over time to a staggering 40 seconds 15 20 3 Since most tasks take longer than 40 seconds to complete, rapid attention switching often means people move on before finishing what they set out to do. Think of leaving a science assignment mid -way through to check