2020-DSE

ENG LANG
Kenneth Lau
PAPER 1
PART A

BEACON COLLEGE
KENNETH LAU
A
COMPULSORY

HONG KONG DIPLOMA OF SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINATION 2020

ENGLISH LANGUAGE PAPER 1

PART A
Reading Passages
1 hour 30 minutes
(for both Parts A and B)

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

(1) There are two parts (A and B) in this paper. All candidates should attempt Part A. In Part B, you
should attempt either Part B1 (easier section) OR Part B2 (more difficult section). Candidates
attempting Parts A and B2 will be able to attain the full range of levels, while Level 4 will be the
highest level attainable for candidates attempting Parts A and B1.

(2) After the announcement of the start of the examination, you should first write your Candidate
Number and stick barcode labels in the spaces provided on the appropriate pages of Part A
Question-Answer Book and Part B Question-Answer Book which you are going to attempt.

(3) Write your answers in the spaces provided in the Question-Answer Books. Answers written in the
margins will not be marked.

(4) For multiple-choice questions, you are advised to blacken the appropriate circle with a pencil so that
wrong marks can be completely erased with a clean rubber. Mark only ONE answer to each
question. Two or more answers will score NO MARKS.

(5) Supplementary answer sheets will be supplied on request. Write your Candidate Number, mark
the question number box and stick a barcode label on each sheet and fasten them with string
INSIDE the Question-Answer Book.

(6) No extra time will be given to candidates for sticking on barcode labels or filling in the question
number boxes after the ‘Time is up’ announcement.

(7) The two Question-Answer Books you have attempted (one for Part A and one for Part B) will be
collected together at the end of the examination. Fasten the two Question-Answer Books together
with the green tag provided.

(8) The unused Question-Answer Book for Part B will be collected separately at the end of the
examination. This will not be marked. Do not write any answers in it.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR PART A

(1) The Question-Answer Book for Part A is inserted in this Reading Passages booklet.

(2) Attempt ALL questions in Part A. Each question carries ONE mark unless otherwise stated.

© 遵理集團 保留版權
Kenneth Lau Beacon Group Not to be taken away before the
All Rights Reserved 2020 end of the examination session

2020-DSE-ENG LANG 1-A-RP–1 1

 PART A
Read Texts 1-2 and answer questions 1-16 on pages 1-5 of the Question-Answer Book for Part A.

Text 1

Classified Ad 1
The XTND Board
Light and comfortable to carry, the XTND Board is an electric skateboard with artificial intelligence, which gathers data
about the way you ride. The data allows the AI to create unique settings that suit your style and improve its performance.

Classified Ad 2
VINCI
A smart handy device controlled by your voice, VINCI is a set of interactive headphones. It is connected with your
different platforms so that it can update you on your schedule and notifications and anticipate your needs. All you have to
do is ask. The more you use VINCI, the better it understands you, and the more effective it will be.

Classified Ad 3
Ambi Climate
A normal air-conditioner only allows you to set a temperature without considering other factors that can affect your
comfort, such as humidity, weather, and sunlight. That is why you need Ambi Climate, an AI-powered accessory for air
conditioners. Just tell it if you are too hot or too cold, and its AI will automatically adjust the system to improve your
comfort.

Source: written by Kenneth’s Team

Text 2

The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence

[1] The A.I. products that now exist are improving faster than most people realize and promise to radically transform our
world, not always for the better. They are only tools, not a competing form of intelligence as asserted by many. But they will
reshape what work means and how wealth is created, leading to unprecedented economic inequalities and even altering the
global balance of power. It is imperative that we turn our attention to these imminent challenges.

5 [2] What is artificial intelligence today? Roughly speaking, it’s technology that takes in huge amounts of information from a
specific domain (say, loan repayment histories) and uses the information it has collected to make a decision in a specific case
(whether to give an individual a loan). The decision it makes will achieve a specified goal (maximizing profits for the lender).
Think of a spreadsheet on steroids, trained on big data. These tools can outperform human beings at a given task. This kind
of A.I. is spreading to thousands of domains (not just loans), and as it does, it will eliminate many jobs. Bank tellers,
10 customer service representatives, telemarketers, stock and bond traders, even paralegals and radiologists will gradually be
replaced by such software. Over time this technology will come to control semiautonomous and autonomous hardware like
self-driving cars and robots, displacing factory workers, construction workers, drivers, delivery workers and many others.

[3] Unlike the Industrial Revolution and the computer revolution, the A.I. revolution is not taking certain jobs (artisans,
personal assistants who use paper and typewriters) and replacing them with other jobs (assembly-line workers, personal
15 assistants conversant with computers). Instead, it is poised to bring about a wide-scale decimation of jobs – mostly
lower-paying jobs, but some higher-paying ones, too. This transformation will result in enormous profits for the companies
that develop A.I., as well as for the companies that adopt it. Imagine how much money a company like Uber would make if it
used only robot drivers. Imagine the profits if Apple could manufacture its products without human labor. Imagine the gains
to a loan company that could issue 30 million loans a year with virtually no human involvement.

20 [4] We are thus facing two developments that do not sit easily together: enormous wealth concentrated in relatively few hands
and enormous numbers of people out of work. What is to be done?

[5] Part of the answer will involve educating or retraining people in tasks A.I. tools aren’t good at. Artificial intelligence is
poorly suited for jobs involving creativity, planning and “cross-domain” thinking – for example, the work of a trial lawyer.
But these skills are typically required by high-paying jobs that may be hard to retrain displaced workers to do. More
25 promising are lower-paying jobs involving the “people skills” that A.I. lacks: social workers, bartenders, concierges –
professions requiring nuanced human interaction. But here, too, there is a problem: How many bartenders does a society
really need?

2020-DSE-ENG LANG 1-A-RP–2 2

 [6] The solution to the problem of mass unemployment, I suspect, will involve “service jobs of love.” These are jobs that A.I.
cannot do, that society needs and that give people a sense of purpose. Examples include accompanying an older person to
30 visit a doctor, mentoring at an orphanage and serving as a sponsor at Alcoholics Anonymous – or, potentially soon, Virtual
Reality Anonymous (for those addicted to their parallel lives in computer-generated simulations). The volunteer service jobs
of today, in other words, may turn into the real jobs of the future. Other volunteer jobs may be higher-paying and
professional, such as compassionate medical service providers who serve as the “human interface” for A.I. programs that
diagnose cancer. In all cases, people will be able to choose to work fewer hours than they do now.

35 [7] Who will pay for these jobs? Here is where the enormous wealth concentrated in relatively few hands comes in. It
strikes me as unavoidable that large chunks of the money created by A.I. will have to be transferred to those whose jobs
have been displaced. This seems feasible only through increased government spending, presumably raised through
taxation on wealthy companies.

[8] This leads to the final and perhaps most consequential challenge of A.I. The above approach I have sketched out may
40 be feasible in the United States and China, which will have enough successful A.I. businesses to fund welfare initiatives via
taxes. But what about other countries?

[9] They face two insurmountable problems. First, most of the money being made from artificial intelligence will go to the
United States and China. A.I. is an industry in which strength begets strength: The more data you have, the better your
product; the better your product, the more data you can collect; the more data you can collect, the more talent you can
45 attract; the more talent you can attract, the better your product. It’s a virtuous circle, and the United States and China have
already amassed the talent, market share and data to set it in motion.

[10] The other challenge for many countries that are not China or the United States is that their populations are increasing,
especially in the developing world. While a large, growing population can be an economic asset (as in China and India in
recent decades), in the age of A.I. it will be an economic liability. This asset will only turn into burden when the
50 population comprises mostly displaced workers, not productive ones.

[11] So if most countries will not be able to tax ultra-profitable A.I. companies to subsidize their workers, what options will
they have? I foresee only one: Unless they wish to plunge their people into poverty, they will be forced to negotiate with
whichever country supplies most of their A.I. software – China or the United States – to essentially become that country’s
economic dependent, taking in welfare subsidies in exchange for letting the “parent” nation’s A.I. companies continue to
55 profit from the dependent country’s users. Such economic arrangements would reshape today’s geopolitical alliances.

[12] One way or another, we are going to have to start thinking about how to minimize the looming A.I.-fueled gap between
the haves and the have-nots, both within and between nations. Or to put the matter more optimistically: A.I. is presenting us
with an opportunity to rethink economic inequality on a global scale. These challenges are too far-ranging in their effects for
any nation to isolate itself from the rest of the world.

Source: Adapted from an article by Kai-Fu Lee in the New York Times, 24 June, 2017.

END OF READING PASSAGES

2020-DSE-ENG LANG 1-A-RP–3 3

2020-DSE
ENG LANG
Kenneth Lau
PAPER 1
PART B1

BEACON COLLEGE
KENNETH LAU
B1
EASY SECTION

HONG KONG DIPLOMA OF SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINATION 2020

ENGLISH LANGUAGE PAPER 1

PART B1
Reading Passages
1 hour 30 minutes
(for both Parts A and B)

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

(1) Refer to the General Instructions on Page 1 of the Reading Passages booklet for Part A.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR PART B1

(1) The Question-Answer Book for Part B1 is inserted in this Reading Passages booklet.

(2) Candidates who choose Part B1 should attempt all questions in this part. Each question carries ONE
mark unless otherwise stated.

(3) Hand in only ONE Question-Answer Book for Part B, either B1 or B2, and fasten it with the
Question-Answer Book for Part A using the green tag provided.

© 遵理集團 保留版權
Kenneth Lau Beacon Group Not to be taken away before the
All Rights Reserved 2019 end of examination session

2020-DSE-ENG LANG 1-B1-RP–1 1

 PART B1
Read Text 3 and answer questions 17-33 on pages 1-4 of the Question-Answer Book for Part B1.

Text 3

Jin Yong, 94, Lionized Author of Chinese Martial Arts Epics, Dies

[1] Jin Yong, a literary giant of the Chinese-speaking world whose fantastical epic novels were read by generations of ethnic
Chinese, died on Oct. 30 in Hong Kong. He was 94. His death, at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital, was confirmed
by Ming Pao, the Hong Kong newspaper that Jin Yong established. Chip Tsao, a writer and friend, said the cause of death
was organ failure.

5 [2] Jin Yong, the pen name of Louis Cha, was one of the most widely read 20th-century writers in the Chinese language. The
panoramic breadth and depth of the fictional universes he created have been compared to J. R. R. Tolkien’s “The Lord of the
Rings” and have been studied as a topic known as “Jinology.”

[3] Jin Yong elevated what had been a rather formulaic genre by blending in poetry, history and fantasy to create hundreds
of vivid characters who travel through a mirror underworld that operates according to its own laws and code of ethics. In
10 tales of love, friendship and filial piety, his characters are flawed, with complex emotional histories, making them all the
more appealing.

[4] Jin Yong used martial arts fiction as a vehicle to talk about Chinese history and traditional culture, forging his own
fictional vernacular that drew heavily on classical expressions. His stories were often set at important moments in Chinese
history, like the rise and fall of dynasties. They made reference to Confucian, Buddhist and Taoist ideas, and positioned
15 martial arts as an integral part of Chinese culture, alongside traditional Chinese medicine, acupuncture and calligraphy.
Translated into many different languages, Jin Yong’s books have sold tens of millions of copies, fueling a sprawling
industry of film, television and video game adaptations.

[5] Jin Yong graduated from Soochow University’s law school in 1948. By then he had begun working as a journalist and
translator for the newspaper Ta Kung Pao in Shanghai. In 1948 he moved with the newspaper to Hong Kong, which was
20 then a British crown colony, and lived there for most of his life. His career as a novelist began in the mid-1950s while
working as a film critic and editor for The New Evening Post in Hong Kong. From 1955 to 1972, Jin Yong wrote 14
novels and novellas and one short story in the popular genre known as wuxia, which consisted mainly of thrilling martial
arts adventures. His first wuxia novel, “The Book and the Sword” (1955), drew its inspiration from a legend that held that
the Manchu emperor Qianlong was in fact a Han Chinese who had been switched at birth. The novel was serialized in The
25 New Evening Post and became an instant hit.

[6] Following the early success of his novels, Jin Yong established his own newspaper, Ming Pao Daily News, in Hong
Kong in 1959. Soon he was publishing installments of his novels while writing daily social commentaries about the
horrors of Mao Zedong’s China. It was a subject he was intimately familiar with: In 1951, his father had been labeled a
“class enemy” and was executed by the Communists.

30 [7] By the time he began writing, the Chinese Communist Party, which was under Mao Zedong’s control, had banned wuxia
literature, calling it “decadent” and “feudal.” The ban reflected a centuries-old view of wuxia as a marginal genre within
the Chinese literary tradition. But in Hong Kong and other parts of the world where Chinese-speaking people lived, Jin
Yong’s novels helped start a new wave of martial arts fiction in the 1950s and ‘60s.

2020-DSE-ENG LANG 1-B1-RP–2 2

 [8] In 1981, as China was beginning to open up economically and politically, Jin Yong traveled to Beijing to meet with
35 Deng Xiaoping, Mao’s successor. Deng confessed that he was an avid fan of Jin Yong’s books. Not long afterward,
China lifted its ban on Jin Yong’s novels. At the time, many young Chinese were eager to read something other than the
socialist promotional material they used to read and therefore Jin Yong’s books bloomed.

[9] In 1985, Jin Yong was appointed to a political committee charged with drafting Hong Kong’s Basic Law, the
mini-constitution that would govern that semiautonomous city once Britain handed it over, ending colonial rule. He drew
40 criticism for backing a conservative proposal to select the city’s leader without universal suffrage. Jin Yong’s initial
optimism about China’s political opening was shattered by the government’s bloody crackdown on the student-led
democracy movement in Tiananmen Square in 1989. He resigned from the committee in protest. In a tearful interview,
he said, “Students’ peaceful petitions should never be suppressed by military force.” He retired from writing novels in 1972.
He stepped down as chairman of the Ming Pao Enterprise Corporation in 1993.

Source: Adapted from an article by Amy Qin in the New York Times, 2 November, 2018.

END OF READING PASSAGE

2020-DSE-ENG LANG 1-B1-RP–3 3

2020-DSE
ENG LANG
Kenneth Lau
PAPER 1
PART B2

BEACON COLLEGE
KENNETH LAU
B2
DIFFICULT SECTION

HONG KONG DIPLOMA OF SECONDARY EDUCATION EXAMINATION 2020

ENGLISH LANGUAGE PAPER 1

PART B2
Reading Passages
1 hour 30 minutes
(for both Parts A and B)

GENERAL INSTRUCTIONS

(1) Refer to the General Instructions on Page 1 of the Reading Passages booklet for Part A.

INSTRUCTIONS FOR PART B2

(1) The Question-Answer Book for Part B2 is inserted in this Reading Passages booklet.

(2) Candidates who choose Part B2 should attempt all questions in this part. Each question carries ONE
mark unless otherwise stated.

(3) Hand in only ONE Question-Answer Book for Part B, either B1 or B2, and fasten it with the
Question-Answer Book for Part A using the green tag provided.

© 遵理集團 保留版權
Kenneth Lau Beacon Group Not to be taken away before the
All Rights Reserved 2020 end of the examination session

2020-DSE-ENG LANG 1-B2-RP–1 1

 PART B2
Read Texts 4-5 and answer questions 34-57 on pages 1-5 of the Question-Answer Book for Part B2.

Text 4

J.K. Rowling

[1] Joanne Rowling, writing under the pen name J. K. Rowling, is a British novelist best known for her mega-hit Harry Potter
fantasy series. The books have won multiple awards, and sold more than 500 million copies, becoming the best-selling book
series in history.

[2] From living on state benefits to being the world’s first billionaire author, Rowling has lived a “rags to riches” life story.
5 Rowling completed her degree at the University of Exeter in French and Classics in 1985. Martin Sorrell, a French
professor at Exeter, remembers “a quietly competent student, with a denim jacket and dark hair, who, in academic terms,
gave the appearance of doing what was necessary”. In 1990, while she was travelling from Manchester to London, the
train delayed and the concept of the story of a young boy attending a school of wizardry "came fully formed" into her mind.

[3] Rowling’s daughter, Jessica, was born in 1993 in Portugal. She separated with her ex-husband that same year and
10 moved to Edinburgh, Scotland with her then infant daughter. At the time she had with her three chapters of what would
become Harry Potter in her luggage.

[4] Seven years after graduating from university, Rowling thought of herself a failure: her marriage did not work out and she
was unemployed with a dependent child. In retrospect, however, she saw her failure as liberating which allowed her to
concentrate on writing. During this period, Rowling was diagnosed with depression, which was then translated figuratively
15 into the character known as Dementor, the ‘soul-sucking’ creature introduced in the third book. Rowling described her
economic status as being “poor as it is possible to be in modern Britain, without being homeless” and lived on welfare
benefits in that period.

[5] In 1995, Rowling submitted her manuscript for ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ to twelve publishers and all of
which turned it down. A year later she was eventually given the green light by Barry Cunningham, an editor from
20 Bloomsbury, a publishing house in London.

[6] In June 1997, Bloomsbury published ‘Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone’ with an initial print run of 1,000 copies.
Today, such copies are valued between £16,000 and £25,000. In early 1998, an auction was held in the United States for
the rights to publish the novel, and was won by Scholastic Inc., for US$105,000. Rowling said contentedly that she “nearly
died” when she heard the news.

Source: written by Kenneth’s Team

2020-DSE-ENG LANG 1-B2-RP–2 2

 Text 5

Harry Potter, Market Wiz

[1] The success of the Harry Potter series has provoked a lively discussion among French literary theorists about the novels’
underlying message and the structure of Harry’s school, Poudlard (Hogwarts). This article, which appeared last month in the
French daily Le Monde, got particular attention, including an essay published in response arguing that Harry is an antiglobalist
crusader.

5 [2] With the Harry Potter series, J. K. Rowling has enchanted the world: the reader is drawn into a magical universe of
flying cars, spells that make its victims spew slugs, trees that give blows, books that bite, elf servants, portraits that argue
and dragons with pointed tails.

[3] On the face of it, the world of Harry Potter has nothing in common with our own. Nothing at all, except one detail: like
ours, the fantastic universe of Harry Potter is a capitalist universe. Hogwarts is a private wizardry school where students
10 learn how to use magic, and its director constantly has to battle against the state as represented, essentially, by the inept
minister of magic, Cornelius Fudge; the ridiculous bureaucrat Percy Weasley; and the unpleasant inspector Dolores
Umbridge.

[4] The young student wizards are also consumers who dream of shopping for all sorts of high-tech magical objects, like high
performance wands or the latest brand-name flying brooms, manufactured by multinational corporations. Hogwarts, then, is
15 not only a school, but also a market: subject to an incessant advertising onslaught, the students are never as happy as when they
can spend their money in the boutiques near the school. There is all sorts of bartering between students, and the author
heavily emphasizes the possibility of social success for young people who enrich themselves thanks to trade in magical
products.

[5] The scene is completed by the ritual complaints about the rigidity and incompetence of bureaucrats. Their mediocrity is
20 starkly contrasted with the inventiveness and boldness of some entrepreneurs, whom Ms. Rowling always praises in the
book. For example, Bill Weasley, who works for the goblin bank Gringotts, is presented as the opposite of his brother,
Percy the bureaucrat. The first is young, dynamic and creative, and wears clothes that “would not have looked out of place
at a rock concert”; the second is unintelligent, limited and devoted to state regulation, his career's masterpiece being a report
on the standards for the thicknesses of cauldrons.

25 [6] We have, then, an invasion of neoliberal stereotypes in a fairy tale. The fictional universe of Harry Potter, Hogwarts,
offers an exaggerated picture of a capitalist social model: beneath the surface of strict rules and traditional rituals, this
pitiless jungle is a place where competition, violence and the cult of winning prevail.

[7] The young wizards clearly grow up based on a culture of confrontation: competition among students to be prefect;
competition among Hogwarts “houses” to gain points; competition with other schools to win the Triwizard tournament; and,
30 ultimately, the bloody competition between the forces of Good and Evil. This permanent state of war ends up redefining
the role of different institutions: faced with ever-more violent conflicts, they are no longer able to protect individuals against
the dangers that they face everywhere. For instance, the minister of magic fails pitifully in his combat against Evil, and the
regulatory constraints of school life hinder Harry and his friends in defending themselves against the attacks and
provocations that they constantly encounter. The young wizards are thus alone in their struggle to survive in a hostile
35 milieu, and the weaker, like Harry’s schoolmate Cedric Diggory, are inevitably eliminated.

[8] These circumstances influence the education given to the young students of Hogwarts. The only disciplines that matter
are those that can give students an immediately usable practical knowledge that can help them in their battle to survive.
That’s not astonishing, considering how this prestigious school aims to form, above all, graduates who can compete in the
job market, not to mention fighting against Evil. Artistic subjects are thus absent from Hogwarts’s curriculum, and the
40 teaching of social sciences is considered of little value: the students have only some tedious courses of history. It’s very
revealing that Harry finds them “as boring as Percy’s cauldron-bottom report.” In other words, in the cultural universe of
Harry Potter, social sciences are as useless and obsolete as state regulation.

[9] Harry Potter, probably unintentionally, thus appears as a summary of the social and educational aims of neoliberal
capitalism. This capitalism tries to fashion not only the real world, but also the imagination of consumer-citizens.

Source: Adapted from an article by Ilias Yocarisin the New York Times, 18 July, 2004.

END OF READING PASSAGES

2020-DSE-ENG LANG 1-B2-RP–3 3