Questões de Concurso Sobre preposições | prepositions em inglês

    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/)

The Disappearing Honeybee

• Honeybees do more than just make honey. They fly around and pollinate flowers, plants, and trees. Our fruits, nuts, and vegetables rely.....................these pollinators. One third.....................America’s food supply is pollinated.....................the honeybee.

Have you seen or heard a honeybee lately? Bees are mysteriously disappearing in many parts of the world. Most people don’t know about this problem. It is called “colony collapse disorder” (CCD). Some North American beekeepers lost 80% of their hives from 2006-2008. Bees in Italy and Australia are disappearing too.

The disappearance of the honeybee is a serious problem. Can you imagine never eating another blueberry? What about almonds and cherries? Without honeybees food prices will skyrocket. The poorest people always suffer the worst when there is a lack of food.

This problem affects other foods besides fresh produce. Imagine losing your favourite ice cream! Haagen Daaz is a famous ice cream company. Many of their flavours rely on the hard working honeybee. In 2008, Haagen Daaz began raising money for CCD. They also funded a garden at the University of California called The Haven. This garden helps raise awareness about the disappearing honeybee and teaches visitors how to plant for pollinators.

Donating money to research is the most important thing humans can do to save the honeybee. Some scientists blame CCD on climate change. Others think pesticides are killing the bees. Commercial bee migration may also cause CCD. Beekeepers transport their hives from place to place in order to pollinate plants year round.

https://www.englishclub.com/reading/environment/honeybee.htm

      There is a danger in paying too much attention to learners’ errors. While errors indeed reveal a system at work, the classroom language teacher can become so preoccupied ________ noticing errors that the correct utterances in the second language go unnoticed. In our observation and analysis of errors – for all that they do reveal about the learner – we must beware of placing too much attention on errors and not lose sight of the value of positive reinforcement of clearly expressed language that is a product of the learner’s progress of development. While the diminishing of errors is an important criterion ______ increasing language proficiency, the ultimate goal of second language learning is the attainment of communicative fluency.

      Another inadequacy in error analysis is an overemphasis on production data. Language is speaking and listening, writing and reading. The comprehension of language is as important as production. It so happens that production lends itself to analysis and thus becomes the prey of researchers, __________ comprehension data is equally important in developing an understanding of the process of SLA.

               (Brown, D. H. Principles of language learning and teaching. 2000. Adapted)

Smiling Can Actually Make People Happier, Study Finds

Researchers of a new study find that the simple act (1)______ smiling can actually make a person happier. Evidently, nearly 50 years of data shows facial expressions can affect an individual’s emotions or feelings.

Emotional Debate  

For over 100 years, psychologists have been debating whether facial expressions can affect emotions. The argument became even more pronounced (2)______ 2016 after 17 teams of scientists failed to replicate a popular experiment that would supposedly show that smiling can actually make people happier. 

While there are some studies that do not show a relationship (3)______facial expressions and emotional feelings, the researchers of the new study believe that they can’t focus on the data from just one. As such, they scoured data from 138 studies, which tested over 11,000 participants (4)_____ all over the world. 

“But we can’t focus on the results of any one study. Psychologists have been testing this idea since the early 1970s, so we wanted to look at all the evidence,” said lead researcher Nicholas Coles, PhD. 

Facial Expressions Affect People's Emotions 

Based on the team’s meta-analysis, facial expressions do, in fact, have a small impact on emotions. For instance, a person who smiles will feel happier, a person who scowls will feel angrier, and a person who frowns will feel sadder. While the effects aren’t very powerful or long-lasting, it is significant enough to show a correlation.  

According to researchers, their findings bring us closer to understanding how human emotions work and how the mind and body work together to shape how we experience emotions. That said, they do note that they are not saying that people can just smile their way to happiness, especially when it comes to mental health conditions such as depression. 

The study is published in Psychological Bulletin. 

Source: https://www.techtimes.com/articles/241396/20190413/smiling-can-actually-make-peoplehappier-study-finds.htm(adapted)Access: April 13th, 2019 

Cow Threat

Cows are walking machines. They transform materials (grass, hay, water, and feed) into finished products (milk, beef, leather, and so on).

As any factory, cows produce waste. Solid waste is eliminated through the rear end of these ‘complex machines’, and it is used as fertilizer.

The fermentation process in their four stomachs produces gas. These walking machines have two chimneys: one in the front end, and other in the rear end. Gaseous emissions through the front end chimney are called burps. Cows burp a lot. Every minute and half these burps release methane gas. Methane is dangerous to the planet because it contributes to the greenhouse effect.

The world population is growing very fast. That means there are more people eating beef. Consequently, there is more cattle – more walking machines – producing more methane gas.

This is the problem, but very few people want to change their eating habits. What about you?