CGSS PRELIM 2022 EL Paper 2 insert

CEDAR GIRLS’ SECONDARY SCHOOL PRELIMINARY EXAMINATION 2022 Secondary Four Cedar Girls’ Secondary School 1128/02/S4/PRELIM22 ENGLISH LANGUAGE 1128/02 Paper 2 Comprehension Insert 25 August 2022 1 hour 50 minutes READ THESE INSTRUCTIONS FIRST This Insert contains Text 1, Text 2 and Text 3. This document consists of 6 printed pages and 2 blank pages.

2 Cedar Girls’ Secondary School 1128/02/S4/PRELIM22

3 Cedar Girls’ Secondary School 1128/02/S4/PRELIM22 Section A Text 1 Study the webpage below and answer Questions 1 – 4 in the Question Booklet. VISIT JEWEL TODAY! About Jewel Discover Jewel! Embark on a journey to uncover lesser-known facts about Jewel and the exciting offerings available to everyone! Designed for the enjoyment of Singaporeans and tourists alike, Jewel is an air-conditioned destination with its inner worlds of fantastical indoor forest and experiential super-stores, global cuisines and art galore. Comfort and Convenience for Travellers Embark on a journey to uncover lesser- known facts about Jewel and the exciting offerings available to everyone. Find out how Jewel enhances travellers’ experiences by providing specialised services and a comfortable environment where every traveller can rest and relax at Changi Jewel Lounge. Exciting Attractions and Lifestyle Offerings Experience a wondrous and unique world with first-of-its-kind attractions and shops suitable for the young and the young-at- heart. Come unearth some hidden gems with a mouth-wateringly diverse F&B selection and browse new products from an eclectic variety of retail shops for a fresh and memorable experience. BOOK A TOUR TODAY! Apart from an intriguing storyline for each tour, our guides deliver customised content through the use of visual aids such as photos, videos and maps. Participants will be engaged in a two-way interaction with our friendly guides through quizzes and experiential activities.

4 Cedar Girls’ Secondary School 1128/02/S4/PRELIM22 Section B Text 2 The text below describes a woman from a village who helps to take care of a house in the Mexican countryside, which was purchased by a journalist. Read the text carefully and answer Questions 5 - 15 in the Question Booklet. 1 Rafaela Cortes spent the morning barefoot, sweeping both dead and living things from over and under beds, from behind doors and shutters, through archways, along the veranda, sweeping them all across the deep shadows and luminous sunlight carpeting the cool tile floors. Her slender arms worked the broom industriously through the air which was already thick with suffocating heat. Along the floor, her feet followed, printing their moisture in dark footprints that the tiles ate up. Every morning, a small pile of assorted insects and tiny animals — moths and spiders, lizards and beetles — collected, their brittle bodies tossed in waves along the floor, a cloudy hush of sandy soil, cobwebs, and human hair. 5 2 An iguana, a crab, and a mouse. And there was the scorpion, always dead — its fragile back broken in the middle. And the snake that slithered away at the urging of her broom, probably not poisonous, but one never knew. Every morning, it was the same. Every morning, she swept this mound of dead and wiggling things to the door and off the side of the veranda and into the dark green undergrowth with the same flourish. Occasionally, there was more of one species or the other, but every morning, each somehow always made its way back into the house. The iguana, the crab, and the mouse, for example, were always there. Sometimes they were dead; sometimes they were alive. As for the scorpion, it was always dead, but the snake was always alive. 10 15 3 On some days, the dust seemed to twirl before her broom, communicating a kind of dance that seemed to send a visceral message up the broom to her fingertips. There was no explanation for any of it. It also made no difference if she closed the doors and shutters at the first sign of dusk or if she left the house unoccupied and tightly shut for several days. Every morning when the house was thrown open to the sunlight, she knew that she and her son had not slept alone that night. Gabriel was kind and allowed her to bring along her son, Sol, to this house. Hummingbirds fluttered across the rooms, stirring the languid humidity settled by the night, frantically searching for escape through the open lace curtains, while crawling lives hid beneath furniture or presented themselves lifeless at her feet. 20 25 4 When she first came to the house, she couldn’t find a broom to accomplish this daily ritual, not to mention for sweeping the clouds of cobwebs from the dark, rough-hewn rafters. Gabriel had left an American vacuum cleaner in a closet - an old steel Electrolux purchased at a thrift-store for thirty dollars. When the electricity wasn’t shut off, Rafaela dragged the vacuum, the hard plastic wheels bumping over the clay tiles and the woven throw rugs, from one room to the next but soon she depleted Gabriel’s supply of vacuum bags. 30 35 5 Recycling these bags was nearly impossible, and she did not have the heart to dump them without releasing the trapped animals inside. One day, attempting to use the vacuum cleaner without the bags resulted in jamming the gears with pieces of the crab, not to mention everything else, and that was the end of the Electrolux. When Rafaela told Gabriel that the Electrolux had died, there was an uncomfortable silence on the other end of the line, probably because Gabriel had had some idea that a stainless-steel vacuum cleaner was something incredibly wise to have in the salty humidity of Mazatlán and also because he had lugged it one thousand miles on one particularly sacrificial trip made in a borrowed Volkswagen van. The story about the crab seemed unlikely. His land was much too far from the sea. Yes, it sounded impossible, but why would Rafaela make such a thing up? 40 45

5 Cedar Girls’ Secondary School 1128/02/S4/PRELIM22 6 Rafaela also cared for Gabriel’s trees. Over the years, Gabriel had planted an orchard full of different trees. He had a thing about planting a tree every time he came. He tried not to be discouraged when they died, telling Rafaela, “they gotta take care of themselves”. Needless to say, the fittest were the mango and papaya trees. At this time of year, their fruit rotted in steaming ditches everywhere. The sweet stench floated above the earth swirling around as Rafaela’s body cut a meandering path through the garden, wondering why Gabriel insisted on planting trees that couldn’t survive in this climate. “Survival of the fittest,” he explained. Still, she was hoping to make some miracle happen in this orchard, just to surprise Gabriel. A sweet gooey marmalade jam from his orange trees just for him, perhaps. But perhaps not. 50 55 7 The variety of citrus trees was commendable: Italian blood oranges, mandarins, valencias, Mexican limes, their green foliage spreading a pretentiously rich blanket across the land. But Rafaela was only concerned about one tree in particular. It was a rather sorry tree, yellowing perhaps from lack of some nutrient or another, but for some reason, she had been watching it every day. It was the only citrus tree in the garden that had fruit on it. The tree was a sorry one, and so was the orange. But from the v