Questões de Inglês - Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension para Concurso
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READ THE TEXT AND ANSWER QUESTIONS 41 TO 46.
TEXT
Petroleum Alternatives. A new promising source
Human consumption of fossil fuels is expected to fully deplete the Earth’s crude oil reserves by the year 2060. As underground reservoirs of oil continue to shrink, we have no choice but to find alternatives. One promising source, with much cleaner emissions, is called bio-diesel. Bio-diesel is often made from soybean oil, although it can be made from any vegetable oil that is not elementally different from soy. Bio-diesel can even be made from used cooking oils that homes or restaurants would otherwise dispose of. Biodiesel can be used without constraint in any vehicle that runs on diesel—no modifications are needed. Presently, diesel engines can take up to 20 percent soy in their soy-diesel blend. As the need for bio-diesel increases and the technology improves, we may soon witness the extinction of the fossil-fueled vehicle.This is good news for the planet, as biodiesel is a more stable source of energy than petroleum, and it reduces contamination of our air and water.
It is implied in the Text that
READ THE TEXT AND ANSWER QUESTIONS 41 TO 46.
TEXT
Petroleum Alternatives. A new promising source
Human consumption of fossil fuels is expected to fully deplete the Earth’s crude oil reserves by the year 2060. As underground reservoirs of oil continue to shrink, we have no choice but to find alternatives. One promising source, with much cleaner emissions, is called bio-diesel. Bio-diesel is often made from soybean oil, although it can be made from any vegetable oil that is not elementally different from soy. Bio-diesel can even be made from used cooking oils that homes or restaurants would otherwise dispose of. Biodiesel can be used without constraint in any vehicle that runs on diesel—no modifications are needed. Presently, diesel engines can take up to 20 percent soy in their soy-diesel blend. As the need for bio-diesel increases and the technology improves, we may soon witness the extinction of the fossil-fueled vehicle.This is good news for the planet, as biodiesel is a more stable source of energy than petroleum, and it reduces contamination of our air and water.
What is the main idea of the Text?
Texto para as questões 20 a 22.
The passage below is an extract from the preface of the centenary edition of Animal Farm, written by George Orwell. Read the text to answer questions 20 - 22.
(…)
Orwell called the book “a fairy story.” Like Voltaire’s Candide, however, with which it bears comparison, it is too many other things to be so handily classified. It is also a political tract, a satire on human folly, a loud hee-haw at all who yearn for Utopia, an allegorical lesson, and a pretty good fable in the Aesop tradition. It is also a passionate sermon against the dangers of political innocence. The passage in which the loyal but stupid workhorse Boxer is sold to be turned into glue, hides, and bone meal because he is no longer useful is written out of a controlled and icy hatred for the cynicism of the Soviet system – but also out of despair for all deluded people who served it gladly.
Maybe because it gilds the philosophic pill with fairy-story trappings, Animal Farm has had an astonishing success for a book rooted in politics. Since its first publication at the end of World War II, it has been read by millions. With 1984, published three years later, it established Orwell as an important man of letters. It has enriched modern political discourse with the observation that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” How did we ever grasp the true nature of the politics of uplift before Orwell explained it so precisely?
George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Blair, the son of a colonial official with long service in British India. Eric was educated as a scholarship boy at Eton and seemed to be miserable there most of the time, largely, one guesses, because of the money gap that divided him from so many of his well-heeled schoolmates. His dislike of the moneyed classes in turn influenced him toward a lifelong loyalty to democratic socialism. After Eton he went to Burma as a member of the Imperial constabulary and had the enlightening experience of discovering he was hated by the Burmese people as a symbol of British Imperialism. Hating the work himself, he quit and went back to England to try making a living by writing.
During the years when he was not very successful, he began to devote himself to work for British socialism. Afterwards he said he had never written anything good that was not about politics. Before he went to work on Animal Farm, his books were well enough received by the critics but sold modestly.
Those old enough to remember the wartime spirit of the 1940s may be startled to realize that Orwell started work on Animal Farm in 1943. As he discovered when he went looking for a publisher, Stalin’s Soviet Union was so popular that year in Britain and America that few wanted to hear or read anything critical of it. It was as though a great deal of the West had willingly put on blinders, and this was because the Red Army that year had fought the Nazis to a standstill and forced it to retreat. Suddenly Hitler’s army, which had looked invincible for so long, had begun to look vincible.
In this period the air on both sides of the Atlantic was filled with a great deal of justifiable praise for the Soviet people and their fighting forces. Stalin’s political system, with its bloody purges and police-state brutality, was an important beneficiary of all this. Looking for a publisher for his small book, Orwell was reminded that British socialists, who idealized the Russian Revolution, had never been hospitable to critics of the Soviet Union. In 1943, however, even conservatives were pro-Soviet.
It became hard to write candidly of the Soviet system without being accused of playing dupe to the Nazis. Orwell discovered how hard when he began receiving publishers’ rejections on Animal Farm. With its swinish communists, the book seemed heretical. As no wonder. Stalin and Trotsky, after all, were unmistakably Orwell’s feuding pigs, Napoleon and Snowball. It was not until the war had ended that Frederic Warburg finally published it, on August 17, 1945.
(…)
Source: ORWELL, George. Animal Farm. London: Penguin Books, 2003. Preface by Russel Baker.
Observe the extract below and choose the alternative that is closest in meaning to it:
With its swinish communists, the book seemed heretical. And no wonder. Stalin and Trotsky, after all, were unmistakably Orwell’s feuding pigs, Napoleon and Snowball. It was not until the war had ended that Frederic Warburg finally published it, on August 17, 1945.
Texto para as questões 20 a 22.
The passage below is an extract from the preface of the centenary edition of Animal Farm, written by George Orwell. Read the text to answer questions 20 - 22.
(…)
Orwell called the book “a fairy story.” Like Voltaire’s Candide, however, with which it bears comparison, it is too many other things to be so handily classified. It is also a political tract, a satire on human folly, a loud hee-haw at all who yearn for Utopia, an allegorical lesson, and a pretty good fable in the Aesop tradition. It is also a passionate sermon against the dangers of political innocence. The passage in which the loyal but stupid workhorse Boxer is sold to be turned into glue, hides, and bone meal because he is no longer useful is written out of a controlled and icy hatred for the cynicism of the Soviet system – but also out of despair for all deluded people who served it gladly.
Maybe because it gilds the philosophic pill with fairy-story trappings, Animal Farm has had an astonishing success for a book rooted in politics. Since its first publication at the end of World War II, it has been read by millions. With 1984, published three years later, it established Orwell as an important man of letters. It has enriched modern political discourse with the observation that “All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.” How did we ever grasp the true nature of the politics of uplift before Orwell explained it so precisely?
George Orwell is the pen name of Eric Blair, the son of a colonial official with long service in British India. Eric was educated as a scholarship boy at Eton and seemed to be miserable there most of the time, largely, one guesses, because of the money gap that divided him from so many of his well-heeled schoolmates. His dislike of the moneyed classes in turn influenced him toward a lifelong loyalty to democratic socialism. After Eton he went to Burma as a member of the Imperial constabulary and had the enlightening experience of discovering he was hated by the Burmese people as a symbol of British Imperialism. Hating the work himself, he quit and went back to England to try making a living by writing.
During the years when he was not very successful, he began to devote himself to work for British socialism. Afterwards he said he had never written anything good that was not about politics. Before he went to work on Animal Farm, his books were well enough received by the critics but sold modestly.
Those old enough to remember the wartime spirit of the 1940s may be startled to realize that Orwell started work on Animal Farm in 1943. As he discovered when he went looking for a publisher, Stalin’s Soviet Union was so popular that year in Britain and America that few wanted to hear or read anything critical of it. It was as though a great deal of the West had willingly put on blinders, and this was because the Red Army that year had fought the Nazis to a standstill and forced it to retreat. Suddenly Hitler’s army, which had looked invincible for so long, had begun to look vincible.
In this period the air on both sides of the Atlantic was filled with a great deal of justifiable praise for the Soviet people and their fighting forces. Stalin’s political system, with its bloody purges and police-state brutality, was an important beneficiary of all this. Looking for a publisher for his small book, Orwell was reminded that British socialists, who idealized the Russian Revolution, had never been hospitable to critics of the Soviet Union. In 1943, however, even conservatives were pro-Soviet.
It became hard to write candidly of the Soviet system without being accused of playing dupe to the Nazis. Orwell discovered how hard when he began receiving publishers’ rejections on Animal Farm. With its swinish communists, the book seemed heretical. As no wonder. Stalin and Trotsky, after all, were unmistakably Orwell’s feuding pigs, Napoleon and Snowball. It was not until the war had ended that Frederic Warburg finally published it, on August 17, 1945.
(…)
Source: ORWELL, George. Animal Farm. London: Penguin Books, 2003. Preface by Russel Baker.
According to the passage read, a possible reason why Animal Farm was acknowledged is:
Read the text and answer the question.
Nudges That Help Struggling Students Succeed
David L. Kirp
When I was in high school, I earned A’s in all my math classes — until I took calculus. In algebra and geometry, I could coast on memorizing formulas, but now I had to think for myself.
It was disastrous, culminating in my getting a charity “C,” and I barely passed my college calculus class.
The reason, I was convinced, was that I didn’t have a math mind. I have avoided the subject ever since.
It turns out that I got it wrong. While it’s unlikely that I could have become a math whiz, it wasn’t my aptitude for math that was an impediment; it was my belief that I had the impediment to begin with.
I’m not the only person convinced that he can’t like math. Millions of college freshmen flunk those courses and, because algebra is often required, many drop out of school altogether. A report from the Mathematical Association of America flagged math as “the most significant barrier” to graduation.
This fatalistic equation can be altered. In scores of rigorously conducted studies, social psychologists have demonstrated that brief experiences can have a powerful and long-lasting impact on students’ academic futures by changing their mind-sets before they get to college.
Consider these examples from three recent studies:
• A cohort of sixth-grade students was taught, in eight lessons, that intelligence is malleable, not fixed, and that the brain is a muscle that grows stronger with effort. Their math grades, which had been steadily declining, rose substantially, while the grades of classmates who learned only about good study habits continued to get worse.
When an English teacher critiqued black male adolescents’ papers, she added a sentence stating that she had high expectations and believed that, if the student worked hard, he could meet her exacting standards. Eighty-eight percent of those students rewrote the assignment and put more effort into rewriting, while just a third of their peers, who were given comments that simply provided feedback, did the same.
• In a series of short written exercises, sixth graders wrote about values that were meaningful to them, like spending time with their family and friends. After this experience, white students did no better, but their black and Latino classmates improved so much that the achievement gap shrank by 40 percent.
There is every reason to be skeptical of these findings. Like magic spells cast by a modern-day Merlin, they sound much too good to be true. Why should brief interventions carry so much punch when more intricate and costly strategies — everything from summer school to single-sex education — are often less effective?
Innovative social-psychological thinking, not magic, is at work here. These interventions focus on how kids, hunched over their desks in the back of the classroom, make sense of themselves and their environment. They can be brief but powerful because they concentrate on a single core belief.
There are three strategies represented here. The first, pioneered by the Stanford social psychology professor Carol Dweck and illustrated by the initial example, aims to change students’ mind-sets by showing them that their intelligence can grow through deliberate work. I’ve written about Dr. Dweck’s theories as applied to college students, but they are just as successful with students in middle school.
The second uses constructive critical feedback to instill trust in minority adolescents, a demonstrably powerful way to advance their social and intellectual development.
The third intervention — and in some ways, the most powerful — invites students to acknowledge their selfworth, combating the corrosive effects of racial stereotypes, by having them focus on a self-affirming value.
These interventions are designed to combat students’ negative feelings. I’m dumb, some believe; I don’t belong here; the school views me only as a member of an unintelligent group. The first two experiences give students the insight that brain work will make them smarter. The third invites them to situate themselves on the path to belonging or to connect with their values in a classroom setting. The goals are to build up their resilience and prepare them for adversity.
The impact, in all these studies, is greatest on black and Latino students. That makes sense, since as adolescents they are far more inclined to see teachers as prejudiced and school as a hostile environment. As these youths come to feel more secure, they are likely to make a greater effort. Success begets success. They start earning A’s and B’s instead of C’s, they take tougher classes and connect more readily with likeminded students.
An unpublished study by social psychologists shows that the impact echoes years later. African-American seventh graders who were asked to write about the most important value in their lives were propelled on an entirely different path from classmates who wrote about neutral topics. Two years later, the students in the first group were earning better grades and were more likely to be on track for college, rather than in remedial classes.
The reverberations persisted beyond high school. These students were more likely to graduate, to enroll in college and to attend more selective institutions.
Can this kind of intervention work on a grander scale? A 2015 study conducted by researchers at Stanford and the University of Texas suggests so. When 45-minute growth-mind-set interventions were delivered online to 1,500 students in 13 high schools scattered across the country, the weakest students were significantly more likely to earn satisfactory grades in their core courses than classmates who didn’t have the same intervention.
Using the same approach nationwide, the researchers conclude, would mean 1.8 million more completed courses each year, hundreds of thousands fewer students departing high school with no diploma, slotted into dead-end futures.
Let’s be clear — these brief interventions aren’t a silver bullet, a quick-and-easy way to transform K-12 education. While they can complement good educational practice, they are no substitute for quality in the classroom.
Students who come to see themselves as the masters of their own destiny can take advantage of opportunities to learn, but only if those opportunities exist. They won’t learn biology unless there’s a biology class, and they won’t learn to be critical thinkers unless the school makes that a priority. What’s more, as the researchers are quick to point out, a brief intervention can’t even begin to address the pernicious effects of poverty and discrimination.
Still, these experiences require a trivial amount of time, cost next to nothing and can make an outsize difference in students’ lives. What’s not to like?
Disponível em: http://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/30/opinion/nudges-that-help-struggling-students-succeed.html?action=click&pgtype=Homepage&clickSource=story-heading&module=opinion-c-col-top-region®ion=opinion-c-col-topregion&WT.nav=opinion-c-col-top-region&_r=0 Accessed on 30-10-16
According to the text, students must understand that
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