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

TEXT I

Breaking the habit: From oiloholics to e-totallers

What changes in driving habits and improved batteries might do to oil demand

It has been a bad couple of years for those hoping for the death of driving. In America, where cars are an important part of the national psyche, a decade ago people had suddenly started to drive less, which had not happened since the oil shocks of the 1970s. Academics started to talk excitedly about “peak driving”, offering explanations such as urbanisation, ageing baby-boomers, car-shy millennials, ride-sharing apps such as Uber and even the distraction of Facebook.

Yet the causes may have been more prosaic: a combination of higher petrol prices and lower incomes in the wake of the 2008-09 financial crisis. Since the drop in oil prices in 2014, and a recovery in employment, the number of vehicle-miles travelled has rebounded, and sales of trucks and SUVs, which are less fuel-efficient than cars, have hit record highs.

This sensitivity to prices and incomes is important for global oil demand. More than half the world’s oil is used for transport, and of that, 46% goes into passenger cars. But the response to lower prices has been partially offset by dramatic improvements in fuel efficiency in America and elsewhere, thanks to standards like America’s Corporate Average Fuel Economy (CAFE), the EU’s rules on CO₂ emissions and those in place in China since 2012.

The IEA says that such measures cut oil consumption in 2015 by a whopping 2.3m b/d. This is particularly impressive because interest in fuel efficiency usually wanes when prices are low. If best practice were applied to all the world’s vehicles, the savings would be 4.3m b/d, roughly equivalent to the crude output of Canada. This helps explain why some forecasters think demand for petrol may peak within the next 10-15 years even if the world’s vehicle fleet keeps growing.

Occo Roelofsen of McKinsey, a consultancy, goes further. He reckons that thanks to the decline in the use of oil in light vehicles, total consumption of liquid fuels will begin to fall within a decade, and that in the next few decades driving will be shaken up by electric vehicles (EVs), self-driving cars and car-sharing. […]

(Dated Nov 24th, 2016. From https://www.economist.com/news/specialreport/21710635-what-changes-driving-habits-and-improved-batteries-might-dooil-demand-coming. Accessed July 18th, 2017)

As questões de números 52 a 55 verificam conhecimentos relativos à cultura e a escritores dos países de língua inglesa. Em cada uma delas, assinale a alternativa correta.

As questões de números 31 a 35 referem-se ao texto a seguir.

Teaching Children Literacy Skills in a Second Language

by ANNE EDIGER

In recent years, there has been increased focus on the teaching of reading and other literacy skills to children, both in North America and abroad. Part of this may relate to the recognition that reading is probably the most important skill for second language (L2) learners in academic contexts, and part of it may come from an increase in the numbers of children worldwide who are learning English as a second or foreign language (hereafter ESL or EFL). It may also be a result of the recent implementation of standards in much of public education in the United States and Canada, a movement built upon the belief that basic literacy instruction should be a fundamental component of public education.

Another possible factor contributing to an increased focus on literacy instruction to children in EFL contexts may be the growing numbers of countries that are moving toward making English language instruction mandatory from a younger age. Given the portability of books and other reading materials (as well as the increasing availability of reading material over the Internet), reading is gradually being recognized as a valuable source of language input, particularly for students in learning environments (as in some EFL contexts) in which fluent speakers of English are generally not available to provide other kinds of language input.

Notions of literacy are expanding as well. Although many different definitions of literacy can be found in the literature on the subject, and reading still seems to be primary to most of them, the teaching of writing and oral skills is increasingly being integrated with reading instruction for both native English speakers (NES) and English language learners (ELLs). Many of the new standards, both for ELLs and NES children, also integrate expectations for the development of all four language skills — reading, writing, listening, and speaking. In fact, increasingly, the large-scale standardized tests ask students to bring together all of these skills, requiring students to demonstrate competence in synthesizing information from multiple sources, or bringing information they have heard or read into written.

_{(Marianne Celce-Murcia (ed.), Teaching English as a Second or Foreign Language. Adapted)}

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THE INNOVATORS OFFERING EXPATS CHEAPER SCHOOLS

A few years ago, competition for places in Dubai’s best international schools was so intense that British expat Jemma Schilbach felt she had to get her two children on the waiting lists for her preferred schools before they were even out of nappies.

Work ended up taking the family away from Dubai for a couple of years. When they returned in 2014, they were relieved to discover there were plenty more schools to choose from, but there was another issue: cost.

Both Schilbach and her husband, who’d previously worked in jobs where companies paid for children’s schooling, were now self-employed, and would need to pay for their children’s education themselves.

Schilbach, 43, who now runs expat community website BritishMums.com, enrolled both her children at Foremarke Dubai, which is affiliated with the UK independent school Repton.

She was impressed with the small class sizes and Foremarke’s reputation, but with tuition fees there starting at 65,000 AED ($18,000) a year, it meant the family had to be more careful about spending to ensure they had the money to send their children, aged five and seven, to the school.

“We economize on other costs during the year,” says Schilbach, adding that ordering some household items from the UK and closely watching what the family spends on weekends have helped to save pennies. “In our opinion, the money is better spent on educating our children to a high standard.”

(Fonte: bbc.com)