Questões de Concurso Sobre sinônimos | synonyms em inglês

TOURISM IN TURKEY

Turkey's Tourism Took a Hit in 2016

by Isabel von Kessel,

Jul 13, 2017  

Several major terrorist attacks in(1)____ Ankara, Istanbul and Diyarbakir, as well as an attempted coup d'état one year ago, made 2016 one of the worst years for (2)_____ Turkish tourism industry. After a ten-year-high of nearly 36,8 million visitors arriving in 2014, Turkey is facing a severe backlash that is hitting its tourism sector the hardest. Following the coup on 15 July 2016 and subsequent purges in Turkey, foreign visitor numbers have dropped dramatically (70 percent). By the end of last year visitor numbers fell to 25,4 million. While European holidaymakers and business people (notably the British and Germans) are still reluctant to pay a visit to Turkey, visitor numbers nevertheless increased from January to May 2017 by 16.3 percent when compared to the same time frame of the previous year. However, Russian citizens are increasingly making up for the declining tourist numbers from other countries: with more than 928,000 visitors coming from Russia up until the end of May, Germany was displaced as (3)_____ largest source of tourism for Turkey. (…)  

Source:https://www.statista.com/chart/10270/tourism-in-turkey/(adapted)

Access:22^nd April, 2019  

TEXT II

What to Know About the Controversy Surrounding the Movie Green Book

Depending on who you ask, Green Book is either the pinnacle of movie magic or a whitewashing sham. 

The film, which took home the prize for Best Picture at the 91st Academy Awards, as well as honors for Mahershala Ali as Best Supporting Actor and Nick Vallelonga, Brian Currie and Peter Farrelly for Best Original Screenplay, depicts the burgeoning friendship between a black classical pianist and his ItalianAmerican driver as they travel the 1960s segregated South on a concert tour. But while Green Book was an awards frontrunner all season, its road to Oscar night was riddled with missteps and controversies over its authenticity and racial politics. 

Green Book is about the relationship between two real-life people: Donald Shirley and Tony “Lip” Vallelonga. Shirley was born in 1927 and grew up in a well-off black family in Florida, where he emerged as a classical piano prodigy: he possessed virtuosic technique and a firm grasp of both classical and pop repertoire. He went on to perform regularly at Carnegie Hall— right below his regal apartment—and work with many prestigious orchestras, like the Chicago Symphony and the New York Philharmonic. But at a time when prominent black classical musicians were few and far between due to racist power structures, he never secured a spot in the upper echelons of the classical world. (African Americans still only make up 1.8 percent of musicians playing in orchestras nationwide, according to a recent study.) 

Vallelonga was born in 1930 to working-class Italian parents and grew up in the Bronx. As an adult he worked as a bouncer, a maître d’ and a chauffeur, and he was hired in 1962 to drive Shirley on a concert tour through the Jim Crow South. The mismatched pair spent one and a half years together on the road — though it’s condensed to just a couple of months in the film — wriggling out of perilous situations and learning about each other’s worlds. Vallelonga would later become an actor and land a recurring role on The Sopranos. 

In the 1980s, Vallelonga’s son, Nick, approached his father and Shirley about making a movie about their friendship. For reasons that are now contested, Shirley rebuffed these requests at the time. […]

(Source: from http://time.com/5527806/green-book-movie-controversy/)

TEXT I

Critical Literacy, EFL and Citizenship

We believe that a sense of active citizenship needs to be developed and schools have an important role in the process. If we agree that language is discourse, and that it is in discourse that we construct our meanings, then we may perceive the foreign language classrooms in our schools as an ideal space for discussing the procedures for ascribing meanings to the world. In a foreign language we learn different interpretive procedures, different ways to understand the world. If our foreign language teaching happens in a critical literacy perspective, then we also learn that such different ways to interpret reality are legitimized and valued according to socially and historically constructed criteria that can be collectively reproduced and accepted or questioned and changed. Hence our view of the EFL classroom, at least in Brazil, as an ideal space for the development of citizenship: the EFL classrooms can adopt a critical discursive view of reality that helps students see claims to truth as arbitrary, and power as a transitory force which, although being always present, is also in permanent change, in a movement that constantly allows for radical transformation. The EFL classroom can thus raise students’ perception of their role in the transformation of society, once it might provide them with a space where they are able to challenge their own views, to question where different perspectives (including those allegedly present in the texts) come from and where they lead to. By questioning their assumptions and those perceived in the texts, and in doing so also broadening their views, we claim students will be able to see themselves as critical subjects, capable of acting upon the world.

[…] 

We believe that there is nothing wrong with using the mother tongue in the foreign language classroom, since strictly speaking, the mother tongue is also foreign - it’s not “mine”, but “my mother’s”: it was therefore foreign as I first learned it and while I was learning to use its interpretive procedures. When using critical literacy in the teaching of foreign languages we assume that a great part of the discussions proposed in the FL class may happen in the mother tongue. Such discussions will bring meaning to the classroom, moving away from the notion that only simple ideas can be dealt with in the FL lesson because of the students’ lack of proficiency to produce deeper meanings and thoughts in the FL. Since the stress involved in trying to understand a foreign language is eased, students will be able to bring their “real” world to their English lessons and, by so doing, discussions in the mother tongue will help students learn English as a social practice of meaning-making.

(Source: Adapted from JORDÃO, C. M. & FOGAÇA, F. C. Critical Literacy in The English Language Classroom. DELTA, vol. 28, no 1, São Paulo, p. 69-84, 2012. Retrieved from http://www.scielo.br/pdf/delta/v28n1a04.pdf). 

(Source:http://www.revasolutions.com/internet-of-things-newchallenges-and-practices-for-information-governance/. Retrieved on January 26th, 2018) 

Governance Challenges for the Internet of Things

Virgilio A.F. Almeida -Federal University of Minas Gerais, Brazil

Danilo Doneda - Rio de Janeiro State University

Marília Monteiro - Public Law Institute of Brasília

Published by the IEEE Computer Society

© 2015 

The future will be rich with sensors capable of collecting vast amounts of information. The Internet will be almost fused with the physical world as the Internet of Things (IoT) becomes a reality. Although it’s just beginning, experts estimate that by the end of 2015 there will be around 25 billion “things” connected to the global Internet. By 2025, the estimated number of connected devices should reach 100 billion. These estimates include smartphones, vehicles, appliances, and industrial equipment. Privacy, security, and safety fears grow as the IoT creates conditions for increasing surveillance by governments and corporations. So the question is: Will the IoT be good for the many, or the mighty few? 

While technological aspects of the IoT have been extensively published in the technical literature, few studies have addressed the IoT’s social and political impacts. Two studies have shed light on challenges for the future with the IoT. In 2013, the European Commission (EC) published a study focusing on relevant aspects for possible IoT governance regimes. The EC report identified many challenges for IoT governance — namely privacy, security, ethics, and competition. In 2015, the US Federal Trade Commission (FTC) published the FTC Staff Report The Internet of Things: Privacy and Security in a Connected World. Although the report emphasizes the various benefits that the IoT will bring to consumers and citizens, it acknowledges that there are many risks associated with deploying IoT-based applications, especially in the realm of privacy and security. 

[…] 

The nature of privacy and security problems frequently associated with the IoT indicates that further research, analysis, and discussion are needed to identify possible solutions. First, the introduction of security and privacy elements in the very design of sensors, implementing Privacy by Design, must be taken into account for outcomes such as the homologation process of sensors by competent authorities. Even if the privacy governance of IoT can oversee the control centers for collected data, we must develop concrete means to set limits on the amount or nature of the personal data collected. 

Other critical issues regard notification and consent. If, from one side, it’s true that several sensors are already collecting as much personal data as possible, something must be done to increase citizens’ awareness of these data collection processes. Citizens must have means to take measures to protect their rights whenever necessary. If future scenarios indicate the inadequacy of a mere notice-and-consent approach, alternatives must be presented so that the individual’s autonomy isn’t eroded. 

As with other technologies that aim to change human life, the IoT must be in all respects designed with people as its central focus. Privacy and ethics aren’t natural aspects to be considered in technology’s agenda. However, these features are essential to build the necessary trust in an IoT ecosystem, making it compatible with human rights and ensuring that it’s drafted at the measure, and not at the expense, of people. 

(Source: https://cyber.harvard.edu/~valmeida/pdf/IoT-governance.pdf Retrieved on January 23rd, 2018)  

TEXT I

In Europe, Weber still rules

Statecrafting

Jul 13, 2016

Steven Van de Walle

True, many tools and management practices associated with the NPM such as staff performance talks or management by objectives have become very common. Across all countries, the almost 7000 top civil servants we surveyed list achieving results and ensuring an efficient use of resources among the most important roles they have. They are also in agreement that, compared to five years ago, the public sector has made major progress in terms of efficiency and service quality — two main objectives of the NPM.

There are ‘NPM champions’ — countries that have gone further than others in reforming the Weberian state. Think the UK or the Netherlands, where public employment is increasingly normalised, and delivery contracted out. But even there, the structures of traditional public administration remain firmly in place.

Some elements of the NPM are still mainly absent from current management practice in European countries. Internal steering by contract is not very common, and performance related pay is very rare despite the popularity in reform talk. The weak presence of flexible employment also shows that the Weberian model still dominates. Despite attempts to normalize public employment in some countries, civil servants still enjoy a unique statute. We also observed this during the fiscal crisis, where outright firing permanent civil servants or cutting salaries has been relatively rare.

For civil servants, referring issues upwards in the hierarchy is still the dominant response in situations when responsibilities or interests conflict with that of other organisations. European top civil servants consider the impartial implementation of laws and rules as one of their dominant roles, and largely prefer state provision of services over market provision, with the exception of the British, Danish, and Dutch.

There are clear country differences, with management ‘champions’ such as the UK, Estonia, Norway and the Netherlands, and more legalistic and traditional public administrations such as in Austria, France, Germany, Hungary and Spain. The adoption of newer reform ideas suggest that the Weberian state may now be in decline. Yet some of the other findings of the survey, reported above, show that Weberianism’s main ideas are still deeply embedded in European countries.

(Source: https://statecrafting.net/in-europe-weber-still-rulesa851866dbf02. Retrieved on January 21st, 2018)

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?