Questões de Concurso

    “English is the global language.” — a headline of this kind must have appeared in a thousand newspapers and magazines in recent years. “English Rules” is an actual example, presenting to the world an uncomplicated scenario suggesting the universality of the language’s spread and the likelihood of its continuation. A statement prominently displayed in the body of the associated article, memorable chiefly for its alliterative ingenuity, reinforces the initial impression: “The British Empire may be in full retreat with the handover of Hong Kong. But from Bengal to Belize and Las Vegas to Lahore, the language of the sceptered isle is rapidly becoming the first global lingua franca.” Millennial retrospectives and prognostications continued in the same vein, with several major newspapers and magazines finding in the subject of the English language an apt symbol for the themes of globalization, diversification, progress and identity addressed in their special editions.

      A language achieves a genuinely global status when it develops a special role that is recognized in every country. To achieve such a status, a language has to be taken up by other countries around the world. They must decide to give it a special place within their communities, even though they may have few (or no) mother-tongue speakers.

    Salman Rushdie comments that “the English language ceased to be the sole possession of the English some time ago”. Indeed, when even the largest English-speaking nation, the USA, turns out to have only about 20 percent of the world’s English speakers, it is plain that no one can now claim sole ownership. This is probably the best way of defining a genuinely global language, in fact: that its usage is not restricted by countries or by governing bodies.

David Crystal. English as a global language. Cambridge University Press, 2003. pp. 1-2;4;140-141 (adapted).

     Children are not being taught enough about plants at a time when they could be the answer to global warming, scientists have warned. This has led to people becoming “disconnected from the botanical world” of plants when understanding flora has become crucial to ecology. Even students starting masters’ degrees in biology lack a “basic” ability to identify plants, the new study claims.

       Data from the Higher Education Statistics Agency of the United Kingdom reveals just one student graduated in plant science for every 185 who graduated in other life sciences between 2007 and 2019. The lack of botanical knowledge means people can’t identify invasive species and that ecological damage is being done as trees are planted in the wrong places and wildflower meadows are damaged.

     Researchers argue “nature literacy” must become a core skill for professionals from planners, engineers, architects, and educators as much as it does to farmers, foresters, and fishermen. Researchers at the University of Leeds, in England, say plant ecology — which studies the distribution and abundance of plants, the effect of the environment on them and how they interact with the environment — is also not taught well enough. “We ignore the opportunities presented to us by the botanical world at our own peril,” said lead study author and doctoral student Seb Stroud.

       This data is also corroborated by the Scottish government, which said there are not enough skilled people to implement “nature-based solutions” to rising temperatures. The University of Leeds team also argued that people’s inability to identify plants could make the spread of invasive plants worse. The researchers conclude: “The extinction of botanical education will only continue to worsen unless we break the cycle of disconnection from the botanical world.”

Internet:<https://www.newsweek.com/>  (adapted).