Questões de Concurso Sobre comparativo e superlativo de adjetivos | comparative and superlative em inglês

The difficult journey to Olympic success

For Jessica Morgan, a young athlete New Zealand, a typical day starts early. Most mornings, she gets up 4:30 a.m., while her family is still bed, and trains before school. As an elite rower, she is one the best in her country, and she aims to compete in the next Olympic Games.

Jessica’s weekly schedule is grueling. She trains twice a day, six days a week, and competes in rowing events on the weekends. However, she’s also a normal schoolgirl, and like every other sixteen-year-old at high school, she regularly does her homework, too. Jessica’s motivation is impressive. She never hangs out with friends or takes a vacation. She isn’t only an amazing athlete – she usually gets good grades in school, too. Of course, it isn’t easy to become successful. Being the best at your sport requires hard work, determination, and the help of family and coaches. Young athletes’ relationships with their family and coaches can influence their success in the future. Jessica’s parents usually spend hours every week taking her to training and competitions, and they help her to eat a healthy diet. Her coach plans her training and enters her for competitions. But both parents and coach must offer emotional support, too – for example, when Jessica loses a competition or she gets an injury. Luckily for Jessica, she has a good relationship with both her coach and family. But in other cases, these relationships can place too much pressure on young athletes. For this reason, some of them lose their motivation to do well. For Jessica, the most important factor in her future success is her own desire to win. “I know talented young athletes who give up because they feel lonely without their friends,” she says. “But I prefer not to think negatively.” Jessica believes she is responsible for securing her future success. “It’s my decision to train every morning and go back to it again every afternoon. It’s my decision not to have a social life, and never to take a vacation.” Not everyone can cope with this kind of lifestyle. But each day Jessica moves one step closer to achieving her Olympic dream.

Instruction: answer the question based one the following text.

While at home in Ireland my poor mother wept bitter tears at the thought of her daughter with the university education serving hamburgers to pop stars.

I had been working there about six months the night I met James. It was a Friday night, which was traditionally the night the OJs frequented our restaurant. “OJ” standing, of course, for Office Jerks.

At five o’clock every Friday, like graves disgorging their dead, offices all over the center of London liberated their staffs for the weekend so that hordes of pale, cheapsuited clerks descended on us.

It was de rigueur for us waitresses to stand around sneering disdainfully at the besuited clientele, shaking our heads in disbelieving pity at the attire, hairstyles, etc., of the poor customers.

On the night in question, James and three of his colleagues sat in my section and I attended to their needs in my normal irresponsible and slapdash fashion. I paid them almost no attention whatsoever, barely listened to them as I took their order and certainly made no eye contact with them. If I had I might have noticed that one of them (yes, James, of course) was very handsome, in a black-haired, green-eyed, five-foottenish kind of way. I should have looked beyond the suit and seen the soul of the man.

Oh, shallowness, thy name is Clare.

But I wanted to be out back with the other waitresses, drinking beer and smoking and talking about sex. Customers were an unwelcome interference.

“Can I have my stake very rare?” asked one of the men.

“Um,” I said vaguely. I was even more uninterested than usual because I had noticed a book on the table. It was a really good book, one that I had read myself.

I loved books. And I loved reading. And I loved men who read. I loved a man who knew his existentialism from his magi-realism.And I had spent the last six months working with people who could just about manage to read Stage magazine (laboriously mouthing the words silently as they did so). I suddenly realized, with a pang, how much I missed the odd bit of intelligent conversation.

Suddenly the people at this table stopped being mere irritants and took on some sort of identity for me.

“Who owns this book?” I asked abruptly, interrupting the order placing.

The table of four men were startled. I had spoken to them! I had treated them almost as if they were human!

“I do,” said James, and as my blue eyes met his green eyes across his mango daiquiri, that was it, the silvery magic dust was sprinkled on us. In that instant something wonderful happened. From the moment we really looked at each other, we both knew we had met someone special.

I maintained that we fell in love immediately.

He maintained nothing of the sort, and said that I was a romantic fool. He claimed it took at least thirty seconds longer for him to fall in love with me.

First of all he had to establish that I had read the book in question also. Because he thought that I must be some kind of not-so-bright model or singer if I was working there. You know, the same way that I had written him off as some kind of subhuman clerk. Served me right.

KEYES, Marian. Watermelon. New York: Perennial, HarperCollins, 2002 (Edited).

TEXT III

(Source: https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/Green_Book)

Here are six reviews on Green Book:

1.

The screenplay essentially turns Shirley into a black man who thematically shapeshifts into whoever will make the story appealing to white audiences - and that’s inexcusable.

Lawrence Ware New York Times

2.

Green Book is effective and affecting while being careful to avoid overdosing its audience on material that some might deem too shocking or upsetting.

James Berardinelli ReelViews

3.

In a world that seems to get uglier every day, this movie’s gentle heart and mere humanity feel like a salve.

Leah Greenblatt Entertainment Weekly

4.

A bizarre fish-out-of-water comedy masquerading as a serious awards-season contender by pretending to address the deep wound of racial inequality while demonstrating its profound inability, intellectually and dramatically, to do that.

Kevin Maher Times (UK)

5.

Sometimes life is stranger than art, sometimes art imitates life, and sometimes life imitates art. If life starts imitating hopeful art - that’s uplifting. That’s the goal of art, as I see it. “Green Book” uplifts.

Mark Jackson Epoch Times

6.

There’s not much here you haven’t seen before, and very little that can’t be described as crude, obvious and borderline offensive, even as it tries to be uplifting and affirmative.

A.O. Scott New York Times

(Source: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/green_book/reviews/)  

New Public Management Model

        The new public management model, which emerged in the 1980s, represented an attempt to make the public sector more business-like as well as to improve the efficiency of the Government, borrowed ideas and management models from the private sector. It emphasized the centrality of citizens who were the recipient of the services or customers to the public sector.

        New public management system also proposed a more decentralized control of resources. It explored other service delivery models so as to achieve better results, including a quasi-market structure where public and private service providers competed with each other in an attempt to provide better and faster services.

        The Core Themes for the New Public Management were:

1. A strong focus on financial control, value for money and increasing public sector efficiency;

2. A command and control mode of functioning, identifying and setting targets and continuous monitoring of public sector performance;

3. Introducing audits and controls at professional level, using transparent means to review public worker performance, setting benchmarks, using protocols to ameliorate public sector worker professional behaviour;

4. Greater customer orientation and responsiveness and increasing the scope of roles played by non-public sector providers;

5. Deregulating the labor market, replacing collective agreements to individual rewards packages combined with short term contracts;

6. Introducing new forms of corporate governance, introducing a board model of functioning and concentrating the power to the strategic core of the organization.

(www.managementstudyguide.com/new-public-management.htm. Adaptado.)

Read the following text and answer question.

Importance of Aquaculture 

Aquaculture involves the art, science and business of breeding aquatic animals and plants in fresh or marine waters for human use. It also extends to the marketing of such organisms in a controlled environment. It is a kind of agriculture, and therefore, it requires inputs such as clean water and nutrients. It also requires storage for harvested produce, transportation and marketing facilities.

Inputs often depend on the species that are farmed. Species lower on the aquatic food chain usually require less input, as they feed on microorganisms and are fine in just clean water. More inputs like fish or fishmeal, cereals, or grains are required, as we get higher on the food chain with species like salmon or tuna.

All over the world, the demand for seafood has increased because people have learned that seafood as part of regular diets are healthier and help fight cardiovascular disease, cancer, Alzheimer’s and many other major illnesses.

Aquaculture will add to wild seafood, and make it _______ and accessible to all.

Aquaculture business provides tax and royalty revenue to local governments. Besides, there is also potential revenue from exports. 

(Adapted from: https://goo.gl/qcbcfY. Access: 01/25/2018)

Read the following text and answer question.

Introduction to global food loss and food waste

Food losses and food waste are quickly becoming a top global issue, because while there are millions of families with children starving, others are living in abundance, with many others carelessly throwing food away. Many of us have wasted food in one way or the other, but the real food losses and waste matter is ______ than just consumer food waste.

From farming fields and storage places, through transportation, processing, market places, down to consumption places such as homes, schools, restaurants and workplaces, more than half of all food produced globally go to waste. This is a tragedy!

In developing countries, it takes a lot of man-power to produce food. In more advanced countries, machines and technology are used, but the drain on energy, destruction of vegetative lands, the use of chemicals and ______ impact on the environment are phenomenal. Putting all that together, it is clear that a major problem has emerged and we are all in a position to help in one way or the other.

(Adapted from: https://goo.gl/ySEn3F. Access: 01/23/2018) 

Read the following text and answer question.

How do people see disability today?

Some time ago, people’s idea of disability was very distressing, especially towards people with disability and their families. If a child was born with any kind of disability, they _____________ that to many strange taboos, spiritual and traditional beliefs.

Today, disability is seen very differently. Education, information, support services, policy and accessibility efforts by many modern societies have empowered people with disabilities, together with _____ families, to rise to their fullest potential. Children with disability are able to go to school and feel part of society. Many people with disability have grown to become great, successful people.

Ray Charles and Steve Wonder, both blind from childhood, are some of ____________ musicians in the world. Marlee Matlin, ______ lost her hearing from childhood, is a great Standup Comedian and Actress. Chris Burke, a favorite American TV character, and writer, is a person with Down Syndrome. Nick Vujicic is _______ Australian Christian Evangelist and Motivational Speaker. Born ______ 1982 with a rare disorder, characterized by no hands and legs, has lived to inspire millions and continue to empower people.

Disability is part of life. People with disability have potential too, just like people without a disability. They have the same rights as everyone else and if people with disabilities, families, and society can work together on policy, we can make society all-inclusive and every person will have a fair chance to be the best they can be. 

(Adapted from: https://goo.gl/fhJZCM. Access: 01/22/2018)