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

Set the Table

When you begin writing tests, you will discover a common pattern:

1. Create some objects

2. Stimulate them

3. Check the results

While the stimulation and checking steps are unique test-to-test, the creation step is often familiar. I have a 2 and 3. If I add them, I expect 5. If I subtract them, I expect – 1, if I multiply them, I expect 6. The stimulation and expected results are unique, the 2 and the 3 don’t change.

If this pattern repeats at different scales (and it does), then we’re faced with the question of how often do we want to create new objects. Looking back at our initial set of constraints, two constraints come into conflict:

· Performance—we would like our tests to run as quickly as possible

· Isolation—we would the success or failure of one test to be irrelevant to other tests

For performance sake, assuming creating the objects (we’ll call them collectively the “fixture”) is expensive, we would like to create them once and then run lots of tests.

But sharing objects between tests creates the possibility of test coupling. Test coupling can have an obvious nasty effect, where breaking one test causes the next ten to fail even though the code is correct. Test coupling can have a subtle really nasty effect, where the order of tests matters. If I run A before B, they both work, but if I run B before A, then A fails. Worse, the code exercised by B is wrong, but because A ran first, the test passes.

Kent Beck – Test-Driven Development By Example. Addison-Wesley Professional; Edição: 1. Novembro, 2002. Page 82.

Set the Table

When you begin writing tests, you will discover a common pattern:

1. Create some objects

2. Stimulate them

3. Check the results

While the stimulation and checking steps are unique test-to-test, the creation step is often familiar. I have a 2 and 3. If I add them, I expect 5. If I subtract them, I expect – 1, if I multiply them, I expect 6. The stimulation and expected results are unique, the 2 and the 3 don’t change.

If this pattern repeats at different scales (and it does), then we’re faced with the question of how often do we want to create new objects. Looking back at our initial set of constraints, two constraints come into conflict:

· Performance—we would like our tests to run as quickly as possible

· Isolation—we would the success or failure of one test to be irrelevant to other tests

For performance sake, assuming creating the objects (we’ll call them collectively the “fixture”) is expensive, we would like to create them once and then run lots of tests.

But sharing objects between tests creates the possibility of test coupling. Test coupling can have an obvious nasty effect, where breaking one test causes the next ten to fail even though the code is correct. Test coupling can have a subtle really nasty effect, where the order of tests matters. If I run A before B, they both work, but if I run B before A, then A fails. Worse, the code exercised by B is wrong, but because A ran first, the test passes.

Kent Beck – Test-Driven Development By Example. Addison-Wesley Professional; Edição: 1. Novembro, 2002. Page 82.

       I have suggested that many, if not most teachers, could usefully adjust the values they emphasise. Here, three of them:

      1. From Short-Term to Long-Term Aims

          Learning a foreign language can be a valuable, long-term personal asset for the student. lt can be inhibited by over-emphasising short-term objectives — tests, pressure to speak before you are ready etc.

      2. From Knowledge to Skill

     Knowledge involves answers and explanations and is necessary, but not sufficient. What matters is not what you know, but what you can do. ‘Knowing’ a foreign language may be interesting; the ability to use it is life-enhancing.

     3. From Accuracy to Communication

       Successful communication always involves at least limited accuracy. Accuracy need not involve communication at all. Communication is a wider, more useful concept; successful language is more valuable than language which is only accurate.

(Michael Lewis. The lexical approach. 2002. Adaptado)

       I have suggested that many, if not most teachers, could usefully adjust the values they emphasise. Here, three of them:

      1. From Short-Term to Long-Term Aims

          Learning a foreign language can be a valuable, long-term personal asset for the student. lt can be inhibited by over-emphasising short-term objectives — tests, pressure to speak before you are ready etc.

      2. From Knowledge to Skill

     Knowledge involves answers and explanations and is necessary, but not sufficient. What matters is not what you know, but what you can do. ‘Knowing’ a foreign language may be interesting; the ability to use it is life-enhancing.

     3. From Accuracy to Communication

       Successful communication always involves at least limited accuracy. Accuracy need not involve communication at all. Communication is a wider, more useful concept; successful language is more valuable than language which is only accurate.

(Michael Lewis. The lexical approach. 2002. Adaptado)

      Characteristics of a good test

      In order to judge the effectiveness of any test, it is sensible to lay down criteria against which the test can be measured, as follows:

      Validity: a test is valid if it tests what it is supposed to test. Thus it is not valid, for example, to test writing ability with an essay question that demands specialist knowledge of history or biology — unless it is known that all students share this knowledge before they do the test.

      A particular kind of ‘validity’ that concerns most test designers is face validity. This means that the test should look, on the ‘face’ of it, as if it is valid. A test which consisted of only three multiple choice items would not convince students of its face validity however reliable or practical teachers thought it to be.

      Reliability: a good test should give consistent results. For example, if the same group of students took the same test twice within two days — without reflecting on the first test before they sat it again — they should get the same results on each occasion. If two groups who were demonstrably alike took the test, the marking range would be the same.

      In practice, ‘reliability’ is enhanced by making the test instructions absolutely clear, restricting the scope for variety in the answers. Reliability also depends on the people who mark the tests. Clearly a test is unreliable if the result depends to any large extent on who is marking it. Much thought has gone into making the scoring of tests as reliable as possible.

(Jeremy Harmer. The practice of English language teaching. 2007. Adaptado)

How monks helped invent sign language

      For millennia people with hearing impairments encountered marginalization because it was believed that language could only be learned by hearing the spoken word. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, asserted that “Men that are deaf are in all cases also dumb.” Under Roman law people who were born deaf were denied the right to sign a will as they were “presumed to understand nothing; because it is not possible that they have been able to learn to read or write.”

      Pushback against such ideas began in the 16th-century, with the creation of the first formal sign language for the hearing impaired, by Pedro Ponce de León, a Spanish Benedictine monk. His idea to use sign language was not a completely new one. Native Americans used hand gestures to communicate with other tribes and to facilitate trade with Europeans. Benedictine monks had used them to convey messages during their daily periods of silence. Inspired by the latter practice, Ponce de León adapted the gestures used in his monastery to create a method for teaching the deaf to communicate, paving the way for systems now used all over the world.

      Building on Ponce de León’s work, another Spanish cleric and linguist, Juan Pablo Bonet, proposed that deaf people learn to pronounce words and progressively construct meaningful phrases. Bonet’s approach combined oralism – using sounds to communicate – with sign language. The system had its challenges, especially when learning the words for abstract terms, or intangible forms such as conjunctions like “for,” “nor,” or “yet.”

      In 1755 the French Catholic priest Charles-Michel de l’Épée established a more comprehensive method for educating the deaf, which culminated in the founding of the first public school for deaf children, in Paris. Students came to the institute from all over France, bringing signs they had used to communicate with at home. Insistent that sign language needed to be a complete language, his system was complex enough to express prepositions, conjunctions, and other grammatical elements.

      Épée’s standardized sign language quickly spread across Europe and to the United States. In 1814 Thomas Gallaudet went to France to learn Épée’s language system. Three years later, Gallaudet established the American School for the Deaf in his hometown in Connecticut. Students from across the United States attended, and they brought signs they used to communicate with at home.American Sign Language became a combination of these signs and those from French Sign Language.

      Thanks to the development of formal sign languages, people with hearing impairment can access spoken language in all its variety. The world’s many modern signing systems have different rules for pronunciation, word order, and grammar. New visual languages can even express regional accents to reflect the complexity and richness of local speech.

(Ines Anton Rayas. www.nationalgeographic.com. 28.05.2019. Adaptado)

How monks helped invent sign language

      For millennia people with hearing impairments encountered marginalization because it was believed that language could only be learned by hearing the spoken word. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, asserted that “Men that are deaf are in all cases also dumb.” Under Roman law people who were born deaf were denied the right to sign a will as they were “presumed to understand nothing; because it is not possible that they have been able to learn to read or write.”

      Pushback against such ideas began in the 16th-century, with the creation of the first formal sign language for the hearing impaired, by Pedro Ponce de León, a Spanish Benedictine monk. His idea to use sign language was not a completely new one. Native Americans used hand gestures to communicate with other tribes and to facilitate trade with Europeans. Benedictine monks had used them to convey messages during their daily periods of silence. Inspired by the latter practice, Ponce de León adapted the gestures used in his monastery to create a method for teaching the deaf to communicate, paving the way for systems now used all over the world.

      Building on Ponce de León’s work, another Spanish cleric and linguist, Juan Pablo Bonet, proposed that deaf people learn to pronounce words and progressively construct meaningful phrases. Bonet’s approach combined oralism – using sounds to communicate – with sign language. The system had its challenges, especially when learning the words for abstract terms, or intangible forms such as conjunctions like “for,” “nor,” or “yet.”

      In 1755 the French Catholic priest Charles-Michel de l’Épée established a more comprehensive method for educating the deaf, which culminated in the founding of the first public school for deaf children, in Paris. Students came to the institute from all over France, bringing signs they had used to communicate with at home. Insistent that sign language needed to be a complete language, his system was complex enough to express prepositions, conjunctions, and other grammatical elements.

      Épée’s standardized sign language quickly spread across Europe and to the United States. In 1814 Thomas Gallaudet went to France to learn Épée’s language system. Three years later, Gallaudet established the American School for the Deaf in his hometown in Connecticut. Students from across the United States attended, and they brought signs they used to communicate with at home.American Sign Language became a combination of these signs and those from French Sign Language.

      Thanks to the development of formal sign languages, people with hearing impairment can access spoken language in all its variety. The world’s many modern signing systems have different rules for pronunciation, word order, and grammar. New visual languages can even express regional accents to reflect the complexity and richness of local speech.

(Ines Anton Rayas. www.nationalgeographic.com. 28.05.2019. Adaptado)

How monks helped invent sign language

      For millennia people with hearing impairments encountered marginalization because it was believed that language could only be learned by hearing the spoken word. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, asserted that “Men that are deaf are in all cases also dumb.” Under Roman law people who were born deaf were denied the right to sign a will as they were “presumed to understand nothing; because it is not possible that they have been able to learn to read or write.”

      Pushback against such ideas began in the 16th-century, with the creation of the first formal sign language for the hearing impaired, by Pedro Ponce de León, a Spanish Benedictine monk. His idea to use sign language was not a completely new one. Native Americans used hand gestures to communicate with other tribes and to facilitate trade with Europeans. Benedictine monks had used them to convey messages during their daily periods of silence. Inspired by the latter practice, Ponce de León adapted the gestures used in his monastery to create a method for teaching the deaf to communicate, paving the way for systems now used all over the world.

      Building on Ponce de León’s work, another Spanish cleric and linguist, Juan Pablo Bonet, proposed that deaf people learn to pronounce words and progressively construct meaningful phrases. Bonet’s approach combined oralism – using sounds to communicate – with sign language. The system had its challenges, especially when learning the words for abstract terms, or intangible forms such as conjunctions like “for,” “nor,” or “yet.”

      In 1755 the French Catholic priest Charles-Michel de l’Épée established a more comprehensive method for educating the deaf, which culminated in the founding of the first public school for deaf children, in Paris. Students came to the institute from all over France, bringing signs they had used to communicate with at home. Insistent that sign language needed to be a complete language, his system was complex enough to express prepositions, conjunctions, and other grammatical elements.

      Épée’s standardized sign language quickly spread across Europe and to the United States. In 1814 Thomas Gallaudet went to France to learn Épée’s language system. Three years later, Gallaudet established the American School for the Deaf in his hometown in Connecticut. Students from across the United States attended, and they brought signs they used to communicate with at home.American Sign Language became a combination of these signs and those from French Sign Language.

      Thanks to the development of formal sign languages, people with hearing impairment can access spoken language in all its variety. The world’s many modern signing systems have different rules for pronunciation, word order, and grammar. New visual languages can even express regional accents to reflect the complexity and richness of local speech.

(Ines Anton Rayas. www.nationalgeographic.com. 28.05.2019. Adaptado)

How monks helped invent sign language

      For millennia people with hearing impairments encountered marginalization because it was believed that language could only be learned by hearing the spoken word. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, asserted that “Men that are deaf are in all cases also dumb.” Under Roman law people who were born deaf were denied the right to sign a will as they were “presumed to understand nothing; because it is not possible that they have been able to learn to read or write.”

      Pushback against such ideas began in the 16th-century, with the creation of the first formal sign language for the hearing impaired, by Pedro Ponce de León, a Spanish Benedictine monk. His idea to use sign language was not a completely new one. Native Americans used hand gestures to communicate with other tribes and to facilitate trade with Europeans. Benedictine monks had used them to convey messages during their daily periods of silence. Inspired by the latter practice, Ponce de León adapted the gestures used in his monastery to create a method for teaching the deaf to communicate, paving the way for systems now used all over the world.

      Building on Ponce de León’s work, another Spanish cleric and linguist, Juan Pablo Bonet, proposed that deaf people learn to pronounce words and progressively construct meaningful phrases. Bonet’s approach combined oralism – using sounds to communicate – with sign language. The system had its challenges, especially when learning the words for abstract terms, or intangible forms such as conjunctions like “for,” “nor,” or “yet.”

      In 1755 the French Catholic priest Charles-Michel de l’Épée established a more comprehensive method for educating the deaf, which culminated in the founding of the first public school for deaf children, in Paris. Students came to the institute from all over France, bringing signs they had used to communicate with at home. Insistent that sign language needed to be a complete language, his system was complex enough to express prepositions, conjunctions, and other grammatical elements.

      Épée’s standardized sign language quickly spread across Europe and to the United States. In 1814 Thomas Gallaudet went to France to learn Épée’s language system. Three years later, Gallaudet established the American School for the Deaf in his hometown in Connecticut. Students from across the United States attended, and they brought signs they used to communicate with at home.American Sign Language became a combination of these signs and those from French Sign Language.

      Thanks to the development of formal sign languages, people with hearing impairment can access spoken language in all its variety. The world’s many modern signing systems have different rules for pronunciation, word order, and grammar. New visual languages can even express regional accents to reflect the complexity and richness of local speech.

(Ines Anton Rayas. www.nationalgeographic.com. 28.05.2019. Adaptado)

How monks helped invent sign language

      For millennia people with hearing impairments encountered marginalization because it was believed that language could only be learned by hearing the spoken word. Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle, for example, asserted that “Men that are deaf are in all cases also dumb.” Under Roman law people who were born deaf were denied the right to sign a will as they were “presumed to understand nothing; because it is not possible that they have been able to learn to read or write.”

      Pushback against such ideas began in the 16th-century, with the creation of the first formal sign language for the hearing impaired, by Pedro Ponce de León, a Spanish Benedictine monk. His idea to use sign language was not a completely new one. Native Americans used hand gestures to communicate with other tribes and to facilitate trade with Europeans. Benedictine monks had used them to convey messages during their daily periods of silence. Inspired by the latter practice, Ponce de León adapted the gestures used in his monastery to create a method for teaching the deaf to communicate, paving the way for systems now used all over the world.

      Building on Ponce de León’s work, another Spanish cleric and linguist, Juan Pablo Bonet, proposed that deaf people learn to pronounce words and progressively construct meaningful phrases. Bonet’s approach combined oralism – using sounds to communicate – with sign language. The system had its challenges, especially when learning the words for abstract terms, or intangible forms such as conjunctions like “for,” “nor,” or “yet.”

      In 1755 the French Catholic priest Charles-Michel de l’Épée established a more comprehensive method for educating the deaf, which culminated in the founding of the first public school for deaf children, in Paris. Students came to the institute from all over France, bringing signs they had used to communicate with at home. Insistent that sign language needed to be a complete language, his system was complex enough to express prepositions, conjunctions, and other grammatical elements.

      Épée’s standardized sign language quickly spread across Europe and to the United States. In 1814 Thomas Gallaudet went to France to learn Épée’s language system. Three years later, Gallaudet established the American School for the Deaf in his hometown in Connecticut. Students from across the United States attended, and they brought signs they used to communicate with at home.American Sign Language became a combination of these signs and those from French Sign Language.

      Thanks to the development of formal sign languages, people with hearing impairment can access spoken language in all its variety. The world’s many modern signing systems have different rules for pronunciation, word order, and grammar. New visual languages can even express regional accents to reflect the complexity and richness of local speech.

(Ines Anton Rayas. www.nationalgeographic.com. 28.05.2019. Adaptado)

Leia o texto e responda à questão.

      In a research project at the University of Illinois, US, Savignon (1972) adopted the term ‘communicative competence’ to characterize the ability of classroom language learners to interact with other speakers, to make meaning, as distinct from their ability to recite dialogs or perform on discrete-point tests of grammatical knowledge.

      At a time when pattern practice and error avoidance were the rule in language teaching, this study of classroom acquisition of language looked at the effect of practice on the use of coping strategies as part of an instructional program. By encouraging students to ask for information, to seek out clarification, or to use whatever linguistic or nonlinguistic resources they could gather to negotiate meaning and stick to the communicative task at hand, teachers were invariably leading learners to take risks and speak in other than memorized patterns.

      Test results at the end of the instructional period showed conclusively that learners who practiced communication in place of laboratory pattern drills performed with no less accuracy on discrete-points tests of grammatical structure. On the other hand, their communicative competence as measured in terms of fluency, comprehensibility, effort and amount of communication in unrehearsed oral communication tasks significantly surpassed that of learners who had had no such practice. Learners’ reactions to the test formats added further support to the view that even beginners respond well to activities that let them focus on meaning rather than formal features.

(Sandra J. Savignon. Communicative language teaching for the twenty-first century. In: Marianne Celce-Murcia. Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Adaptado)

Leia o texto e responda à questão.

      In a research project at the University of Illinois, US, Savignon (1972) adopted the term ‘communicative competence’ to characterize the ability of classroom language learners to interact with other speakers, to make meaning, as distinct from their ability to recite dialogs or perform on discrete-point tests of grammatical knowledge.

      At a time when pattern practice and error avoidance were the rule in language teaching, this study of classroom acquisition of language looked at the effect of practice on the use of coping strategies as part of an instructional program. By encouraging students to ask for information, to seek out clarification, or to use whatever linguistic or nonlinguistic resources they could gather to negotiate meaning and stick to the communicative task at hand, teachers were invariably leading learners to take risks and speak in other than memorized patterns.

      Test results at the end of the instructional period showed conclusively that learners who practiced communication in place of laboratory pattern drills performed with no less accuracy on discrete-points tests of grammatical structure. On the other hand, their communicative competence as measured in terms of fluency, comprehensibility, effort and amount of communication in unrehearsed oral communication tasks significantly surpassed that of learners who had had no such practice. Learners’ reactions to the test formats added further support to the view that even beginners respond well to activities that let them focus on meaning rather than formal features.

(Sandra J. Savignon. Communicative language teaching for the twenty-first century. In: Marianne Celce-Murcia. Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Adaptado)

Leia o texto e responda à questão.

      In a research project at the University of Illinois, US, Savignon (1972) adopted the term ‘communicative competence’ to characterize the ability of classroom language learners to interact with other speakers, to make meaning, as distinct from their ability to recite dialogs or perform on discrete-point tests of grammatical knowledge.

      At a time when pattern practice and error avoidance were the rule in language teaching, this study of classroom acquisition of language looked at the effect of practice on the use of coping strategies as part of an instructional program. By encouraging students to ask for information, to seek out clarification, or to use whatever linguistic or nonlinguistic resources they could gather to negotiate meaning and stick to the communicative task at hand, teachers were invariably leading learners to take risks and speak in other than memorized patterns.

      Test results at the end of the instructional period showed conclusively that learners who practiced communication in place of laboratory pattern drills performed with no less accuracy on discrete-points tests of grammatical structure. On the other hand, their communicative competence as measured in terms of fluency, comprehensibility, effort and amount of communication in unrehearsed oral communication tasks significantly surpassed that of learners who had had no such practice. Learners’ reactions to the test formats added further support to the view that even beginners respond well to activities that let them focus on meaning rather than formal features.

(Sandra J. Savignon. Communicative language teaching for the twenty-first century. In: Marianne Celce-Murcia. Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Adaptado)