Questões de Inglês - Sinônimos | Synonyms para Concurso

Read the extract of the song GIVE ME LO VE by ED Sheeram and answer

Told you l ’d let them go

And TU fight my comer

Maybe tonight Til call ya

After my blood turns into alcohol

No I just wanna hold ya

Give a little time to me, we’ll burn this out

We’ll play hide and seek, to turn this around

All I want is the taste that your lips allow

Give me love like never before

‘Cause lately /Ve been craving more

And it’s been a while but I still feel the same

Maybe I should let you go

Michael Joseph Jackson’s story was an American tale of celebrity and excess that took him from musical boy wonder to global pop superstar to sad figure haunted by lawsuits, paparazzi and failed plastic surgery.

At the height of his career, Mr. Jackson was indisputably the biggest star in the world; he sold more than 750 million albums. He spent a lifetime surprising people, in his last years mainly because of a surreal personal life, lurid legal scandals, serial plastic surgeries and erratic public behaviorthat turned him — on his very best days — into the butt of late-night talk-show jokes and tabloid headlines.

Mr. Jackson died atage 50 in Los Angeles on June25,2009. His death itself became an enormous spectacle. On television and on the Internet, tens of millions of people worldwide watched a memorial Service at the Staples Center in Los Angeles.

The cause of Mr. Jackson’s death was a mixture of the powerful anesthetic propofol and the anti-anxiety drug lorazepam, according to the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office.

Two days after Mr. Jackson’s death his personal doctor, Conrad Murray, told detectives that he had been using propofol nearly daily for the last two months to help Mr. Jackson sleep. But he said that he had been trying to wean Mr. Jackson off the drug and had tried sedatives instead. Dr. Murray was charged with involuntary manslaughter for providing him with propofol.

                                                                                             Adapted from New York Times, Nov. 29, 2011

                  UNEARTHED: REMAINS OF THE EARLIEST KNOWN TSUNAMI VICTIM

                                                                                             By Charles Choi | October 25, 2017 1:00 pm

Paragraph 1 Tsunamis have claimed hundreds of thousands of lives in the past two decades. Now a new study finds that a 6,000-year-old skull may come from the earliest known victim of these killer waves.

Paragraph 2 The partial human skull was discovered in 1929 buried in a mangrove swamp outside the small town of Aitape Papua New Guinea, about 500 miles north of Australia. Scientists originally thought it belonged to an ancient extinct human species, Homo erectus. However, subsequent research dated it to about 5,000 or 6,000 years in age, suggesting that it instead belonged to a modern human.

A Rare Specimen

Paragraph 3 The skull is one of just two examples of ancient human remains found in Papua New Guinea after more than a century of work there. As such, archaeologists wanted to learn more about this skull to elucidate how people settled this region.

Paragraph 4 The scientists went back to where this skull was found and sampled the soil in which it was discovered. They focused on details such as sediment grain size and composition.

Paragraph 5 In the sediment, the researchers discovered a range of microscopic organisms from the ocean known as diatoms. These were similar to ones found in the soil after a 1998 tsunami killed more than 2,000 people in Papua New Guinea — for instance, their shells of silica were broken, likely by extremely powerful forces.

Paragraph 6 These diatom shells, combined with the chemical compositions and the size ranges of the grains, all suggest that a tsunami occurred when the skull was buried. The researchers suggested the catastrophe either directly killed the person or ripped open their grave.

Paragraph 7 Tsunamis, which are giant waves caused by earthquakes, volcanic eruptions or underwater landslides, are some of the deadliest natural disasters known. The 2004 tsunami in the Indian Ocean killed more than 230,000 people, a higher death toll than any fire or hurricane.

Paragraph 8 The site where the skull was found is currently about 7.5 miles away from the coast. Still, the researchers noted that back when whoever the skull belonged to was alive, sea levels were higher, and the area would have been just behind the shoreline.

Paragraph 9 The waves of the tsunami that hit Papua New Guinea in 1998 reached more than 50 feet high and penetrated up to three miles inland. “If the event we have identified resulted from a similar process, it could have also resulted in extremely high waves,” study co-lead author Mark Golitko, an archaeologist at the University of Notre Dame in Indiana and the Field Museum in Chicago.

Paragraph 10 These results show “that coastal populations have been vulnerable to such events for thousands of years,” Golitko said. “People have managed to live with such unpredictable and destructive occurrences, but it highlights how vulnerable people living near the sea can be. Given the far larger populations that live along coastlines today, the potential impacts are far more severe now.”

Paragraph 11 Golitko plans to return to the area over the next few years “to further study the frequency of such events, how the environment changed over time, and how people have coped with the environmental challenges of living in that environment.” He and his colleagues detailed their findings Wednesday in the journal PLOS O.

                                     Retrieved and adapted from:

<http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/d-brief/2017/10/25/first-tsunami-victim/#.WfYiYmhSzIU>

                                Accessed on October, 29th, 2017. 

 Para responder a questão, considere o texto a seguir:                          

Environmental law in Brazil

      BRAZIL’S gridlocked Congress often ends up passing contentious laws only after the combatants collapse in exhaustion. So it is with the revision of the Forest Code, a set of rules that, ...A... the name, apply to all privately owned rural land, not just plots in wooded areas. The code, originally approved in 1965, requires owners to keep native vegetation on parts of their land − 80% in the Amazon, less elsewhere − and in erosion-prone and biodiverse areas such as riverbanks and mangrove swamps. But it was long ignored.

      Since harsher penalties and enforcement were introduced in the late 1990s the ruralistas, as Brazil’s powerful farming lobby is known, have been trying to revise the code. On April 25th, after 13 years of arguments, rewrites and stalling, the final text landed on the desk of the president, Dilma Rousseff. It was far from the version she wanted. Two government defeats in the ruralista-packed lower house meant it contained few of her own previous revisions or those of the more green-friendly Senate.

      The president faced a difficult choice: to scrap the text and start again − which would probably be taken as a declaration of war by the ruralistas − or to make the best of a bad job. She chose the latter. On May 25th ministers went to Congress to say that the president would veto 12 of the new code’s 84 articles and make 32 smaller cuts. The resulting holes would be backfilled in a separate executive decree. Only on May 28th were the details published.

       Under Ms Rousseff’s veto, the amnesty sought by ruralistas will apply only to smallholders, who will still have to replant 20% of their plots. Everyone else will have five years to right past wrongs and add their properties to a new Rural Environmental Register. Holdouts will be denied bank loans and face prosecution.

      Rubens Ricupero, one of ten former environment ministers consulted by the president before the veto, praises her attempt to strike a balance. Treating small landowners more leniently was both practical, he thinks − they account for 90% of rural properties by number but just 24% by area − and socially just: few could afford much replanting.

(Adapted from http://www.economist.com/node/21556245?zid=305&ah=417bd5664dc76da5d98af4f7a640fd8a) 

Read TEXT 3 and answer question.  

TEXT 3  

THE PAPERLESS CLASSROOM IS COMING  

Michael Scherer

Back-to-school night this year in Mr. G’s sixth-grade classroom felt a bit like an inquisition.

Teacher Matthew Gudenius, a boyish, 36-year-old computer whiz who runs his class like a preteen tech startup, had prepared 26 PowerPoint slides filled with facts and footnotes to deflect the concerns of parents. But time was short, the worries were many, and it didn’t take long for the venting to begin.

“I like a paper book. I don’t like an e-book,” one father told him, as about 30 adults squeezed into a room for 22 students. Another dad said he could no longer help his son with homework because all the assignments were online. “I’m now kind of taking out of the routine.”, he complained. Rushing to finish, Gudenius passed a slide about the debate over teaching cursive, mumbling, “We don’t care about handwriting.” In a flash a mother objected: “Yeah, we do.”

At issue was far more than penmanship. The future of K-12 education is arriving fast, and it looks a lot like Mr. G’s classroom in the northern foothills of California’s wine country. Last year, President Obama announced a federal effort to get a laptop, tablet or smartphone into the hands of every student in every school in the U.S. and to pipe in enough bandwidth to get all 49.8 million American kids online simultaneously by 2017. Bulky textbooks will be replaced by flat screens. Worksheets will be stored in the cloud, not clunky Trapper Keepers. The Dewey decimal system will give way to Google. “This one is a big, big deal,” says Secretary of Education Arne Duncan.

It’s a deal Gudenius has been working to realize for years. He doesn’t just teach a computer on every student’s desk; he also tries to do it without any paper at all, saving, by his own estimate, 46,800 sheets a year, or about four trees. The paperless learning environment, while not the goals of most fledgling programs, represents the ultimate result of technology transforming classroom.

Gudenius started teaching as a computer-lab instructor, seeing students for just a few hours each month. That much time is still the norm for most kids. American schools have about 3.6 students for every classroom computing device, according to Education Market Research, and only 1 in 5 school buildings has the wiring to get all students online at once. But Gudenius always saw computers as a tool, not a subject. “We don’t have a paper-and-pencil lab, he says. When you are learning to be a mechanic, you don’t go to a wrench lab.”

Ask his students if they prefer the digital to the tree-based technology and everyone will say yes. It is not unusual for kids to groan when the bell rings because they don’t want to leave their work, which is often done in ways that were impossible just a few years ago. Instead of telling his students to show their work when they do an algebra equation, Gudenius asks them to create and narrate a video about the process, which can then be shown in class. History lessons are enlivened by brief videos that run on individual tablets. And spelling, grammar and vocabulary exercises have the feel of a game, with each student working at his own speed, until Gudenius – who tracks the kids’ progress on a smartphone – gives commands like “Spin it” to let the kids know to flip the screens of their devices around so that he can see their work and begin the next lesson.

Source: TIME- How to Eat Now. Education: The Paperless Classroom is Coming, p. 36-37; October 20, 2014 

Text 3

The Assistants, by Camille Perri

Chapter 1

In less than a second I was at his desk, notepad in hand. Behind me a wall of flat-screens flashed the news being broadcast by Titan and its so-called competitors. Robert had the uncanny ability to devote a small portion of his gaze to each screen simultaneously. In all he owned nine satellite television networks, one hundred seventy-five newspapers, one hundred cable channels, forty book imprints, forty television stations, and one movie studio. His total audience reached around 4.7 billion people, which came out to around three-fourths of the population of the entire globe. But the news was his baby. He was never not watching it, analyzing it, shaping it. That’s why he situated his office at Titan News headquarters, where he could keep close watch not only on his wall of flat-screens but also on his journalists. A man as powerful as Robert could have hidden himself anywhere, pulling at the strings of the world from a lounge chair in the Seychelles, unseen by his employees—but he needed to be here at the center of it all, at the hub.

Our office didn’t look like a newsroom that you’d imagine from movies or TV drama series. The floors below ours were more like that—the broadcast, print media, and digital newsrooms, each of which could have easily passed for something out of The Matrix. And there was an entire floor of flashy studios used for our non-stop news coverage and thrill-a-minute opinion shows. But our office on the fortieth floor was far less exciting, just row after row of desks and cubicles. Still, we were the brain of the whole operation, the source from which all orders trickled down. Titan’s chief editors and all of Robert’s most trusted deputies had desks on our floor so Robert could pull them into impromptus with the business leaders and celebrities he met with— and so he could foster relationships between them and the political-party representatives (yes, from both parties) who came to lobby him. I guess what I’m trying to say is, what the fortieth floor lacked in flash it made up for in influence.

(Taken from http://www.penguinrandomhouse.com/books/317172/the-assistants-by-perri-camille/9780399172540/)

Text 2

The Case for Executive Assistants

Melba J. Duncan

Among the most striking details of the corporate era depicted in the AMC series Mad Men, along with constant smoking and mid-day drinking, is the army of secretaries who populate Sterling Cooper, the 1960s ad agency featured in the show. The secretary of those days has gone the way of the carbon copy and been replaced by the executive assistant, now typically reserved for senior management. Technologies like e-mail, voice mail, mobile devices, and online calendars have allowed managers at all levels to operate with a greater degree of self-sufficiency. At the same time, companies have faced enormous pressure to cut costs, reduce head count, and flatten organizational structures. As a result, the numbers of assistants at lower corporate levels have dwindled in most corporations. That’s unfortunate, because effective assistants can make enormous contributions to productivity at all levels of the organization.

At very senior levels, the return on investment from a skilled assistant can be substantial. Consider a senior executive whose total compensation package is $1 million annually, who works with an assistant who earns $80,000. For the organization to break even, the assistant must make the executive 8% more productive than he or she would be working solo—for instance, the assistant needs to save the executive roughly five hours in a 60-hour workweek. In reality, good assistants save their bosses much more than that. They ensure that meetings begin on time with prep material delivered in advance. They optimize travel schedules and enable remote decision making, keeping projects on track. And they filter the distractions that can turn a manager into a reactive type who spends all day answering e-mail instead of a leader who proactively sets the organization’s agenda. As Robert Pozen writes in this issue: A top-notch assistant "is crucial to being productive."

That’s true not only for top executives. In their zeal to cut administrative expenses, many companies have gone too far, leaving countless highly paid middle and upper managers to arrange their own travel, file expense reports, and schedule meetings. Some companies may be drawn to the notion of egalitarianism they believe this assistant-less structure represents—when workers see the boss loading paper into the copy machine, the theory goes, a ―we’re all in this together‖ spirit is created. But as a management practice, the structure rarely makes economic sense. Generally speaking, work should be delegated to the lowest-cost employee who can do it well. (I)................. companies have embraced this logic by outsourcing work to vendors or to operations abroad, back at headquarters they ignore it, forcing top talent to misuse their time. As a longtime recruiter for executive assistants, I’ve worked with many organizations suffering from the same problem: There’s too much administrative work and too few assistants to whom it can be assigned.

Granting middle managers access to an assistant—or shared resources—can give a quick boost to productivity even at lean, well-run companies. Firms should also think about the broader developmental benefits of providing assistants for up-and-coming managers. The real payoff may come when the manager arrives in a job a few levels up better prepared and habitually more productive. An experienced assistant can be particularly helpful if the manager is a new hire. The assistant becomes a crucial on-boarding resource, helping the manager read and understand the organizational culture, guiding him or her through its different (and difficult) personalities, and serving as a sounding board during the crucial acclimation. In this way, knowledgeable assistants are more than a productivity asset: They’re reverse mentors, using their experience to teach new executives how people are expected to behave at that level in the organization.

(Extract taken from https://hbr.org/2011/05/the-case-for-executive-assistants, in 12/01/2017)

TEXT 1

What is administrative excellence?

Administrative Professionals perform some of the toughest functions in an office. Not only are you required to keep pace with ever-changing technology, you need to work with and through many people to meet deadlines, resolve conflicts, gather information, and coordinate schedules and logistics. Additionally, you are often the first point-of-contact for customers – your competence and professionalism in meeting their demands might be one of the most important factors in how your organization is perceived in the marketplace. To satisfy the needs of so many, your technical skills and your interpersonal skills must be well-balanced to generate efficient and effective results.

Administrative excellence pertains to the quality of work and the caliber of service that you provide in carrying out your responsibilities. Excellence by definition exceeds the routine expectations of managers, coworkers, and other customers, but it is a standard first set by you. It is something that many aspire to and work hard to deliver. I once read that excellence means "you are better today than you were yesterday, but not as good as you will be tomorrow." With that understanding, you can see there is no finish line. Excellence is a commitment to continually do and give your best.

Although we each have personal standards and differing values in terms of excellence, there are a few things that help to streamline administrative efforts in reaching high levels of job performance. Here are what I considered to be the "5Ps" of administrative excellence:

1. Perception – Self-awareness of behaviors and skills that maximize strengths and minimize weaknesses.

Know yourself and what you like and what you dislike about your job. Pay attention to those activities that excite and engage you. Typically, these are things that come naturally or easily for you – your strengths. Find opportunities to do more of what you love to do – you’ll be happier and more satisfied with your work. Take control and find solutions for those parts of your job that are less fulfilling so that your emotions and attitude don’t work against you.

2. Purpose – Understanding the importance of job responsibilities and identifying with the overall objectives of the team, department, and organization.

It’s one thing to know how to do your job, but it’s more important to know why you do what you do. Understanding your role in the bigger picture of organizational success helps to ignite feelings of inclusion and professional pride.

3. Progress – Ability to think progressively for continuous personal and professional improvement.

Challenge yourself to try new things and new ways of doing routine things. Don’t let yourself stagnate or become too comfortable – seize opportunities to showcase your skills or push self-imposed limitations. People rarely gain a professional edge when others can’t see or don’t know what they are capable of achieving.

4. Partnership – Willingness and ability to foster good relationships and teamwork with coworkers, managers, and customers.

Good relationships are the foundation for resourcefulness in your job. Treat others with respect. Do what you say you will do, offer to help others, exhibit a sense of urgency in responding to requests, and extend common courtesy – when others reciprocate, a trusting partnership is formed.

5. Professionalism – High standards of appearance, personal conduct, work product, and expertise.

Don’t leave doubts in the minds of others. Match image with skills and knowledge to help shape the thoughts and experiences of others. Continue to learn and produce accurate, timely work and your reputation and credibility will "speak for itself."

There are many other measurements of excellence. Find things that are unique about you and make your pathway to excellence your own. No one else will do it or achieve it in exactly the same manner. It’s often the small things that make a person stand out in a big way. Several years ago, a manager described his admin’s stellar performance in this way, "I don’t know how else to explain it…everything she does for me comes back just a little bit better than I expected it to." That’s a strong endorsement for administrative excellence – a little effort, a lot of admiration.

©Administrative Excellence – 2010 (Adapted from: https://adminexcellence.wordpress.com/2010/03/16/what-is-administrative-excellence/, in 12/01/2017)