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SELECTIVE HIGH SCHOOL TRIALTEST
School Holiday Day 8
Name:___________________________
English
INSTRUCTIONS
1 You have 40 minutes to complete the test. It contains 30questions.
2 With each question there are four possible answers A, B, C or D. For each question you are to choose the ONE answer you think is best. To show your answer, fill the oval for one letter (A, B, C or D).
3 If you decide to change an answer, rub it out completely and mark your new answer clearly.
4 If you want to work anything out you may write on the question booklet.
5 If you need the help of the supervisor during the test, raise your hand.
DO NOT OPEN THIS BOOKLET UNTIL YOU ARE TOLD
I recently gave a keynote address at Cornell University about how to better ensure the success of the decisions we make. I began by polling the audience of about 2,000 people to gauge whether they worry about making mistakes when they face a big decision. A whopping 92% of attendees responded yes.
I then asked the audience to supply one or two words to describe the kind of mistakes that they worry about making. The top responses, captured in a word cloud, showed that many of us worry that we rely too much on our gut or our instinct. Specifically, the audience members worried about moving too quickly; being hasty, impetuous, or impulsive; and making emotional decisions.
If so many of us worry that we make mistakes by making decisions too quickly, why do we do it?
When we’re faced with difficult and complex decisions, we typically experience difficult and complex emotions. Many of us don’t want to sit with these uncomfortable feelings, so we try to get the decision making over with. But this often leads to poor decisions. We may not truly solve the problem at hand, and we often end up feeling worse. It’s an unproductive feedback loop that bookends our decisions with negative feelings.
These emotional bookends, however, can be your secret weapon in making better decisions. The process is as simple as taking the time to identify 1) the emotions you feel as you face your decision, and 2) the emotions you want to feel as you’re looking at your decision in the rearview mirror. What do you see? How is your life better for a satisfying decision outcome?
This four-step exercise allows our thinking, or “wizard brain,” to check and channel our emotional, or “lizard brain,” so that we don’t make reactive choices. Here’s how it works.
1. Identify the decision you need to make.
When we’re trying to solve a thorny problem, we often have to sort through a lot of conflicting information in addition to our feelings. So the first thing to do is to identify what decision you need to make.
Take Charlie, for example. He created a technology to improve hearing while earning his PhD. Now CEO of a neurobiology startup, he’s passionate and knowledgeable about everything to do with his invention. But he doesn’t have a business background, and he’s facing some important business decisions: How does he best use the money he’s already raised to move his product to market? How much is it reasonable to spend to develop and test a minimally viable product? How can he raise additional money for his fledgling startup?
Charlie’s funders want him to finish his clinical trial and build a product to test in a pilot program. He wants to do right by his investors and meet what he perceives as their very short timeline.
Some of Charlie’s advisors and investors have been urging him to find a business-savvy partner. The decision Charlie needs to make is whether he should hire a cofounder with a business background to help him tackle these problems.
2. Identify how you feel about the decision you have to make.
Consider your emotions as you contemplate making a big decision. What is the dominant emotion you are feeling? Is it fear? Anxiety? A sense of being overwhelmed or perhaps excitement at the opportunity ahead? Are your feelings based on previous experiences or other sources of information?
Naming our feelings can help create a little space between our emotions and our actions. Gaining that distance allows us to examine the emotion, and to acknowledge feeling it, without letting the emotion drive the decision, replacing our conscious thought and agency.
Charlie believes deeply in his product and wants to see this wonderful technology helping people in the world. He feels stuck and unsure how to resolve the decision. He feels anxious and hesitant about his other stakeholders. He is getting conflicting advice from investors and advisors, with some pushing hard to bring on a business-minded partner and others insisting that he can do it himself if he can be more organized with his time.
Creating the distance to identify that he felt “stuck” was a game changer for Charlie. It helped him realize that, as the CEO, he wasn’t stuck at all; instead, he was the sole decision maker. He also realized that “stuck” wasn’t the right word. Instead, he said he felt resistance. When I pressed him that resistance is not an emotion, but rather a psychological reaction, he was able to analyze further. What he really felt, he said, was discomfort. The clarification was eye opening. Now he could explore what he felt uneasy about.
3. Visualize your success and how it feels.
Imagine that you’ve made a successful decision. How do you feel now? Do you feel a sense of accomplishment or relief? Do you have a clearer direction for the future? Have you furthered your career, or perhaps strengthened your relationships?
When Charlie imagines hiring a cofounder, he realizes that the feeling of discomfort comes from worries about conflict stemming from having to share decision-making power with someone else. He thought he would feel confidence in the knowledge of the person he hired, but ultimately, he doesn’t want to share ownership of the vision that he has dreamed of and sweated over for so many years. Tuning in to his discomfort was a big aha moment, even though it had been there all along.
4. Apply the emotional bookends.
Now that you’ve examined your initial decision and the emotional bookends for it, consider: Have you correctly identified the decision you are making?
Applying the emotional bookending, Charlie realizes that he feels tied in knots because he has conflated several decisions. The decision he needed to make wasn’t about hiring a cofounder or not, it was about whether he wants to share ownership of his business. He had assumed that in order to get the business acumen he needed he would have to bring on a partner, as many of the startups around him seem to have done.
But the exercise of emotional bookending helped him realize that there were other ways to get the business acumen that the company needs. He could hire someone who reports to him or hire a consultant. The business decision is a short-term decision; the partnership is a long-term
decision. Not only had he conflated the decisions, he hadn’t thought through the long-term implications of a partner.
We think we don’t have time to invest in the decision-making process and we definitely don’t want to dwell in the emotional discomfort, such as anxiety and frustration, that big decisions bring up. It can feel easier to turn complex decisions over to our emotions and our lizard brain.
Calling on our wizard brain sounds like magic, but it’s not. It requires doing the hard work of slowing down to see the lizard: to name and sit with our emotions. Calling on the wizard brain puts us in partnership with our emotions rather than driven by them.
Emotional bookending helps you name and tolerate your emotions, instead of burying them or running away from them, so that you can better identify and make the real decision, the right decision to help you move into your future with clarity and confidence.
1. Pick a word from the passage that means the same as “measure”.
a. Gauge
b. Count
c. Determine
d. Ascertain
2. What according to the passage are humans most afraid of while making decisions?
a. Sentimental decisions
b. Logical decisions
c. Temperamental decisions
d. Illogical decisions
3. What is a consequence of facing complex decisions?
a. Intrusive thoughts
b. Complex emotions
c. Uncomfortable feelings
d. A better decision making ability
4. How are complex emotions and decision making qualities related to each other?
a. Positively
b. Negatively
c. Neutrally
d. No relationship
5. How can we think more effectively?
a. By aligning our thoughts and emotions together
b. With the help of our wizard brain
c. With the help of our lizard brain
d. With the help of emotional decision making
6. What is the overall tone of the passage?
a. Educating
b. Informal
c. Formal
d. Hopeless
Read the poem and answer the questions.
Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth, This autumn morning! How he sets his bones To bask i’ the sun, and thrusts out knees and feet For the ripple to run over in its mirth; Listening the while, where on the heap of stones The white breast of the sea-lark twitters sweet.
That is the doctrine, simple, ancient, true; Such is life’s trial, as old earth smiles and knows. If you loved only what were worth your love, Love were clear gain, and wholly well for you: Make the low nature better by your throes! Give earth yourself, go up for gain above!
7. How many times has the figure of speech “personification” been used in the lines “Oh, good gigantic smile o’ the brown old earth, “?
a. 1
b. 2
c. 3
d. 4
8. What is the meaning of the word “mirth”?
a. Gloom
b. Amusement
c. Sleepy
d. Lazy
9. What month could the poem be possibly set in?
a. September
b. December
c. January
d. June
Read the passage and answer the questions.
MIFRAH ABID’S eight-year-old son, Moosa, loves The Avengers. He’s obsessed with his Iron Man action figure and can talk at length about its many suits. Her twelve-year-old daughter, Tooba, meanwhile, went through a Roblox phase, playing a video game that’s all the rage with kids her age. But, early in the pandemic, when everyone was spending more time together at home, Abid went looking for something the whole family could enjoy. “[Millennial parents] don’t know about new toys,” said Abid, who lives in Kitchener, Ontario, and is host and producer of the interview podcast Across Her Table, which focuses on women with immigrant roots. “We were like, ‘Let’s go back to what we know.’” She thought back to her own childhood, to those old games the family played while crowded around the table Monopoly, Pictionary, Uno. She decided to try to introduce them to her kids. Now Moosa and Tooba love them too.
It was a similar story for Robert Lee and his two daughters. Allie is six, Annie is four, and they both love all things Paw Patrol, Peppa Pig, and Baby Shark. But, for Christmas two years ago, their mother bought them a Lite-Brite and a Spirograph simple art toys invented back in the ’60s that she remembered from her own early years. These weren’t the toys that Lee’s daughters typically saw in the YouTube videos they watched. They didn’t have flashy advertising campaigns or tie-in television shows, meaning the kids would never think to ask for them on their own. But Allie and Annie loved playing with them all the same. Kids get older, and fads come and go. But some toys persist, almost stubbornly artifacts passing from one generation to the next. In the toy business, these products are considered “classics.” It’s an amorphous category filled with all sorts of games and toys that have just a few things in common: namely, they are survivors in an industry where trends rule all. The Rubik’s Cube is, in many ways, the perfect example of a classic toy. More than 450 million are estimated to have been sold since 1978, with up to tens of millions of units still moving in a year. Etch A
Sketch (180 million sold since 1960), Lego, Potato Head, Barbie, and, of course, Play-Doh are classics too. These toys are instantly recognizable but rarely advertised. They’re often low tech or analog. In fact, in a world full of screens, their tactility is increasingly part of the draw. Often, classic toys encourage what academics say is high-quality play, like problem solving or imaginative thinking. And, as some experts have found, such toys are highly nostalgic conjuring warm, fuzzy memories in the parents who do the buying. This is how toys turn into tradition.
In 2016, Jane Eva Baxter published an article in the International Journal of Play that considered the role of nostalgia in keeping two particular items alive: the rotary-style Fisher-Price Chatter Telephone and wearable Mickey Mouse ears. Toys, she wrote, are often thought of as tools of preparation. It’s the reason parents buy Lego (to encourage creativity and cognitive thinking) or dolls (to simulate caregiving). It’s why most daycares and kindergarten classes have colourful blocks with the alphabet printed on the sides: to teach, to set kids up for future success.
But learning and development can’t be the only reason certain toys stick around, wrote Baxter, who is chair of the anthropology department at Chicago’s DePaul University and an archaeologist and historian of childhood. After all, here were two items a rotary phone and mouse ears that have persisted despite having no clear connection with the present. “The emotional connection adults have to this iconic toy has kept it in the marketplace despite the fact that a rotary-dial landline phone is technologically irrelevant for children today,” Baxter wrote. The same could be said of Mickey Mouse ears. The toy hasn’t appeared on TV as much in recent years, is no longer featured prominently in Disney’s theme parks, and is based on a character who is “increasingly peripheral to the Disney brand.”
Speaking from her home in Chicago, Baxter explains that parents, not toy producers, were the ones driving these sales. “There is this nostalgic element of either wanting to share something from their own childhood or give something that they felt they lacked in their childhood, because they think it will be good,” Baxter says. Especially now, in a largely digital world, there is something about these analog toys “that parents see as desirable for their children [and] that we find desirable for ourselves.” In fact, when Fisher-Price tried to modernize its iconic toy phone by removing the rotary dial, there was a consumer revolt, and sales fell. Nostalgia, Baxter concluded, is what keeps certain toys alive.
If you’re Toronto-based Spin Master, one of the largest toy makers in the world, nostalgia is also good for business. Founded in 1994 by two recent graduates from Western University, Spin Master quickly made a name for itself creating playground fads. One early success was 1997’s Air Hogs, a pump-powered, hand-thrown plane that could fly the length of a football field on nothing more than pressurized air. Then there was Bakugan, a 2007 mania centred on battling creatures from another dimension (think a mash-up of Pokémon, Transformers, and Yu-Gi-Oh), which involved an anime series, collectible trading cards, transforming toys, and a board game. And, of course, there’s Paw Patrol. Created in 2013, Spin Master’s star franchise follows the adventures of a group of rescue dogs and their leader, a human boy named Ryder. Paw Patrol has spanned nine TV seasons, a Hollywood film (the second is now on the way), and, most
importantly, a sprawling line of toys, merchandise, and games. The brand practically prints money for Spin Master, which today is worth around $4.4 billion and has 2,000 employees spread across nearly twenty countries.
But the company learned an important lesson from Bakugan, which had generated more than $1 billion in toy sales by 2014, before its popularity started to wane: what goes up eventually comes down, especially when it comes to fickle young audiences. That’s where the classic toys come in. Having one of these brands in your portfolio is every sales department’s dream. They practically sell themselves.
Beginning in 2013, Spin Master went on a spree of acquiring classic toy brands. It started with the century-old British construction toy Meccano (also known as Erector), which allows kids to build models by joining metal strips and plates with nuts and bolts. Then, in 2015, the company paid more than $50 million (US) for Cardinal Industries, one of the oldest manufacturers of chess sets and other traditional board games in the US. It bought Etch A Sketch in 2016. Plush maker Gund, founded in 1898, was snatched up for nearly $80 million (US) in 2018. And, three years later, Spin Master closed on Rubik’s Cube for about $50 million (US). Spin Master, like a Hungry Hungry Hippo, has been gobbling up many of the oldest and most-loved toys in North America with gusto and learning lessons along the way about what products stand the test of time.
Most toys burn hot, bright, and fast, making Paw Patrol’s nine-year reign something of an anomaly. But, eventually, even Paw Patrol will fade. So why is it that some toys don’t? Many companies are trying to figure out the answer to this question, because as great as it is to invent the must-have toy of the season, it’s even better to create one that kids will be playing with 100 years from now.
IN A CONNECTICUT CLASSROOM, a wooden-block monolith rises from the floor. The tower is flanked by two small children on a mission to make it taller. But there’s a problem: there are no more long blocks left on the shelf. The children have used them all. One of the boys looks around, and after a moment of deep thought, a look of recognition spreads across his face. You can almost see the light bulb flash. He takes two smaller blocks and connects them together. Now, “this is a long one,” the boy says, triumphant. Problem solved; the tower grows. The precocious boys were being filmed by researchers at Eastern Connecticut State University’s Center for Early Childhood Education. They were part of a long-term study of preschool children called TIMPANI, or Toys That Inspire Mindful Play and Nurture Imagination. From 2010 to 2019, TIMPANI researchers put kids together in rooms and observed how they interacted with toys and with one another. A generation of kids built whimsical Duplo houses and elaborate marble runs. They pretended to run stores, bakeries, and ice cream shops, with all the requisite props. Simple toys proved especially popular, the researchers found, and those old-timey blocks, cars, people, and shapes seemed to yield the most imaginative play. Julia DeLapp, the centre’s director, says that while there’s been lots of research on how children play and how play affects a child’s development, less attention has been paid to the toys themselves. What kinds of toys encourage the most creativity, imagination, problem solving, or collaboration? What,
specifically, makes a kid gravitate toward one toy over another? DeLapp and her colleagues had their suspicions, but they decided to test them out and for good reason. “I think that children’s earliest experiences with play influence them for the rest of their lives,” she says.
10. Who are millennial parents?
a. Young adults
b. Young adults in the 21st century
c. Elderly people
d. Elderly people in the 21st century
11. Why does the author refer to some toys as tradition?
a. Because parents also enjoy playing with toys
b. Because of the nostalgic value they hold
c. Because they see their children playing with them
d. Because they hold a legacy
12. How can we best describe the above passage?
a. Research oriented
b. Data centered
c. Fact oriented
d. Fictional Read the poem and answer the questions:
Now in thy dazzling half-oped eye, Thy curled nose and lip awry, Uphoisted arms and noddling head, And little chin with crystal spread, Poor helpless thing! what do I see, That I should sing of thee?
From thy poor tongue no accents come, Which can but rub thy toothless gum: Small understanding boasts thy face,
Thy shapeless limbs nor step nor grace: A few short words thy feats may tell, And yet I love thee well.
When wakes the sudden bitter shriek, And redder swells thy little cheek When rattled keys thy woes beguile, And through thine eyelids gleams the smile, Still for thy weakly self is spent Thy little silly plaint.
13. Who is speaking to whom, in the above poem?
a. Poet to an infant
b. A mother to her newborn
c. An infant to her mother
d. An infant to the poet
14. Which of the following is not a synonym of “awry”?
a. Amiss
b. Crooked
c. Usual
d. Askew
Read the text below then answer the questions. Six sentences have been removed from the text. Choose from the sentences (A – G) the one that fits each gap (15 – 20). There is one extra sentence which you do not need to use.
Its a brisk march day in the coastal town of Wick, Scotland. The sky is a cold, fresh blue, contrasting with higher clouds made lambent by the angled spring sun. Looking out from the shore, you can see it all: the sparkling waters of Wick harbour, the Georgian stone buildings of old Wick town.(15…..). The Beatrice wind farm is named after the defunct Beatrice oil field on which it is situated. The only remaining sign of its earlier incarnation is two rusting oil platforms that sit at the feet of towering 200-metre-tall turbines; up close, you can hear the sound of the giant blades, steady as a heartbeat.
The gleaming turbines, eighty-four in all, aren’t pumping out oxygenated blood but renewable electricity into the United Kingdom’s national grid. (16…..). The Beatrice wind farm has two new siblings, the adjacent Moray Firth East, which came online last year, and its westerly neighbour, which will be operational in 2024. Just north from Wick, four undersea tidal turbines are being tested.(17…..). And SSE, the energy giant that owns part of the Beatrice wind farm, is building the world’s second-largest converter station, just north of town, to feed renewable power to the Shetland Islands.
SSE also refurbished two derelict harbour buildings to use as the wind farm’s operation and maintenance base. Two-thirds of the workers in the base’s control room moved over from jobs in oil and gas.(18…..). And, thanks to government incentives, some people have replaced water heaters with air-to-water heat pumps, which provide a further dent in electricity bills.
This montage playing out in a remote corner of northeastern Scotland embodies a remarkable fact: in just over three decades, the UK has reduced its greenhouse gas emissions by almost half. Not only has it slashed emissions faster than any other industrialized country but it’s also charging ahead to get them down to zero by 2050. The market has become a partner in the “net zero” goal: most manufacturing and industrial sectors are changing their conduct to pollute less and be more efficient. Over the past decade alone, electricity generated from wind power jumped by 715 percent, and there are plans to quadruple offshore wind power over the next eight years.(19…..). The confidence with which the country is charting its path away from oil and gas is striking, especially as the Industrial Revolution, and the large-scale practice of burning fossil fuels, began in the UK some 300 years ago.
Canada has its own climate demons. By 1929, a chemist by the name of Karl Clark perfected a way to extract oil from the gummy, tarred earth of Alberta’s Athabasca basin using hot water. That breakthrough and the fact that Canada sits on the third-largest oil reserve in the world led to the energy-intensive mining of the oil sands decades later. (20…..). Cars and trucks contribute nearly a fifth of Canada’s emissions; extraction and refinement of fossil fuels account for about another quarter.
A. One rotation of the blades churns enough power to run a home for nearly a day. Zoom out and you’ll find evidence of a wider transformation.
B. Last summer, Scotland’s first hybrid-electric plane began running trial flights between Wick and the Orkney Islands
C. Further afield, sticking up from the horizon, where steely water meets sky, is Beatrice Offshore Windfarm, its giant propellers hypnotically spinning in the steady winds of Moray Firth.
D. In December 2021, one of four new cars sold in the UK was electric (as opposed to one out of twenty in Canada last year), and the number of properties with solar panels surged 71 percent
E. The way many locals run their homes has changed too. On a sunny day, solar panels on roofs power basic appliances
F. According to the economic website Visual Capitalist, Canada’s per capita carbon emissions are the second highest in the world, higher than those in the United States, Australia, and Russia and almost three times those of the UK.
G. We know that rapid urbanization and industrialization have had an impact on carbon emissions entering the atmosphere, but at what rate?
Read the given extracts. Then answer, which of the following extracts
21 Talks about the idea behind research being conducted?
a. Extract A
b. Extract B
c. Extract C
d. Extract D
22 Throws light on how leaders don't want to be perceived?
a. Extract A
b. Extract B
c. Extract C
d. Extract D
23 Gives an opinion on what separates a leader from a group?
a. Extract A
b. Extract B
c. Extract C
d. Extract D
24 Tells solutions to people who are afraid of being perceived as leaders?
a. Extract A
b. Extract B
c. Extract C
d. Extract D
25 Links leadership to acceptance?
a. Extract A
b. Extract B
c. Extract C
d. Extract D
26 Talks about the viewpoint of marginally represented groups of the society?
a. Extract A
b. Extract B
c. Extract C
d. Extract D
27 Gives the reasons behind people avoiding leadership roles?
a. Extract A
b. Extract B
c. Extract C
d. Extract D
28 Highlights a commonality between male and female leaders?
a. Extract A
b. Extract B
c. Extract C
d. Extract D
29 Tells about a slightly contradictory view point of potent leaders (the research participants)?
a. Extract A
b. Extract B
c. Extract C
d. Extract D
30 Explains the actual reason why people avoid being leaders, other than thinking how others might perceive them?
a. Extract A
b. Extract B
c. Extract C
d. Extract D
EXTRACT A
When it comes to leading, self-identity matters. Research has shown that seeing yourself as a leader is an important first step on the path toward becoming one and reluctance to identify as a leader can keep capable people from taking on leadership responsibilities. So, why are people so often uncomfortable with thinking of themselves as leaders? While there are no doubt many factors at play, prior research has shown that reputational concerns can play a major role in deterring people from proactively pursuing their goals at work. As such, we were interested in whether perceived risk to people’s reputations could similarly impact their sense of identity as leaders, and in turn make them less likely to lead. To explore this question, we conducted a series of studies with more than 1,700 participants including full-time employees, MBA students, and U.S. Airforce cadets, and we consistently found that the more people worried about the reputational risks of being a leader, the less likely they were to identify as one. Specifically, we identified three common reputational fears that hold people back from seeing themselves as leaders.
EXTRACT B
Many of the participants in our study expressed concern about being seen as bossy, autocratic, or domineering if they were to take on a leadership role. As one interviewee put it, “I wouldn’t want to seem pushy, or that I take advantage of weak [people]. I wouldn’t want to seem cold.” Interestingly, while much has been written on the use of pejorative words like “bossy” to describe female leaders, we found that in our studies, men and women were both afraid of coming across in this manner. The second common concern was that acting as a leader would result in being singled out and receiving too much attention for being different from others even if that attention was positive. One participant explained, “I don’t want to be looked up to or idolized. I am comfortable leading, but at the same time I want to be on the same level as everyone else.” Many people worry that if they become leaders, they will have to sacrifice their sense of belonging within the group.
EXTRACT C
Regardless of whether they actually saw themselves as qualified, many of our participants said that they were afraid that others would view them as unfit for leadership. As one shared, “I know people often associate men with leadership roles, so that makes me somewhat uncomfortable. I worry that if I try to pursue leadership in my field, people will not take me seriously.” To be sure, there are very real experiences that often inform these fears, especially for underrepresented groups such as women and people of color. But whether these fears are justified or not, it’s important to understand their impact on how we view ourselves. And across our studies, we found that people who reported higher levels of fear around these reputational risks were less
likely to see themselves as leaders. As a result, they were less likely to act as leaders, and therefore less likely to be seen as leaders by their supervisors.
EXTRACT D
At first glance, this may seem counterintuitive. Why would perceptions of riskiness influence something as deeply ingrained as your identity? From a psychological standpoint, however, this effect is not surprising at all. No one likes to think of themselves as driven by fear, and leadership can often come with substantial challenges. So, when pursuing leadership feels risky, people subconsciously redefine their own identities to justify avoiding it. It’s a lot more comfortable to rationalize an unwillingness to lead by telling yourself that you’re “just not a leader” than to admit that you’re afraid of what others might think. The good news is, our research also revealed several psychological interventions managers can use to reduce both the potency and impact of these fears, enabling them to encourage more people to identify as and become leaders. First, our research suggests that it is possible to influence people’s perceptions of reputational risk. In one study, we found that participants who listened to a podcast in which we framed leadership as risky were less likely to identify or act as leaders than those who listened to a podcast that described leadership as low-risk. This suggests that simply by presenting leadership as less risky and lower-stakes (for example, by clarifying that leadership mistakes are expected and will not be a black mark on an employee’s record), managers can help employees feel more comfortable seeing themselves as leaders.