Cambridge International AS Level

ENGLISH GENERAL PAPER 8021/21

Paper 2 Comprehension October/November 2022
INSERT 1 hour 45 minutes

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• This insert contains all the resources referred to in the questions.
*4479865744-I*

• You may annotate this insert and use the blank spaces for planning. Do not write your answers on the
insert.

This document has 8 pages. Any blank pages are indicated.

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Material for Section A

Background

Mrs Xavier, the owner of No.1 Ace Recruiters, was so pleased by her staff’s recent performance (boosting
the company’s revenue by 30 per cent in the last 6 months) that she decided to reward them by paying
for them to have a fun day out together. She tasked Piotr Piil, Head of Human Resources, with checking
out some options for her final approval. He has found three companies specialising in corporate fun
days.

A. Boat Building (offered by Fundayzout)

We can guarantee you a fun-filled time in our extensive grounds, spending the morning building your
own boat in teams, using assorted materials provided by us, then racing your creation along our river
in the afternoon. You will face the challenge of building a boat that is, most importantly, sturdy enough
not to let water in and reliable enough to complete the race, as no repairs are allowed once the race
starts. The second consideration will be creating a boat speedy enough to win the race, of course.

B. Chocolate Making (offered by ChokkoXtreme)

We all love chocolate, but you might not have realised what fun it is to make your own chocolates. Well,
we can bring all the fun of making chocolate to you – we can change any location into a pop-up chocolate
factory. You will spend the morning learning all the secrets to making delicious chocolates and how to
use our specialist equipment. In the afternoon, you will make your own chocolates from our huge range
of ingredients (such as fruit and nuts) and flavourings. The creator of the best chocolates (in terms of
taste, texture, presentation and innovation) will win a trophy and an apron.

C. Movie Making (offered by MakingStars)

Let your creative juices flow, whether you are in front of or behind the camera! Our tablets, with the
highest possible resolution currently available on the market, will allow you to shoot high-quality short
videos or films. Alongside our professional film equipment, we provide professional-standard lighting
and sound equipment, costumes, props, and sets on which to film or act out your creations. Our team
will help you to cut, edit and polish what you have filmed before showing it in our very own screening
room to complete the experience. Ice cream and popcorn available too!

Online reviews

Boat Building

‘Loved the practical building tasks. Such a change from staring at a screen all day. Thinking about taking
up woodwork as a hobby now.’ (Gregoire)

‘So chilly that I caught a really bad cold. Had to have the rest of the week off work and couldn’t go jogging.
Really got me down.’ (Ria)

Chocolate Making

‘Great time making peanut butter truffle chocolates. Tasted amazing – so proud. And the best part of
the day was winning the trophy.’ (Ricardo)

‘Enjoyed it at first, but, after a bit, was fed up with the sickly sweet smell. Worse than that – my chocolates
melted in the sunshine coming through the window.’ (Sandrina)

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Movie Making

‘An amazing experience! Inspired me to consider changing career. Would love to do something more
creative with my life. Thanks MakingStars.’ (Anonymous)

‘A certain person behaved as if he were a world-famous director, screaming orders at us. Shame he
doesn’t realise how much we all despise him as he is useless at his job.’ (Annoyed)

Additional Information

1. There are 30 members of staff, including Mrs Xavier and Piotr.

2. Mrs Xavier enjoys baking at home: she finds it relaxing after the daily demands of running a business.
3. The staff are mostly young and fit, choosing to run or cycle to work and to have healthy lunches.
4. Boat Building would cost $300 per person; Chocolate Making, $50 per person; Movie Making, $150
per person.
5. Mrs Xavier has never learned to swim.
6. Fundayzout is located in a remote area 100 km from No.1 Ace Recruiters. MakingStars is situated
across the city from No.1 Ace Recruiters.
7. A member of staff who has just retired has been telling ex-colleagues she is bored at home and
would love to have the opportunity to participate in the fun day out.
8. Fundayzout has an excellent safety record as the company always ensures that it has the latest
safety gear.
9. All the staff adore Mrs Xavier and are secretly hoping she will join them on this fun day out.
10. Mrs Xavier is prepared to cover the bill for the day out, whatever the cost.
11. There have been unconfirmed rumours that MakingStars is in financial trouble.
12. Boat Building requires teams of four people. Movie Making requires teams with a minimum of eight
people.
13. Unknown to Piotr, ChokkoXtreme happens to be owned by friends of Mrs Xavier.
14. Piotr is a longstanding member of his local amateur theatre group.
15. Mrs Xavier has not made her mind up yet whether or not to take part in the fun day out.
16. Mrs Xavier hopes to get No.1 Ace Recruiters ranked in the ‘top 100 small companies to work for’
in the country. She has discussed her hopes with Piotr. She thinks that posting something on the
company website showing a happy team would help her achieve this.

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Material for Section B

Extract from an article by Sanjana Varghese about the British Library Sound Archive preserving millions
of audio recordings for future generations.

The noise of time

In 1930, Patrick Saul walked into a music shop in London in search of a particular recording
of a violin sonata by Dohnányi. It was no longer on sale, and Saul moved on to the British
Museum, in the hope that he would at least be able to listen to the record* there. On arrival,
he was told the museum held no records.

After time spent working in a bank and studying, and several years haranguing wealthy 5
donors, Saul opened the Institute of Recorded Sound in 1955. Many decades, grants and
buildings later, it’s now the British Library Sound Archive, home to more than seven million
recordings. Housed in a nondescript part of the British Library, recordings are preserved on
every format. Clips date back to the beginning of recorded sound and range from an oral
history of jazz in Britain to the call of the Bolivian earthcreeper bird. 10

In the years since its inception, the archive has expanded what it preserves, including global
music and radio broadcasts, interviews with famous cultural figures and even sound maps,
where people can upload recordings of themselves speaking with their own regional accents.

Preserving the sounds of the past and present for future generations is a Herculean task,
and audio recordings aren’t viewed as historical items in the same way that photos and 15
letters are. So what does history sound like? How do you choose which sounds are worthy
of keeping?

Emily Thompson, author of The Soundscape of Modernity in 2002 (widely credited with
launching the field of sound studies), emphasises that using sound as a lens to view history
can give us particular insights. In 2013, she created a website with an interactive map of 20
noise complaints in New York City from 1926 to 1932. In an introduction to the website,
Thompson explained that her aim went beyond simply presenting the sounds to a new
audience. The goal was to recover the meaning of sound, to undertake a way of listening
that tunes our modern ears to the pitch of the past.

Like Thompson’s database, the Sound Archive preserves the context and technical details 25
of each sound, so that anyone who listens to a recording can understand where it is situated
historically. ‘We have this ability to travel back in time,’ says Will Prentice, the head of
technical sound. ‘We’re a visually oriented culture, so people aren’t necessarily aware of the
value of sound. But the great thing about sound recordings is that they’re a recording of
time.’ Listening to a folk song from the 1950s, or a talk between two leading intellectuals in 30
the 1960s, has a particular function – it compares and contrasts the past with our experience
of the present. Inevitably, we find similarities and differences – the most common sound on
the streets of London in the early 1900s is the jarring clop of a horse’s hoof, but the calls of
a stall-keeper at an open-air market are almost indistinguishable from the sounds you would
hear there now. 35

Trying to understand the past is a slow process, and it’s often not as distant from
contemporary life as it seems. Some of the sounds we now consider historical have only
recently become historical items, for example the dial-up tone of a modem**. Many of the
irritating sounds of today, such as the growl of a motorbike, will soon go the same way.

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Some recordings are donations, while others are specially commissioned as curators try to 40
fill gaps in the collection to ensure, for example, that the particular lilt of a regional accent
has been documented. ‘If our copy is lost, then it’s completely lost to humanity,’ says Prentice.
‘I want everything to be preserved, because it’s here for a reason.’

Many of the archive’s recordings are stored on formats that are vulnerable and grow closer
to erosion every year. Even if the recording itself is perfect, the equipment necessary to 45
listen to it could very well become obsolete and finding technicians with the knowledge to
operate it is tricky. As a result, the archive has significantly expanded its digitisation efforts,
as part of the initiative Save our Sounds.

Everyday occurrences (such as a conversation between two friends detailing their schooldays)
are given equal weight to significant events (a recording from Joel Joffe, Nelson Mandela’s 50
defence counsel, recounting Mandela’s famous Rivonia Trial speech of 1964) or moments
of cultural interest (a recording of John Berger*** reading one of his short stories in 1991).
They’re all digitised and preserved, carefully tagged on the website so that anyone who
wants to find them can.

The archive’s careful considered work is arguably a contrast to an emerging model of 55

preservation, where websites, or the internet more broadly, act as inadvertent and inadequate
archives. In 2019, one company announced it had lost tens of millions of music files that had
been uploaded to its website.

Contradicting the saying that everything on the internet lives forever, a division seems to
emerge. Access to the internet democratises the sounds of history, making them freely 60
available to people without specialist equipment or knowledge. But the actual materials
themselves are maintained on websites and social networks that may shut down in a year,
or require software that will soon become defunct.

However, if institutions such as the archive are listening carefully, then future generations
will be able to hear the past, as well as the present. 65

* an analogue sound storage medium in the form of a flat disc with grooves, now commonly referred to
as a vinyl (record)

** a device allowing the digital data of one computer to be transmitted to another via the analogue signal
of a telephone line

***an English art critic, novelist, painter and poet

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