Questões de Concurso

It is possible to find adjectives with ED suffix and ING suffix (e.g. bored and boring). What is the difference between them? 

TEXT 2 The taxi, an old Rover smelling of old cigarette smoke, trundled along the empty, country road at an unhurried pace. It was early afternoon at the very end of February, a magic winter day of bitter cold, frost, and pale, cloudless skies. The sun shone, sending long shadows, but there was little warmth in it, and the ploughed fields lay hard as iron. From the chimneys of scattered farmhouses and small stone cottages, smoke rose, straight as columns, up into the still air, and flocks of sheep, heavy with wool and incipient pregnancy, gathered around feeding troughs, stuffed with hay. Sitting in the back of the taxi, gazing through the dusty window, Penelope Keeling decided that she had never seen the familiar countryside look so beautiful. The road curved steeply; ahead stood the wooden signpost marking the lane that led to Temple Pudley. The driver slowed and with a painful change of gear, turned, bumping downhill between high and blinding hedges. Moments later they were in the village, with its golden Cotswold stone houses, newsagent butcher, the Sudeley Arms, and the church – set back from the street behind an ancient graveyard and the dark foliage of some suitably gloomy yews. There were few people about. The children were all in school, and the bitter weather kept others indoors. Only an old man, mittened and scarved, walked his ancient dog. “Which house is it?” the taxi driver inquired over his shoulder. She leaned forward, ridiculously excited and expectant. “Just a little way on. Through the village. The white gates on the right. They’re open. There! Here we are.” He turned in through the gates and the car drew up at the back of the house. She opened the door and got out, drawing her dark blue cape around her against the cold. She opened her bag and found her key, went to unlock the door. Behind her, the taxi driver manhandled open the boot of the car and lifted out her small suitcase. She turned to take it from him, but he held on to it, somewhat concerned. “is there nobody here to meet you?” “No. Nobody. I live alone, and everybody thinks I’m still in the hospital.” “Be all right, will you?” She smiled into his kindly face. He was quite young, with fair bushy hair. “Of course.” He hesitated, not wishing to presume. ‘If you want, I’ll carry the case in. Carry it upstairs, if needs be.’ “Oh, that’s kind of you. But I can easily manage…” “No bother.” He told her, and followed her into the kitchen. She opened the door, and led him up the narrow, cottage stairs. Everything smelt clinically clean. Mrs. Plackett, bless her heart, had not been wasting time during the few days of Penelope’s absence. She quite liked it when Penelope went away, because then she could do things like wash the white paint of the bannisters, and boil dusters, and buff up the brass and silver. Her bedroom door stood ajar. She went in, and the young man followed her, setting her case on the floor. “Anything else I can do?” he asked. “Not a thing. Now, how much do I owe you?” He told her, looking shamefaced, as though it were an embarrassment to him. She paid him, and told him to keep the change. He thanked her, and they went back down the stairs. But still he hung about, seeming reluctant to leave. He probably, she told herself, had some old granny, of his own, for whom he felt the same sort of responsibility. “You’ll be all right, then?” “I promise you. And tomorrow my friend Mrs. Plackett will come. So then I won’t be alone anymore.” This, for some reason, reassured him. “I’ll be off then.’” “No trouble.” PILCHER, Rosamund. The shell seekers. London: Coronet Books, Hodder and Stoughton,1989. p. 9-11.
In the sentence “The taxi, an old Rover smelling of old cigarette smoke, trundled along the empty, country road at an unhurried pace”, the words “empty” and “country” are used as

Analyse the sentence: “It is the world’s largest chain of hamburger restaurants with 31,000 eateries”. Choose the only alternative that gives a wrong example of a superlative adjective.

Why Bilinguals Are Smarter (By YUDHIJIT BHATTACHARJEE) 1. SPEAKING two languages rather than just one has obvious practical benefits in an increasingly globalized world. But in recent years, scientists have begun to show that the advantages of bilingualism are even more fundamental than being able to converse with a wider range of people. Being bilingual, it turns out, makes you smarter. It can have a profound effect on your brain, improving cognitive skills not related to language and even shielding against dementia in old age. 
2. This view of bilingualism is remarkably different from the understanding of bilingualism through much of the 20th century. Researchers, educators and policy makers long considered a second language to be an interference, cognitively speaking, that hindered a child’s academic and intellectual development. 
3. They were not wrong about the interference: there is ample evidence that in a bilingual’s brain both language systems are active even when he is using only one language, thus creating situations in which one system obstructs the other. But this interference, researchers are finding out, isn’t so much a handicap as a blessing in disguise. It forces the brain to resolve internal conflict, giving the mind a workout that strengthens its cognitive muscles. (…) 
4. The collective evidence from a number of such studies suggests that the bilingual experience improves the brain’s so-called executive function — a command system that directs the attention processes that we use for planning, solving problems and performing various other mentally demanding tasks. These processes include ignoring distractions to stay focused, switching attention willfully from one thing to another and holding information in mind — like remembering a sequence of directions while driving. (…) 
5. The key difference between bilinguals and monolinguals may be more basic: a heightened ability to monitor the environment. “Bilinguals have to switch languages quite often — you may talk to your father in one language and to your mother in another language,” says Albert Costa, a researcher at the University of Pompeu Fabra in Spain. “It requires keeping track of changes around you in the same way that we monitor our surroundings when driving.” In a study comparing German-Italian bilinguals with Italian monolinguals on monitoring tasks, Mr. Costa and his colleagues found that the bilingual subjects not only performed better, but they also did so with less activity in parts of the brain involved in monitoring, indicating that they were more efficient at it. (…) 
6. Bilingualism’s effects also extend into the twilight years. In a recent study of 44 elderly Spanish-English bilinguals, scientists led by the neuropsychologist Tamar Gollan of the University of California, San Diego, found that individuals with a higher degree of bilingualism — measured through a comparative evaluation of proficiency in each language — were more resistant than others to the onset of dementia and other symptoms of Alzheimer’s disease: the higher the degree of bilingualism, the later the age of onset. 
7. Nobody ever doubted the power of language. But who would have imagined that the words we hear and the sentences we speak might be leaving such a deep imprint? 
(Source: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/03/18/opinion/sunday/thebenefits-of-bilingualism.html?_r=0. Acesso: 04/02/2013)
The words globalized (paragraph 01), considered (paragraph 02), blessing (paragraph 03), and like (paragraph 04), are respectively presented in text as: