Questões de Inglês - Interpretação de texto | Reading comprehension para Concurso

Read the text to answer 33, 34 and 35.

As epoch-making as Gutenberg’s printing press, 3-D printing is changing the future.

By Roff Smith

Rocket engine parts, chocolate figurines, functional replica pistols, a Dutch canal house, designer sunglasses, a zippy two-seater car, a rowboat, a prototype bionic ear, pizzas — hardly a week goes by without a startling tour de force in the rapidly evolving technology of three-dimensional printing. What sounds like something out of Star Trek — the starship’s replicator could synthesize anything — is increasingly becoming a reality. Indeed, NASA is testing a 3-D printer on the International Space Station to see if it might provide a way to fabricate meals, tools, and replacement parts on long missions. Back on Earth, long-term business plans are being reimagined. Airbus envisions that by 2050 entire planes could be built of 3-D printed parts. GE is already using printers to make fuel-nozzle tips for jet engines. And interest isn’t limited just to corporate giants.

The high cost of tooling up a factory has long been a barrier to developing niche products. But now anyone with an idea and money could go into small-scale manufacturing, using computer-aided design software to create a threedimensional drawing of an object and letting a commercial 3-D printing firm do the rest. Since a product’s specifications can be “retooled” at a keyboard, the technology is perfect for limited production runs, prototypes, or one-time creations — like the one-third-scale model of a 1964 Aston Martin DB5 that producers of the James Bond film Skyfall had printed, then blew up in a climactic scene. And because a 3-D printer builds an object a bit at a time, placing material only where it needs to be, it can make geometrically complex objects that can’t be made by injecting material into molds — often at a considerable savings in weight with no loss in strength. It can also produce intricately shaped objects in a single piece, such as GE’s titanium fuel-nozzle tips, which otherwise would be made of at least 20 pieces. “People read about the fabulous things that are being made with 3-D printing technology, and they are led to believe that they will be able to make these things themselves at home and that what they turn out will be of a really high standard of workmanship, it won’t be.” Dr. Rowly, a tech expert says. While consumer printers may one day allow us to make whatever we like, Rowley envisions a different grassroots revolution, one where people can test ideas that once would never have made it off the back of an envelope.

(Available: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/3d-printer.)

Read the text to answer 33, 34 and 35.

As epoch-making as Gutenberg’s printing press, 3-D printing is changing the future.

By Roff Smith

Rocket engine parts, chocolate figurines, functional replica pistols, a Dutch canal house, designer sunglasses, a zippy two-seater car, a rowboat, a prototype bionic ear, pizzas — hardly a week goes by without a startling tour de force in the rapidly evolving technology of three-dimensional printing. What sounds like something out of Star Trek — the starship’s replicator could synthesize anything — is increasingly becoming a reality. Indeed, NASA is testing a 3-D printer on the International Space Station to see if it might provide a way to fabricate meals, tools, and replacement parts on long missions. Back on Earth, long-term business plans are being reimagined. Airbus envisions that by 2050 entire planes could be built of 3-D printed parts. GE is already using printers to make fuel-nozzle tips for jet engines. And interest isn’t limited just to corporate giants.

The high cost of tooling up a factory has long been a barrier to developing niche products. But now anyone with an idea and money could go into small-scale manufacturing, using computer-aided design software to create a threedimensional drawing of an object and letting a commercial 3-D printing firm do the rest. Since a product’s specifications can be “retooled” at a keyboard, the technology is perfect for limited production runs, prototypes, or one-time creations — like the one-third-scale model of a 1964 Aston Martin DB5 that producers of the James Bond film Skyfall had printed, then blew up in a climactic scene. And because a 3-D printer builds an object a bit at a time, placing material only where it needs to be, it can make geometrically complex objects that can’t be made by injecting material into molds — often at a considerable savings in weight with no loss in strength. It can also produce intricately shaped objects in a single piece, such as GE’s titanium fuel-nozzle tips, which otherwise would be made of at least 20 pieces. “People read about the fabulous things that are being made with 3-D printing technology, and they are led to believe that they will be able to make these things themselves at home and that what they turn out will be of a really high standard of workmanship, it won’t be.” Dr. Rowly, a tech expert says. While consumer printers may one day allow us to make whatever we like, Rowley envisions a different grassroots revolution, one where people can test ideas that once would never have made it off the back of an envelope.

(Available: http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2014/12/3d-printer.)

Read the text to answer 31 and 32.

Language aptitude

It has been suggested that people differ in the extent to which they possess a natural ability for learning an L2. This ability, known as language aptitude, is believed to be in part related to general intelligence but also to be in part distinct. Research involving language aptitude has focused on whether and to what extent language aptitude is related to success in L2 learning. Learners who score highly on language aptitude tests tipically learn rapidly and achieve higher levels of L2 proficiency than learners who obtain low scores. Furthermore, research has shown that this is so whether the measure of L2 proficiency is some kind of formal language text or a measure of more communicative language use.

(ELLIS, Rod. Second Language Acquisition. Oxford University Press. Pag. 73-74.)