Questões de Concurso Sobre palavras conectivas | connective words em inglês

Text 1:

How being bilingual can boost your career

Whether you’re fresh out of college or a seasoned executive, insiders agree that fluency in a second language can not only help you stand out among prospective employers, it can also open doors to opportunities that those without foreign language skills might miss. 

In today’s global economy, the ability to communicate in another language has become a significant advantage in the workforce. Research has found that people who speak at least one foreign language have an average annual household income that’s $10,000 higher than the household income of those who only speak English. And about 17 percent of those who speak at least one foreign language earn more than $100,000 a year. 

A recent survey found that nearly 9 out of 10 headhunters in Europe, Latin America, and Asia say that being at least bilingual is critical for success in today’s business environment. And 66 percent of North American recruiters agreed that being bilingual will be increasingly important in the next 10 years. 

“In today’s global economy you really have to understand the way business is done overseas to maximize your potential. A second language equips you for that,” says Alister Wellesley, managing partner of a Connecticut-based recruiting firm. “If you’re doing business overseas, or with someone from overseas, you obtain a certain degree of respect if you’re able to talk in their native language.” 

Language skills can also be key for service industries. At the Willard InterContinental Washington, a luxury hotel a few blocks from the White House, a staff of about 570 represents 42 nations, speaking 19 languages. The Willard’s front-of-house employees such as the concierge speak at least two languages. Bilingualism is not an absolute requirement, but it is desirable, according to Wendi Colby, director of human resources. 

Workers with skills in a second language may have an edge when it comes to climbing Willard’s professional ladder. “The individual that spoke more languages would have a better chance for a managerial role, whatever the next level would be,” Colby says. “They are able to deal with a wide array of clients, employees.” 

So which languages can give you a leg up on the job market? Insiders agree the most popular – and marketable – languages are Spanish, German, French, Italian, Russian and Japanese, with a growing emphasis on Mandarin, given China’s booming economy. So let’s learn Mandarin!

“We see demand from a full range of industries,” says Wellesley. “Actually it depends on which company you’re working for and the country in which they’re located.” 

Adapted from: LATHAM-KOENIG, Christina & OXENDEN, Clive. American English File 5. 2nd edition. Oxford: OUP, 2018. 

Read the text to answer 33, 34 and 35. 

Reflective teaching: exploring your own classroom practice 

Text for the question.

Higher life expectancy worldwide 

    What do you think should be the most important quality of a hotel manager? If someone were to ask me, I’d say it would be the capability to communicate effectively with the staff, colleagues and guests. In this new age of electronic communication, one should not forget that effective verbal and non-verbal communication skills should be emphasized and wellexecuted in the hospitality industry.

     Compelling communication skills are important in a hotel regardless of some staff members not being guest-facing. A few hotels spend considerable amount of money on training their staff to interact with the guests. Good communication skills are a learned art and not a natural skill so one should consider training to enhance staff skills. Excellent communication skills enhance guest experience as this conveys that you are listening to your guests, valuing their feedback and conveying clear messages. Apart from communicating with the guests, your staff ought to know how to write emails. Good communication skills will impress your guests which will further prove beneficial to your hotel business.

     Not only does the staff need to communicate successfully with the guests but also with other department employees. Few of the staff members might be able to speak in manageable English but those who don’t have English as their first language suffer due to their inability and fail to understand simple instructions and information […] Hotels should emphasize on providing communication skills training courses which cover everything from basic communication techniques to advanced empathy skills program.

(adapted from http://www.hotelogix.com/blog/2014/10/17/benefits-of-effectivecommunication-in-the-hotel-industry/)

Leia o texto para responder a questão.

What is a Content Management System (CMS)?

July 19, 2018

      A content management system, often abbreviated as CMS, is software that helps users create, manage, and modify content on a website without the need for specialized technical knowledge. In simpler language, a content management system is a tool that helps you build a website without needing to write all the code from scratch (or even know how to code at all).

      Instead of building your own system for creating web pages, storing images, and other functions, the content management system handles all that basic infrastructure stuff for you so that you can focus on more forward-facing parts of your website. Beyond websites, you can also find content management systems for other functions – such as document management.

      The content management system is not just a backend management interface, though. It also makes all of the content that you create show up for your visitors exactly like you want it to.

(https://kinsta.com/knowledgebase/content-management-system. Adaptado) 

Leia as instruções a seguir e responda a questão.

Instructions for making sandwiches

    First decide what type of filling you would like and check to see if there is some available. Next take two slices of bread and butter each of them on one side only. Put your filling on one slice of bread, butter side up. You may choose two fillings. Place the other piece of bread, butter side down, on top of the filling. Now cut your sandwich carefully with a knife. Now sit down and enjoy your sandwich. Finally, clear away the things you have been using.

(http://www.drapersmillsprimary.co.uk/ lead-learner-key-stage-one-blog/ – Adaptado)

Para responder a questão, leia o artigo de jornal a seguir.

Trial with migrants

        The Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban is against migration there. He says that the EU risks losing another country if the migration is not stopped. Nine men were sentenced to nearly a year in jail; however, they were released at the judge’s discretion due to time already served. One of the group was kept behind bars after receiving a three-year sentence for issuing instructions to the rioters through a loudspeaker. After the trial, a United Nations spokesman said that he was worried that a country would criminalize people who are fleeing war zones.

(www.ondemandnews.com – Adaptado)

Text VI.

                            Critical Discourse Analysis

      We have seen that among many other resources that define the power base of a group or institution, access to or control over public discourse and communication is an important "symbolic" resource, as is the case for knowledge and information (van Dijk 1996). Most people have active control only over everyday talk with family members, friends, or colleagues, and passive control over, e.g. media usage. In many situations, ordinary people are more or less passive targets of text and talk, e.g. of their bosses or teachers, or of the authorities, such as police officers, judges, welfare bureaucrats, or tax inspectors, who may simply tell them what (not) to believe or what to do.

      On the other hand, members of more powerful social groups and institutions, and especially their leaders (the elites), have more or less exclusive access to, and control over, one or more types of public discourse. Thus, professors control scholarly discourse, teachers educational discourse, journalists media discourse, lawyers legal discourse, and politicians policy and other public political discourse. Those who have more control over more ‒ and more influential ‒  discourse (and more properties) are by that definition also more powerful.

      These notions of discourse access and control are very general, and it is one of the tasks of CDA to spell out these forms of power. Thus, if discourse is defined in terms of complex communicative events, access and control may be defined both for the context and for the structures of text and talk themselves.

(van DIJK, T. A. Critical Discourse Analysis. In: SCHIFFRIN, D.; TANNEN, D.; HAMILTON, H. (eds.).   The Handbook of Discourse Analysis, Wiley‐Blackwell, 2003. pp. 352‐371.)

Text IV

                       Identity and Interaction: a sociocultural linguistic approach

      Different research traditions within sociocultural linguistics have particular strengths in analyzing the varied dimensions of identity outlined in this article. The method of analysis selected by the researcher makes salient which aspect of identity comes into view, and such 'partial accounts' contribute to the broader understanding of identity that we advocate here. Although these lines of research have often remained separate from one another, the combination of their diverse theoretical and methodological strengths  ‒  including the microanalysis of conversation, the macroanalysis of ideological processes, the quantitative and qualitative analysis of linguistic structures, and the ethnographic focus on local cultural practices and social groupings  ‒  calls attention to the fact that identity in all its complexity can never be contained within a single analysis. For this reason, it is necessary to conceive of sociocultural linguistics broadly and inclusively. The five principles proposed here  ‒  Emergence, Positionality, Indexicality, Relationality, and Partialness  ‒ represent the varied ways in which different kinds of scholars currently approach the question of identity. Even researchers whose primary goals lie elsewhere can contribute to this project by providing sophisticated conceptualizations of how human dynamics unfold in discourse, along with rigorous analytic tools for discovering how such processes work. While identity has been a widely circulating notion in sociocultural linguistic research for some time, few scholars have explicitly theorized the concept. The present article offers one way of understanding this body of work by anchoring identity in interaction. By positing, in keeping with recent scholarship, that identity is emergent in discourse and does not precede it, we are able to locate identity as an intersubjectively achieved social and cultural phenomenon. This discursive approach further allows us to incorporate within identity not only the broad sociological categories most commonly associated with the concept, but also more local positionings, both ethnographic and interactional. The linguistic resources that indexically produce identity at all these levels are therefore necessarily broad and flexible, including labels, implicatures, stances, styles, and entire languages and varieties. Because these tools are put to use in interaction, the process of identity construction does not reside within the individual but in intersubjective relations of sameness and difference, realness and fakeness, power and disempowerment. Finally, by theorizing agency as a broader phenomenon than simply individualistic and deliberate action, we are able to call attention to the myriad ways that identity comes into being, from habitual practice to interactional negotiation to representations and ideologies.

      It is no overstatement to assert that the age of identity is upon us, not only in sociocultural linguistics but also in the human and social sciences more generally. Scholars of language use are particularly well equipped to provide an empirically viable account of the complexities of identity as a social, cultural, and ‒ most fundamentally ‒ interactional phenomenon. The recognition of the loose coalition of approaches that we call sociocultural linguistics is a necessary step in advancing this goal, for it is only by understanding our diverse theories and methods as complementary, not competing, that we can meaningfully interpret this crucial dimension of contemporary social life.

(BUCHOLTZ, M.; HALL, K. Identity and interaction: a sociocultural approach. In: Discourse Studies, vol 7 (4‐5). London: SAGE, 2005. pp. 585‐614.)