Questões de Concurso Comentadas por alunos sobre substantivos e compostos | nouns and compounds em inglês

TEXT 

Dear Mayor Estrosi, Mayor Vivoni, Prime Minister

Manuel Valls, Former President Nicolas Sarkozy,

and other French officials who have supported

France’s burkini ban:

    My name is Amara Majeed, and I am a 19-yearold Muslim Sri Lankan American. I am a student at Brown University, studying cognitive neuroscience and public policy.

    When I look at the photo circulating of a woman in Nice being surrounded by armed police officers as she is coerced into removing her clothing, because French officials deemed the burkini to be inappropriate beach attire, I see infringement on a woman’s right to choose what she puts on her body by a group of white males. I see the scapegoating, ostracization, and criminalization of Muslims in the aftermath of the Nice terror attacks. I am a woman who wears the hijab, and I see an affront to the rights and civil liberties of women like me.

    Deputy Mayor of Nice, Christian Estrosi: You have stated that you support this ban on “inappropriate clothing” in the wake of the Nice terror attacks. Mayor Vivoni, you have described the burkini ban as a necessary measure to “protect the population.” Former French president Nicolas Sarkozy, you have labeled the burkini as a symbol of extremism.

    Let me respond to all of you by saying this: any conflation of the burkini with terrorism is invalid, virulent, and discriminatory. Tell me, in what way does our way of dress pose a threat to France’s national security? In what way does the burkini propagate hateful, violent ideologies? How is it that our way of dress poses a national security threat, yet some wetsuits, which take on strikingly similar designs to the burkini, aren’t? While France’s highest administrative court has now overturned the ban, the damage has already been done — this attack on the Muslim way of dress only serves as fodder to the already existing rising anti-Muslim sentiment and stigmatization of Muslims in France. If this institutionalized Islamophobia and fearmongering is being perpetrated by French officials and authorities, I fear how the general public’s poor treatment of hijab-clad women may be exacerbated in the coming weeks. We’re all well aware that hate crimes and violence targeting Muslim women wearing the hijab is not a new phenomenon in France.

    As one burkini-clad woman who was forced to leave the beach states, “Because people who have nothing to do with my religion have killed, I no longer have the right to go to the beach.” In the eyes of many authority figures, our religious identity in and of itself is incriminating. Our way of dress is incriminating. Our sheer existence is incriminating.

    Many of you have called the hijab an emblem of oppression. In April, France’s Minister for Women’s Rights equated women who choose to wear the hijab with “Negroes who were in favor of slavery.” More recently, France’s prime minister stated that the burkini is a tool of “enslavement,” and former French President Sarkozy insinuated that hijabclad women are imprisoned.

    I am genuinely tired of individuals like you imposing your brand of colonial feminism on us and telling us that we are oppressed, that we have been indoctrinated, that this was not our choice, and that we need to be unshackled. Instead of continuing to pursue these offensive and failing attempts at liberating us, I implore you to liberate yourselves from this white savior complex and recognize that we don’t need your saving. The hijab does not oppress me. For me, the hijab is a symbol of feminism and freedom of expression — so who are you to invalidate my experiences, to invalidate a fundamental, inextricable aspect of my identity, and to label me as enslaved, as imprisoned, as oppressed? By depriving us of our rights to dress the way we want, by making public spaces inaccessible to us, by publicly humiliating us and coercing us to remove some of our clothing while we are trying to enjoy a day at the beach — you are oppressing us.

    My news feed has been saturated with people posting photos of a Muslim woman at a beach being forced to strip, captioned with outrage and vitriol towards this form of discrimination. While your support of our rights is appreciated, I ask that you refrain from doing a disservice to this individual by circulating this photo. It may not seem like you are violating a woman’s privacy and liberties by sharing a picture revealing her arms or shoulders, but it is incumbent upon us to understand that she did not freely choose to show those parts of her body in public. Even if the intent is to excoriate the burkini ban while circulating these photos, I implore you to not be complicit, whether directly or indirectly, in systems of oppression that are stripping women, literally, of their right to choose what they wear.

Yours truly,

Amara Majeed – a muslin woman

(Source: http://www.bustle.com/articles/180721-an-open-letter-to-french-officials-who-support-the-burkini-ban-from-a-muslim-wo-man)

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The birth of a nation

     The most memorable writing in eighteenth-century America was done by the founding fathers, the men who led the American Revolution of 1775-1783 and wrote the constitution of 1989. But none of them were writers of fiction. Rather, they were practical philosophers, and their most typical product was the political pamphlet. They shared the European Enlightenment belief that human reason could understand both nature and man. Unlike the Puritans – who saw man as a sinful failure – the Enlightenment men were sure man could improve himself. They wanted to create a happy society based on justice and freedom.

     The writings of Benjamin Franklin (1706 -1790) show the Enlightenment spirit in America at its best and most optimistic. His style is quite modern and, even today, his works are a joy to read. At the same time, there’s something “anti-literary” about Franklin. He had no liking for poetry and felt that writing should always have a practical purpose.

     Almanacs, containing much useful information for farmers and sailors (about the next year’s weather, sea tides, etc.), were a popular form of practical literature. Together with the Bible and the newspaper, they were the most-widely read and often the only reading matter in most Colonial households. Franklin made his Almanac interesting by creating the character “Little Richard”. Each new edition continued a simple but realist story about Richard, his wife and family. He also included many “sayings” about saving money and working hard. Some of those are known to most Americans today:

     Lost time is never found again.

     God helps those who help themselves.

     In 1757 Franklin collected together the best of his sayings and published The Way to Wealth. This little book became one of the best-sellers of the Western World and was translated into many languages.

(Peter High. Outline of American Literature . Essex, Longman. 1996. Adaptado)

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    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)