Questões de Inglês - Plural dos substantivos | Plural of nouns para Concurso

Newly discovered primate 'already facing extinction'

(Adaptado de https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-54894681)

Leia o texto e responda à questão.

    For years attention has been paid to so-called communicative tests – usually implying tests dealing with speaking. More recently, efforts have been made to design truly communicative tests of other language skills as well, such as reading comprehension.

    Canale (1984) points out that a good test is not just one which is valid, reliable, and practical in terms of test administration and scoring, but rather one that is accepted as fair, important and interesting by test takers (the teachers) and test users (the students). Also, a good test has feedback potential, rewarding both teachers and students with clear, rich, relevant, and generalizable information. Canale suggests that acceptability and feedback potential have often been accorded low priority, thus explaining the curious phenomenon of multiple-choice tests claiming to assess oral interaction skills.

    One example of a communicative test has been referred to as a “storyline” test. In such a test, a common theme runs throughout in order to assess the effects of context. The basis for such an approach is that the respondents learn as they read on, that they check previous content, and that the ability to use language in conversation or writing depends in large measure on the skill of picking up information from past discussion and using it in formulating new strategies.

    Swain (1984), for example, developed a storyline test of French as a foreign language for high school French immersion students. The test consisted of six tasks around a common theme, “finding summer employment”. There were four writing tasks (a letter, a note, a composition, a technical exercise) and two speaking tasks (a group discussion and a job interview). The test was designed so that the topic would be motivating to the students and so that there would be enough information provided in order to give the tasks credibility. There was access to dictionaries and reference material, and opportunity for students to review and revise their work. Swain’s main concern was to “bias for best” in the construction of the test – to make every effort to support the respondent in doing their best on the test.

(Andrew D.Cohen. Second Language Assessment. IN: Marianne Celce-Murcia(ed). Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston, Massachusstes: Heinle&Heinle. 2nd edition. 2001. Adaptado)

Read the text below and answer the question that follow:

Text 1 - News from Japan

Japanese tsunami dog and owner reunited

A dog that was rescued after spending three weeks floating at sea after a huge earthquake and tsunami has been reunited with its owner, who recognized the dog when she saw a TV news report on the rescue on Friday.

The dog was found by a Japan Coast Guard crew on a roof drifting some 1.8km off the coast of one of the worst-hit areas along Japan's north-east coast. The roof that the dog was found on is believed to have broken off the house and been washed out to sea by the retreating waters of the devastating tsunami.

The two-year-old dog called Ban had an emotional reunion with its owner at an animal care center where it had been taken to be looked after. Local media reported that Ban immediately jumped up and was very excited when the owner appeared. “We'll never let go of her,” said the owner, who wished to remain anonymous.

Taken from: https://www.usingenglish.com/comprehension/

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)

From interactivity to passivity

    Observers have noted that the Internet is moving away from its original model of cooperative communication based on exchange, and tending towards the logic of a mass broadcasting media, resulting in a concentration of producers and the progressive disappearance of interactivity. This tendency towards passivity in the use of the new media can, we believe, be counterbalanced effectively in an approach to FLT which encourages cooperative, collaborative procedures, where teachers abandon traditional roles and act more as guides and mentors, exploring the new media themselves as learners and thus acting as role models for their learners. Case studies show that there is closer interaction between teacher and students when the new media are employed. Language learners who have experienced this kind of approach are most likely to transfer the skills acquired to their daily practice in the use of the new media in the mother tongue. And, above all, this experience should lead to the development of a “user culture”, implying appropriate behaviour, which respects other people as well as the diversity of their opinions.

(Available: http://iite.unesco.org/pics/publications/en/file.)

Text II

                               Reading Comprehension Instruction

      There are widespread and erroneous perceptions that children must know all of the words before they can comprehend a text and that they must comprehend it at the literal level before advancing to comprehension at the inferential level.

      Recognizing some words is clearly necessary and central to reading. It is important for children to acquire a set of strategies for figuring out the meanings of words and apply these strategies so that words are recognized automatically. Four groups of strategies exist: (1) common graphophonic patterns (e.g., at in cat, hat, bat), (2) high‐frequency or common words used in sentences (e.g., the, a, or), (3) word building (e.g., morphemes, as play in plays, played, playing, playful), and (4) contextual supports gathered through the meanings of sentences, texts, and illustrations. These word recognition strategies are taught as children are engaged in reading and are considered effective in fluency instruction.

      Vocabulary and reading comprehension growth occurs side by side even for beginning readers. They each require explicit instruction and lots of reading of stories including repeated readings to teach phonics, to develop sight vocabulary, and to teach children how to decode words; guided retelling using questions that prompt children to name the characters, identify the setting (place and time), speak to the problem, tell what happened, and how the story ended; repeated checking for information; and drawing conclusions. Teaching strategies to children early, explicitly, and sequentially are three key characteristics of effective vocabulary and reading comprehension instruction.

      For those who are learning English as second or foreign language, take advantage of their first language knowledge to identify cognate pairs, which are words with similar spellings, pronunciations, and meanings in English. To identify the degree of overlap between the two languages is a strategy that has been demonstrated to be effective for Spanish‐ literate children: learn the words for basic objects (e.g., dog, cat, house, car) that English‐only children already know; review and practice passages and stories through read‐alouds in order to accelerate the rate at which words can be identified and read; and engage in basic reading skills including spelling.

(PHILLIPS, L.M, NORRIS, S. P. & VAVRA, K.L. Reading Comprehension Instruction (pp. 1‐10). Faculty of Education, University of Alberta.   Posted online on 2007‐11‐20 in: http://www.literacyencyclopedia.ca)

History and Debate of Internet Censorship

Censorship refers to any action taken by a society to control access to ideas and information. Throughout history, many different types of societies, including democracies, have used censorship in various ways. The issue is increasingly important due to the rapid development of new communication technology. As innovators continue to create new ways for people to share information, many people are now arguing over the issue of censorship. 

Pros and Cons of the Internet Censorship Debate

For the proponents of censorship, restricting the access of information is something that can provide benefits to society. By censoring pornography on the internet, children are less likely to encounter it. By censoring certain types of images and videos, society can prevent offensive or vulgar material from offending those that it targets. For example, some would argue that society should censor material that is insulting to a particular religion in order to maintain societal harmony. In this way, censorship is viewed as a way to protect society as a whole or certain segments of society from material that is seen as offensive or damaging. 

Some argue that censorship is necessary to preserve national security. Without using any kind of censorship, they argue that it is impossible to maintain the secrecy of information necessary for protecting the nation. For this purpose, censorship protects a state's military or security secrets from its enemies who can use that information against the state. 

Those who are against censorship argue that the practice limits the freedoms of speech, the press and expression and that these limitations are ultimately a detriment to society. By preventing free access to information, it is argued that society is fostering ignorance in its citizens. Through this ignorance, citizens are more easily controlled by special interest groups, and groups that are able to take power are able to use censorship to maintain themselves. Additionally, they argue that censorship limits a society's ability to advance in its understanding of the world. 

Another main issue for those who are against censorship is a history of censorship abuse. Those who argue against censorship can point to a number of examples of dictators who used censorship to create flattering yet untrue images of themselves for the purpose of maintaining control over a society. They argue that people should control the government instead of the government controlling its people.

(SOURCE: http://www.debate.org/internet-censorship/ accessed on 19/02/16 at 3:10 pm). 

TEXT III

Use of language in diplomacy

What language should one use when speaking to diplomats, or what language should diplomats use? Or, to be more precise, what language/languages should a (young) diplomat try to learn to be more successful in his profession? 

The term "language in diplomacy" obviously can be interpreted in several ways. First, as tongue ("mother" tongue or an acquired one), the speech "used by one nation, tribe, or other similar large group of people"; in this sense we can say, for example, that French used to be the predominant diplomatic language in the first half of the 20th century. Second, as a special way of expressing the subtle needs of the diplomatic profession; in this way it can be said, for example, that the delegate of such-andsuch a country spoke of the given subject in totally nondiplomatic language. Also, the term can refer to the particular form, style, manner or tone of expression; such as the minister formulated his conditions in unusually strong language. It may mean as well the verbal or non-verbal expression of thoughts or feelings: sending the gunships is a language that everybody understands.

All of these meanings - and probably several others - can be utilised in both oral and written practice. In any of these senses, the use of language in diplomacy is of major importance, since language is not a simple tool, vehicle for transmission of thoughts, or instrument of communication, but very often the very essence of the diplomatic vocation, and that has been so from the early beginnings of our profession. That is why from early times the first envoys of the Egyptian pharaohs, Roman legates, mediaeval Dubrovnik consuls, etc., had to be educated and trained people, well-spoken and polyglots.

Let us first look into different aspects of diplomatic language in its basic meaning - that of a tongue. Obviously, the first problem to solve is finding a common tongue. Diplomats only exceptionally find themselves in the situation to be able to communicate in one language, common to all participants. This may be done between, for example, Germans and Austrians, or Portuguese and Brazilians, or representatives of different Arab countries, or British and Americans, etc. Not only are such occasions rare, but very often there is a serious difference between the same language used in one country and another. 

There are several ways to overcome the problem of communication between people who speak different mother tongues. None of these ways is ideal. One solution, obviously, is that one of the interlocutors speaks the language of the other. Problems may arise: the knowledge of the language may not be adequate, one side is making a concession and the other has an immediate and significant advantage, there are possible political implications, it may be difficult to apply in multilateral diplomacy, etc. A second possibility is that both sides use a third, neutral, language. A potential problem may be that neither side possesses full linguistic knowledge and control, leading to possible bad misunderstandings. Nevertheless, this method is frequently applied in international practice because of its political advantages. A third formula, using interpreters, is also very widely used, particularly in multilateral diplomacy or for negotiations at a very high political level - not only for reasons of equity, but because politicians and statesmen often do not speak foreign languages. This method also has disadvantages: it is time consuming, costly, and sometimes inadequate or straightforwardly incorrect. […] Finally, there is the possibility of using one international synthetic, artificial language, such as Esperanto; this solution would have many advantages, but unfortunately is not likely to be implemented soon, mostly because of the opposition of factors that dominate in the international political - and therefore also cultural and linguistic - scene.

So, which language is the diplomatic one? The answer is not simple at all […].

Words are bricks from which sentences are made. Each sentence should be a wound-up thought. If one wants to be clear, and particularly when using a language which he does not master perfectly, it is better to use short, simple sentences. On the contrary, if one wishes to camouflage his thoughts or even not say anything specific, it can be well achieved by using a more complicated style, complex sentences, digressions, interrupting one's own flow of thought and introducing new topics. One may leave the impression of being a little confused, but the basic purpose of withholding the real answer can be accomplished.

(adapted from http://www.diplomacy.edu/books/language_and_ diplomacy/texts/pdf/nick.PDF)