Questões de Concurso Sobre interpretação de texto | reading comprehension em inglês

The Story Behind TIME’s ‘Resilience of Ukraine’ Cover

(Artwork by JR; Photograph by Artem Iurchenko. A drone was used to capture the cover image on March 14 in Lviv.)

    Since Russia’s invasion began, dozens of Ukraine’s 7.5 million children have been killed and thousands of others have fled in search of safety. Among those thousands is 5-year-old Valeriia from Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown in central Ukraine. Her image – a smiling child – appears on one of this issue’s covers.

    If you met Valeriia, you might think she’s shy, her mother Taisiia told TIME, but don’t be fooled; at home, she commands attention. She loves the same things as many little girls – her stuffed bunny; her Elsa doll fromCold Heart(which English speakers know as Frozen); and her pink backpack, which she had to leave behind as she ran off her country. Valeriia also has big dreams: in particular, starting her first year of school on Sept. 1. Now, it’s hard to say when and where Valeriia will be able to do so. On March 9, mother and daughter fled to Poland; for safety, they asked that TIME use only their first names. In an interview, Taisiia explained her decision to leave home to keep her child safe. “She is my sunshine, my joy.”

    According to Taisiia they woke up early in the morning of Feb. 24 to learn the occupying army had started bombing military bases. “I thought about my daughter, Valeriia; for her safety, I knew we had to go. We left Ukraine before we were bombarded, so we had a chance.” Even though Valeriia is with her now, husband and son stayed in Ukraine and therefore, it was very hard to leave. The day they left, the lines for buses and trainsstretched 3 km, mostly women and children, she says, “We were packed together and had to stand for 18 hours on the train to Lviv”.

    The Russians still haven’t come to their city. The people from Kryvyi Rih have fought them off. But they are closer and closer, and you can see them approaching. In the media, Russia says they aren’t at war in Ukraine. But the war is real. People are dying for real. “And here I am, with my sister, my nephew, and my mother in Poland, in a hotel near Warsaw. They take care of us and even in this difficult situation, it was a warm reception. I cannot find the words to express how grateful I am to everyone who has helped”, ends up a crying Taisiia.

(Available: https://time.com/magazine/europe. Adapted.)

Read the text to answer.

Dear Madam:

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. Hence, I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Your very sincerely and respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln.

(Lederer, Richard. The miracle of language. Pocket Books, New York, NY.)

Read the text to answer.

The Story Behind TIME’s ‘Resilience of Ukraine’ Cover

By Clare Lavery

Keeping students’ attention and stopping them from getting distracted is a big challenge. Here are some reasons why students’ attention may wander and ways to keep your classes on track.

• Keep in control. Anticipation is the best form of teacher defence so keep scanning the room, making eye contact with all students. You will catch those who are starting to fidget, look out of window or chat to their mates. Then you can react accordingly before the noise level has distracted everyone and created a situation.

• Keep in tune with the class. Don’t just glide along with the best. If one student answers your questions this is not proof that all the others are following what is being discussed. Aim for responses from as wide a sample as possible. Don’t just accept answers from the 3 or 4 class leaders or you will leave the rest behind.

• Keep checking understanding. Try not to use questions like “Do you understand?” or “Has everyone got that?” Students are notoriously wary of admitting they haven’t understood, especially if their peers are feigning comprehension! Use further questions to see if they have understood the concepts.

• Keep demonstrating. Attention wanders when they don’t know what to do and are too afraid to admit it. Keep your instructions to a minimum and demonstrate what to do rather than giving lengthy or detailed explanations. If nearly half of them are clearly unsure and starting to flounder or chat in their mother tongue, take action. Call on the pairs who are doing the task successfully to demonstrate their work as an example for others then try again. 

Changing the pace

Here are some tried and tested techniques for changing the pace of the lesson to keep students awake.

• Chant. Select a weekly chant which rouses students. Students stand or sit, clap along or snap their fingers and repeat the rap you have devised. This can be a quotation for higher levels or a sentence construction covered by lower levels. Make it short, snappy and fun.

• Drill. Use some quick-fire questioning around the class and involve as many as possible. Then get the students to do the questions as well as supplying answers. Use visuals as prompts for this questioning.

• Play a game. Do a 10-minute revision game involving everyone pooling ideas, words or questions. Even a spelling game for beginners does the trick. Word association or memory games work well!

• Give a dictation. They do have to concentrate here! It might be just a short piece of text or a list of words. It could be some lines from a song in the charts.

Available at: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/article/ strategies-keeping-attention. Accessed on: April 26, 2022

Why can group work be a challenge in monolingual classes?

[1] Firstly, and most obviously, the lack of a need to communicate in English means that any communication between learners in that language will seem artificial and arguably even unnecessary. Secondly, the fact that all the learners in the class share a common culture (and are often all from the same age group) will mean that there will often be a lack of curiosity about what other class members do or think, thus making questionnaire-based activities superfluous. Thirdly, there is the paradox that the more interesting and motivating the activity is (and particularly if it involves a competitive element of some sort), the more likely the learners are to use their mother tongue in order to complete the task successfully or to finish first. Finally, the very fact that more effort is involved to communicate in a foreign language when the same task may be performed with much less effort in the mother tongue will also tend to ensure that very little English is used.

Is group work worth the effort?

[2] Taken as a whole, these factors will probably convince many teachers that it is simply not worth bothering with pair and group work in monolingual classes. This, however, would be to exclude from one’s teaching a whole range of potentially motivating and useful activities and to deny learners the opportunity to communicate in English in class time with anyone but the teacher.

[3] Simple mathematics will tell us that in a one-hour lesson with 20 learners, each learner will speak for just 90 seconds if the teacher speaks for half the lesson. In order to encourage learners in a monolingual class to participate in pair and group work, it might be worth asking them whether they regard speaking for just three per cent of the lesson to be good value and point out that they can increase that percentage substantially if they try to use English in group activities.

[4] At first, learners may find it strange to use English when communicating with their peers but this is, first and foremost, a question of habit and it is a gradual process. For the teacher to insist that English is used may well be counter-productive and may provoke active resistance. If the task is in English, on the other hand, and learners have to communicate with each other about the task, some English will inevitably be used. It may be very little at first but, as with any habit, it should increase noticeably as time goes by. Indeed, it is not unusual to hear more motivated learners in a monolingual situation communicating with each other in English outside the classroom. 

Conclusion

[5] If the benefits of using English to perform purposeful communicative tasks are clearly explained to the class and if the teacher is not excessively authoritarian in insisting that English must be used, a modest and increasing success rate can be achieved. It is far too much to expect that all learners will immediately begin using English to communicate with their peers all the time. But, if at least some of the class use English some of the time, that should be regarded as a significant step on the road to promoting greater use of English in pair and group work in the monolingual classroom.

Available at: https://www.onestopenglish.com/methodologytips-for-teachers/classroom-management-pair-and-group-workin-efl/esol/146454.article. Accessed on: April 26, 2022.

Why can group work be a challenge in monolingual classes?

[1] Firstly, and most obviously, the lack of a need to communicate in English means that any communication between learners in that language will seem artificial and arguably even unnecessary. Secondly, the fact that all the learners in the class share a common culture (and are often all from the same age group) will mean that there will often be a lack of curiosity about what other class members do or think, thus making questionnaire-based activities superfluous. Thirdly, there is the paradox that the more interesting and motivating the activity is (and particularly if it involves a competitive element of some sort), the more likely the learners are to use their mother tongue in order to complete the task successfully or to finish first. Finally, the very fact that more effort is involved to communicate in a foreign language when the same task may be performed with much less effort in the mother tongue will also tend to ensure that very little English is used.

Is group work worth the effort?

[2] Taken as a whole, these factors will probably convince many teachers that it is simply not worth bothering with pair and group work in monolingual classes. This, however, would be to exclude from one’s teaching a whole range of potentially motivating and useful activities and to deny learners the opportunity to communicate in English in class time with anyone but the teacher.

[3] Simple mathematics will tell us that in a one-hour lesson with 20 learners, each learner will speak for just 90 seconds if the teacher speaks for half the lesson. In order to encourage learners in a monolingual class to participate in pair and group work, it might be worth asking them whether they regard speaking for just three per cent of the lesson to be good value and point out that they can increase that percentage substantially if they try to use English in group activities.

[4] At first, learners may find it strange to use English when communicating with their peers but this is, first and foremost, a question of habit and it is a gradual process. For the teacher to insist that English is used may well be counter-productive and may provoke active resistance. If the task is in English, on the other hand, and learners have to communicate with each other about the task, some English will inevitably be used. It may be very little at first but, as with any habit, it should increase noticeably as time goes by. Indeed, it is not unusual to hear more motivated learners in a monolingual situation communicating with each other in English outside the classroom. 

Conclusion

[5] If the benefits of using English to perform purposeful communicative tasks are clearly explained to the class and if the teacher is not excessively authoritarian in insisting that English must be used, a modest and increasing success rate can be achieved. It is far too much to expect that all learners will immediately begin using English to communicate with their peers all the time. But, if at least some of the class use English some of the time, that should be regarded as a significant step on the road to promoting greater use of English in pair and group work in the monolingual classroom.

Available at: https://www.onestopenglish.com/methodologytips-for-teachers/classroom-management-pair-and-group-workin-efl/esol/146454.article. Accessed on: April 26, 2022.

Why can group work be a challenge in monolingual classes?

[1] Firstly, and most obviously, the lack of a need to communicate in English means that any communication between learners in that language will seem artificial and arguably even unnecessary. Secondly, the fact that all the learners in the class share a common culture (and are often all from the same age group) will mean that there will often be a lack of curiosity about what other class members do or think, thus making questionnaire-based activities superfluous. Thirdly, there is the paradox that the more interesting and motivating the activity is (and particularly if it involves a competitive element of some sort), the more likely the learners are to use their mother tongue in order to complete the task successfully or to finish first. Finally, the very fact that more effort is involved to communicate in a foreign language when the same task may be performed with much less effort in the mother tongue will also tend to ensure that very little English is used.

Is group work worth the effort?

[2] Taken as a whole, these factors will probably convince many teachers that it is simply not worth bothering with pair and group work in monolingual classes. This, however, would be to exclude from one’s teaching a whole range of potentially motivating and useful activities and to deny learners the opportunity to communicate in English in class time with anyone but the teacher.

[3] Simple mathematics will tell us that in a one-hour lesson with 20 learners, each learner will speak for just 90 seconds if the teacher speaks for half the lesson. In order to encourage learners in a monolingual class to participate in pair and group work, it might be worth asking them whether they regard speaking for just three per cent of the lesson to be good value and point out that they can increase that percentage substantially if they try to use English in group activities.

[4] At first, learners may find it strange to use English when communicating with their peers but this is, first and foremost, a question of habit and it is a gradual process. For the teacher to insist that English is used may well be counter-productive and may provoke active resistance. If the task is in English, on the other hand, and learners have to communicate with each other about the task, some English will inevitably be used. It may be very little at first but, as with any habit, it should increase noticeably as time goes by. Indeed, it is not unusual to hear more motivated learners in a monolingual situation communicating with each other in English outside the classroom. 

Conclusion

[5] If the benefits of using English to perform purposeful communicative tasks are clearly explained to the class and if the teacher is not excessively authoritarian in insisting that English must be used, a modest and increasing success rate can be achieved. It is far too much to expect that all learners will immediately begin using English to communicate with their peers all the time. But, if at least some of the class use English some of the time, that should be regarded as a significant step on the road to promoting greater use of English in pair and group work in the monolingual classroom.

Available at: https://www.onestopenglish.com/methodologytips-for-teachers/classroom-management-pair-and-group-workin-efl/esol/146454.article. Accessed on: April 26, 2022.

Friday the 13th is considered a day on which bad things occur. It is a superstition. A superstition is a belief in something ominous without an actual reason. The origin of this superstition is unclear. Both Friday and the number 13 have been considered unlucky for hundreds of years. Bad luck associated with the number 13 may have biblical roots. Some believe Eve bit the apple from the Tree of Knowledge on the 13th day. Others point to the idea that there were 13 people present for Jesus’s Last Supper, the day before Good Friday. The number 13 was considered so unlucky, that many hotels and buildings were built without a 13th floor! It wasn’t until the 20th century, however, that Friday and “13” were paired together in bad luck. In 1907, author Thomas Lawson wrote Friday, the Thirteenth. The book was about a stock broker who purposely caused the stockmarket to crash on that day.

The Friday the 13th superstition, however, gained serious traction with the Friday the 13th horror film series. Originally released in 1980, the story centers around the “ghost” of Jason Voorhees. In the movie, Jason, with his iconic hockey mask, hunts the hapless characters who come to vacation at Crystal Lake – the lake he drowned in as a child. Twelve movies later, the Friday the 13th series remains one of the most successful horror film franchises in history.

Is Friday the 13th actually unlucky compared to other days? Not really. There is no actual evidence to suggest that events that have occurred on Friday the 13th throughout history are worse than events that have occurred on other days. Some studies have shown that Friday the 13th is actually safer than other days because people are more anxious and attentive. People may actually find Friday the 13th to be lucky. It is thought that air travel is cheaper and booking a wedding is much cheaper on Friday the 13th than on other days. It is clear, however, that Friday the 13th will be around for a long time. Over the next 4,800 months, the 13th will occur on Friday more than any other day!

Friday the 13th is considered a day on which bad things occur. It is a superstition. A superstition is a belief in something ominous without an actual reason. The origin of this superstition is unclear. Both Friday and the number 13 have been considered unlucky for hundreds of years. Bad luck associated with the number 13 may have biblical roots. Some believe Eve bit the apple from the Tree of Knowledge on the 13th day. Others point to the idea that there were 13 people present for Jesus’s Last Supper, the day before Good Friday. The number 13 was considered so unlucky, that many hotels and buildings were built without a 13th floor! It wasn’t until the 20th century, however, that Friday and “13” were paired together in bad luck. In 1907, author Thomas Lawson wrote Friday, the Thirteenth. The book was about a stock broker who purposely caused the stockmarket to crash on that day.

The Friday the 13th superstition, however, gained serious traction with the Friday the 13th horror film series. Originally released in 1980, the story centers around the “ghost” of Jason Voorhees. In the movie, Jason, with his iconic hockey mask, hunts the hapless characters who come to vacation at Crystal Lake – the lake he drowned in as a child. Twelve movies later, the Friday the 13th series remains one of the most successful horror film franchises in history.

Is Friday the 13th actually unlucky compared to other days? Not really. There is no actual evidence to suggest that events that have occurred on Friday the 13th throughout history are worse than events that have occurred on other days. Some studies have shown that Friday the 13th is actually safer than other days because people are more anxious and attentive. People may actually find Friday the 13th to be lucky. It is thought that air travel is cheaper and booking a wedding is much cheaper on Friday the 13th than on other days. It is clear, however, that Friday the 13th will be around for a long time. Over the next 4,800 months, the 13th will occur on Friday more than any other day!

Friday the 13th is considered a day on which bad things occur. It is a superstition. A superstition is a belief in something ominous without an actual reason. The origin of this superstition is unclear. Both Friday and the number 13 have been considered unlucky for hundreds of years. Bad luck associated with the number 13 may have biblical roots. Some believe Eve bit the apple from the Tree of Knowledge on the 13th day. Others point to the idea that there were 13 people present for Jesus’s Last Supper, the day before Good Friday. The number 13 was considered so unlucky, that many hotels and buildings were built without a 13th floor! It wasn’t until the 20th century, however, that Friday and “13” were paired together in bad luck. In 1907, author Thomas Lawson wrote Friday, the Thirteenth. The book was about a stock broker who purposely caused the stockmarket to crash on that day.

The Friday the 13th superstition, however, gained serious traction with the Friday the 13th horror film series. Originally released in 1980, the story centers around the “ghost” of Jason Voorhees. In the movie, Jason, with his iconic hockey mask, hunts the hapless characters who come to vacation at Crystal Lake – the lake he drowned in as a child. Twelve movies later, the Friday the 13th series remains one of the most successful horror film franchises in history.

Is Friday the 13th actually unlucky compared to other days? Not really. There is no actual evidence to suggest that events that have occurred on Friday the 13th throughout history are worse than events that have occurred on other days. Some studies have shown that Friday the 13th is actually safer than other days because people are more anxious and attentive. People may actually find Friday the 13th to be lucky. It is thought that air travel is cheaper and booking a wedding is much cheaper on Friday the 13th than on other days. It is clear, however, that Friday the 13th will be around for a long time. Over the next 4,800 months, the 13th will occur on Friday more than any other day!