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    Cambridge IGCSE: First Language English 0500/23

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    Cambridge IGCSE: First Language English 0500/23

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    0500_s24_in_23

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    Cambridge IGCSE: First Language English 0500/23

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    hareem.9974

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    of 4

    Cambridge IGCSE™

    FIRST LANGUAGE ENGLISH 0500/23


    Paper 2 Directed Writing and Composition May/June 2024

    INSERT 2 hours

    INFORMATION
    *7063019503-I*

    ● This insert contains the reading texts.


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

    This document has 4 pages. Any blank pages are indicated.

    DC (DE) 328977/2
    © UCLES 2024 [Turn over
    2

    Read both texts, and then answer Question 1 on the question paper.

    Text A

    This passage is an article about how language in the workplace is changing.

    If you’ve ever tried to explain a meme, you know how big the cultural divide between generations
    can be. And while ‘yelling’ in capital letters and misunderstood emojis are harmless in an online
    family group chat, workplace communication is much more fraught.

    Workplace harmony depends on successful communication. Language gaps between senior


    leadership and newer employees are usually bridged by a shared grasp of ‘business speak’, 5
    the jargon that applies in specific areas of work. But now, the first truly digital generation of
    young people is entering the workplace, often a virtual one, and workplace communication is
    undergoing a major shift.

    Miscommunication is common. To younger workers, formal business communication seems cold


    and harsh, while younger people are ‘too casual’ for others. Traditionally, the responsibility has 10
    been on younger workers to assimilate into office culture, but things are changing.

    Every generation has their own youth slang and pop-culture code that they use in social
    situations. Older generations tended to adapt their ways of speaking and writing to the more
    formal expectations of the workplace, but staff in their twenties are keeping things much more
    casual. They’re starting to pull down the barriers between work and personal or social life, 15
    naturally creating a more relaxed workplace. These are people who consider both meeting on a
    laptop and in an actual office to be ‘face-to-face’ working, after all.

    New workers who are digitally fluent now have far more influence over communication and
    culture. It goes beyond slang and internet-speak abbreviations. A generation used to informal,
    near-constant contact rejects accepted ways of doing things, spurning the prim email in favour of 20
    a quick message, emojis included. But that can be tough for older generations, who are used to
    defining the professional rules of communication.

    Newer employees can be encouraged to maintain decorum and formality (and maybe go easy
    on the emojis in emails) or perhaps we should run training on emojis for older managers. Who
    knows how people will talk and write to their colleagues and bosses when today’s school students 25
    get their first jobs?

    © UCLES 2024 0500/23/INSERT/M/J/24


    3

    Text B

    The following passage is taken from a letter from a reader written to a newspaper letters page.

    My eldest grandson, a smart, courteous, recent graduate and something of a high-flyer, secured
    a good job straight out of university in one of the country’s new, up-and-coming tech companies.
    We celebrated his tremendous success, and his parents, having struggled in their ordinary jobs
    to give him the best education, breathed a sigh of relief.

    So far, so good. After a month though, I’m seriously worried that his expensive education has 5
    not equipped him to deal with working life. I’m older, I know, but the way he speaks about, and
    even to, his colleagues and his superiors is going to land him in trouble and he doesn’t even
    seem to realise it. For example, in his induction course, a very senior staff member told the new
    recruits, ‘I’m always open to new ideas’, something I doubt she meant literally, but my hapless
    grandson promptly sent her an email outlining all his bright ideas for the company. I shuddered 10
    even more when he proudly showed me the email. It began, ‘Hi Megan’, ending with one of those
    incomprehensible symbols and a suggestion that they might ‘do a face-to-face’ to discuss his
    ideas.

    Of course, I know offices aren’t the stuffy, over-formal settings they were when I got my first job,
    and a good thing too. I never even referred to colleagues I’d worked with for years by their first 15
    names and that seems ridiculous now. We had silly business jargon then too but my grandson’s
    over-familiar slang, abbreviated words and the constant messaging rather than a measured email
    can’t be going down well, can it? How will he ever be taken seriously in his career if he doesn’t
    learn to adapt to proper workplace behaviour in the way he communicates? Why would a young
    man who had the highest English grades not punctuate properly? He writes as if he’s sitting in a 20
    café with his peers, not in a professional working environment.

    © UCLES 2024 0500/23/INSERT/M/J/24


    4

    BLANK PAGE

    Permission to reproduce items where third-party owned material protected by copyright is included has been sought and cleared where possible. Every
    reasonable effort has been made by the publisher (UCLES) to trace copyright holders, but if any items requiring clearance have unwittingly been included, the
    publisher will be pleased to make amends at the earliest possible opportunity.

    To avoid the issue of disclosure of answer-related information to candidates, all copyright acknowledgements are reproduced online in the Cambridge
    Assessment International Education Copyright Acknowledgements Booklet. This is produced for each series of examinations and is freely available to download
    at www.cambridgeinternational.org after the live examination series.

    Cambridge Assessment International Education is part of Cambridge Assessment. Cambridge Assessment is the brand name of the University of Cambridge
    Local Examinations Syndicate (UCLES), which is a department of the University of Cambridge.

    © UCLES 2024 0500/23/INSERT/M/J/24

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