ACJC 2026 Prelim P2

This document consists of 4 printed pages. GP 8881_2 ACJC 2026 Anglo-Chinese Junior College General Paper Department [Turn over ANGLO-CHINESE JUNIOR COLLEGE JC2 PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION 2026 GENERAL PAPER Paper 2 INSERT 8881/02 August 2026 1 hour 30 minutes READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST This Insert contains the passages for comprehension.

2 Passage 1. An author writes about the declining levels of trust in the modern world. 1 Trust has long been regarded as the invisible architecture of civilised society. It is the unspoken compact that allows strangers to cooperate, institutions to function and democracies to sustain themselves across generations. Trust, therefore, is not merely a private virtue or a pleasant social habit; it is a public necessity. Without some baseline confidence in others and in institutions, societies cannot coordinate action, resolve conflict or accept collective decisions. Without it, every transaction becomes adversarial, every promise suspect, every election a crisis of legitimacy. 5 2 Yet across much of the world today, this essential resource is in precipitous decline. The 2025 Edelman Trust Barometer 1, surveying more than 33,000 respondents across 28 countries, found that government and the media are now tied as the least trusted institutions globally, with five of the ten largest economies ranking among the least trusting nations on Earth. The roots of this erosion are multiple and reinforcing. In the political sphere, a pattern of broken promises, institutional corruption and partisan polarisation has steadily hollowed out public confidence. A different survey from the OECD found that 44 per cent of citizens reported low or no trust in their national government, compared with only 39 per cent who expressed high or moderately high trust. Crucially, the survey identified that the single largest trust gap was associated with whether individuals felt they had a meaningful say in government decisions: 69 per cent of those who felt heard trusted government, whereas only 22 per cent of those who did not feel heard extended the same confidence. 10 15 3 Unfortunately, the media landscape has been no less corrosive. Where journalism once served as a vigilant watchdog, guarding the public interest against the excesses of power, it now finds itself drowning in a deluge of disinformation that has poisoned the well of public discourse. Many people now struggle to distinguish credible reporting from fabricated content, and believe that government officials, business leaders and journalists deliberately mislead them. Once broken, trust does not diminish; it metastasises into something far more dangerous – the embrace of hostile activism to drive social change. 20 25 4 The consequences of this trust deficit extend well beyond the political arena. Economically, declining institutional trust translates into reduced cooperation and increased transaction costs. Businesses face greater regulatory scepticism, investors demand higher risk premiums and consumers grow wary of corporate claims about product safety or environmental responsibility. Socially, the damage may be even more profound. Communities fractured by distrust become fertile ground for conspiracy theories and populist demagoguery, and when citizens cease to believe that institutions are acting in their interest, they do not simply disengage; they actively seek alternatives, whether in radical movements, authoritarian strongmen , or the seductive certainties of online echo chambers. 30 35 5 It would be tempting to conclude that trust is a relic of a more naïve age, destined to erode further as societies grow more complex. Yet this fatalism overlooks the asymmetry at the heart of the problem: trust is extraordinarily difficult to build and remarkably easy to destroy. The real question is not whether trust still matters — it manifestly does — but whether societies possess the collective will to rebuild it. The evidence suggests that transparency, accountability and genuine civic participation re main the most reliable foundations for restoring public confidence. Whether these principles will prevail against the forces of polarisation and disinformation, however, remains an open and urgent question. 40 1 Edelman Trust Barometer: An annual global survey conducted by the communications firm Edelman that measures and analy ses public trust in the government, business sector, media and non -governmental organisations (NGOs).

3 Passage 2. An author cautions against placing trust too readily in others. 1 We are taught from childhood that trust is a virtue, but this assumption deserves close interrogation. Trust is not, by itself, a good thing; it is a wager, and like any wager, it can be lost. To gran t trust is to lower one's guard, to reduce the time and effort one spends watching, checking and questioning the other party. When that wager is misplaced, the costs to the truster, and to society, can be severe. A healthy scepticism, far from being cynical, is a prerequisite of mature judgement. 5 2 Consider, first, how easily trust is exploited. Confidence tricksters, dishonest merchants and corrupt officials succeed precisely because their victims are willing to assume goodwill where none exists. Worse still, human beings possess a deep cognitive bias towards trusting authority figures, often suspending their own judgement in the process. A uniform, a title or a confident manner is mistaken for evidence of competence, and the ordinary citizen ceases to scrutini se. History furnishes countless cases in which obedience to authority enabled disastrous policies, financial scandals and even atrocities. Vigilance, then, is not paranoia but self-protection. 10 3 There are further reasons for guarded judgement. Distrust forces institutions to earn legitimacy; it pressures governments to be transparent, courts to be impartial and corporations to honour their contracts. A wary citizenry exposes lies, demands evidence and resists manipulation; a credulous citizenry rewards political propaganda. At the personal level, waiting for trust to be earned guards against the disappointment that arises from developing a deep connection too quickly . It also encourages the truster to gather information, to weigh character and to look for credible commitments rather than glib reassurance. 15 20 4 Distrust, of course, has its costs. Yet a society that trusts blindly is a society waiting to be deceived. To withhold trust is to insist on evidence and to refuse the comfortable shortcut of taking another's word. In a world crowded with persuasive strangers, that refusal is not a weakness but a virtue. 25

4 Passage 3. An author writes about how a budget reform changed two Brazilian residents’ trust in their local government. 1 Maria, owner of a hillside grocery in Porto Alegre, used to dread the rainy season. For thirty years, her Councillor promised to repair the unpaved road outside her shop. Maria lamented, ‘Nothing came of it. The road only mattered when somebody important needed our votes.’ 2 What changed for Maria was not a new Councillor , but the introduction of participatory budgeting, where ordinary residents, not just officials, decide how public money is spent . This allowed residents to sit in a public hall, examine the council's spending records, vote openly on their desired projects and follow those projects through to completion. ‘I have more faith in the system now because I can see the books and have my voice heard!’ Maria says. ‘That is what a citizen is meant to do.’ 5 10 3 Maria’s neighbour, Tomas, used to take his cues from the men in suits at city hall. He voted as th