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

INSTRUCTIONS: Read the following text and answer question.

It has been estimated that some 60 percent of today’sworld population is multilingual. Both from a contemporary and a historical perspective, bilingualism or multilingualism is the norm rather than the exception. It is fair, then, to say that throughout history foreign language learning has always been an important practical concern. Whereas today English is the world’s most widely studied foreign language, five hundred years ago it was Latin, for it was the dominant language of education, commerce, religion, and government in the Western world. In the sixteenth century, however, French, Italian, and English gained in importance as a result of political changes in Europe, and Latin gradually became displaced as a language of spoken and written communication.

As the status of Latin diminished from that of a living language to that of an “occasional” subject in the school curriculum, the study of Latin took on a different function. The study of classical Latin (the Latin in which the classical works of Virgil, Ovid, and Cicero were written) and an analysis of its grammar and rhetoric became the model for foreign language study from the seventeenth to the nineteenth centuries. Children entering “grammar school” in the sixteenth, seventeenth, and eighteenth centuries in England were initially given a rigorous introduction to Latin grammar, which was taught through rote learning of grammar rules, study of declensions and conjugations, translation, and practice in writing sample sentences, sometimes with the use of parallel bilingual texts and dialogue (Kelly 1969; Howatt 1984). Once basic proficiency was established, students were introduced to the advanced study of grammar and rhetoric. School learning must have been a deadening experience for children, for lapses in knowledge were often met with brutal punishment. There were occasional attempts to promote alternative approaches to education; Roger Ascham and Montaigne in the sixteenth century and Comenius and John Locke in the seventeenth century, for example, had made specific proposals for curriculum reform and for changes in the way Latin was taught (Kelly 1969; Howatt 1984), but since Latin (and, to a lesser extent, Greek) had for so long been regarded as the classical and therefore most ideal form of language, it was not surprising that ideas about the role of language study in the curriculum reflected the long-established status of Latin.

The decline of Latin also brought with it a new justification for teaching Latin. Latin was said to develop intellectual abilities, and the study of Latin grammar became an end in itself.

Source: RICHARDS, J.C.; RODGERS, T. S. Approaches

and Methods in Language Teaching. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 1999 (1st edition 1986). pp. 1-2.

TEXT 8

“As far as practical conditions and educational relevance are concerned, virtually no major change has occurred in order to justify reframing our teaching. However, in what concerns social relevance, it is undeniable that the growth of the Internet has provided a new context for the use of the English language outside schools. For that reason, it is my belief that skills other than reading may now be taught in our classes without representing a return to a rationale that is alien to our schools. The teaching of writing in the context of Internet genres and practices is definitely necessary, if we want our students to have their own voice, becoming able to project their own local identities in global contexts.”

ALMEIDA, R. L. T. The teaching of English as a foreign language in the context of Brazilian regular schools: a retrospective and prospective view of policies and practices. Revista Brasileira de Linguística Aplicada, Belo Horizonte, v. 12, n. 2, 2012, p. 347.