Questões de Concurso Sobre inglês

How trade can become a gateway to climate resilience

    Most people don't think about climate change when they lift a café latte to their lips or nibble on a square of chocolate — but this could soon change.

    Based on current trajectories, around a quarter of Brazil’s coffee farms and 37% of Indonesia’s are likely to be lost to climate change. Swathes of Ghana and Côte d’Ivoire — where most of the world’s chocolate is sourced — will become too hot to grow cocoa by 2050.

    Climate-related droughts and deadly heatwaves across the world have coincided with severe storms, cyclones, hurricanes, and, of course, a pandemic. As a consequence of these shocks, millions of people have been left without homes, and a growing number of people now face starvation and a total collapse of livelihoods as growing and exporting staple crops becomes untenable.

    We must immediately rethink the shape of our economies, agricultural systems and consumption patterns. Our priority is to manufacture climate resilience in global economies and societies — and we must do it quickly.

    Trade can kickstart the emergence of climate-resilient economies, especially in the poorest countries. Trade has a multiplier effect on economies by driving production growth and fostering the expansion of export industries. By shifting focus to production and exports that increase climate resilience, there is potential to exponentially increase the land surface and trade processes prepared to withstand the climate crisis.

Adapted from: https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/07/trade-can-be-agateway-to-climate-resilience 

Adding ethics to public finance

    Evolutionary moral psychologists point the way to garnering broader support for fiscal policies

    Policy decisions on taxation and public expenditures intrinsically reflect moral choices. How much of your hard-earned money is it fair for the state to collect through taxes? Should the rich pay more? Should the state provide basic public services such as education and health care for free to all citizens? And so on.

    Economists and public finance practitioners have traditionally focused on economic efficiency. When considering distributional issues, they have generally steered clear of moral considerations, perhaps fearing these could be seen as subjective. However, recent work by evolutionary moral psychologists suggests that policies can be better designed and muster broader support if policymakers consider the full range of moral perspectives on public finance. A few pioneering empirical applications of this approach in the field of economics have shown promise.

    For the most part, economists have customarily analyzed redistribution in a way that requires users to provide their own preferences with regard to inequality: Tell economists how much you care about inequality, and they can tell you how much redistribution is appropriate through the tax and benefit system. People (or families or households) have usually been considered as individuals, and the only relevant characteristics for these exercises have been their incomes, wealth, or spending potential.

    There are two — understandable but not fully satisfactory — reasons for this approach. First, economists often wish to be viewed as objective social scientists. Second, most public finance scholars have been educated in a tradition steeped in values of societies that are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). In this context, individuals are at the center of the analysis, and morality is fundamentally about the golden rule — treat other people the way that you would want them to treat you, regardless of who those people are. These are crucial but ultimately insufficient perspectives on how humans make moral choices.

    Evolutionary moral psychologists during the past couple of decades have shown that, faced with a moral dilemma, humans decide quickly what seems right or wrong based on instinct and later justify their decision through more deliberate reasoning. Based on evidence presented by these researchers, our instincts in the moral domain evolved as a way of fostering cooperation within a group, to help ensure survival. This modern perspective harks back to two moral philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment — David Hume and Adam Smith — who noted that sentiments are integral to people’s views on right and wrong. But most later philosophers in the Western tradition sought to base morality on reason alone.

    Moral psychologists have recently shown that many people draw on moral perspectives that go well beyond the golden rule. Community, authority, divinity, purity, loyalty, and sanctity are important considerations not only in many non-Western countries, but also among politically influential segments of the population in advanced economies, as emphasized by proponents of moral foundations theory.

    Regardless of whether one agrees with those broader moral perspectives, familiarity with them makes it easier to understand the underlying motivations for various groups’ positions in debates on public policies. Such understanding may help in the design of policies that can muster support from a wide range of groups with differing moral values.

Adapted from: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/Addingethics-to-public-finance-Mauro

Adding ethics to public finance

    Evolutionary moral psychologists point the way to garnering broader support for fiscal policies

    Policy decisions on taxation and public expenditures intrinsically reflect moral choices. How much of your hard-earned money is it fair for the state to collect through taxes? Should the rich pay more? Should the state provide basic public services such as education and health care for free to all citizens? And so on.

    Economists and public finance practitioners have traditionally focused on economic efficiency. When considering distributional issues, they have generally steered clear of moral considerations, perhaps fearing these could be seen as subjective. However, recent work by evolutionary moral psychologists suggests that policies can be better designed and muster broader support if policymakers consider the full range of moral perspectives on public finance. A few pioneering empirical applications of this approach in the field of economics have shown promise.

    For the most part, economists have customarily analyzed redistribution in a way that requires users to provide their own preferences with regard to inequality: Tell economists how much you care about inequality, and they can tell you how much redistribution is appropriate through the tax and benefit system. People (or families or households) have usually been considered as individuals, and the only relevant characteristics for these exercises have been their incomes, wealth, or spending potential.

    There are two — understandable but not fully satisfactory — reasons for this approach. First, economists often wish to be viewed as objective social scientists. Second, most public finance scholars have been educated in a tradition steeped in values of societies that are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). In this context, individuals are at the center of the analysis, and morality is fundamentally about the golden rule — treat other people the way that you would want them to treat you, regardless of who those people are. These are crucial but ultimately insufficient perspectives on how humans make moral choices.

    Evolutionary moral psychologists during the past couple of decades have shown that, faced with a moral dilemma, humans decide quickly what seems right or wrong based on instinct and later justify their decision through more deliberate reasoning. Based on evidence presented by these researchers, our instincts in the moral domain evolved as a way of fostering cooperation within a group, to help ensure survival. This modern perspective harks back to two moral philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment — David Hume and Adam Smith — who noted that sentiments are integral to people’s views on right and wrong. But most later philosophers in the Western tradition sought to base morality on reason alone.

    Moral psychologists have recently shown that many people draw on moral perspectives that go well beyond the golden rule. Community, authority, divinity, purity, loyalty, and sanctity are important considerations not only in many non-Western countries, but also among politically influential segments of the population in advanced economies, as emphasized by proponents of moral foundations theory.

    Regardless of whether one agrees with those broader moral perspectives, familiarity with them makes it easier to understand the underlying motivations for various groups’ positions in debates on public policies. Such understanding may help in the design of policies that can muster support from a wide range of groups with differing moral values.

Adapted from: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/Addingethics-to-public-finance-Mauro

Adding ethics to public finance

    Evolutionary moral psychologists point the way to garnering broader support for fiscal policies

    Policy decisions on taxation and public expenditures intrinsically reflect moral choices. How much of your hard-earned money is it fair for the state to collect through taxes? Should the rich pay more? Should the state provide basic public services such as education and health care for free to all citizens? And so on.

    Economists and public finance practitioners have traditionally focused on economic efficiency. When considering distributional issues, they have generally steered clear of moral considerations, perhaps fearing these could be seen as subjective. However, recent work by evolutionary moral psychologists suggests that policies can be better designed and muster broader support if policymakers consider the full range of moral perspectives on public finance. A few pioneering empirical applications of this approach in the field of economics have shown promise.

    For the most part, economists have customarily analyzed redistribution in a way that requires users to provide their own preferences with regard to inequality: Tell economists how much you care about inequality, and they can tell you how much redistribution is appropriate through the tax and benefit system. People (or families or households) have usually been considered as individuals, and the only relevant characteristics for these exercises have been their incomes, wealth, or spending potential.

    There are two — understandable but not fully satisfactory — reasons for this approach. First, economists often wish to be viewed as objective social scientists. Second, most public finance scholars have been educated in a tradition steeped in values of societies that are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). In this context, individuals are at the center of the analysis, and morality is fundamentally about the golden rule — treat other people the way that you would want them to treat you, regardless of who those people are. These are crucial but ultimately insufficient perspectives on how humans make moral choices.

    Evolutionary moral psychologists during the past couple of decades have shown that, faced with a moral dilemma, humans decide quickly what seems right or wrong based on instinct and later justify their decision through more deliberate reasoning. Based on evidence presented by these researchers, our instincts in the moral domain evolved as a way of fostering cooperation within a group, to help ensure survival. This modern perspective harks back to two moral philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment — David Hume and Adam Smith — who noted that sentiments are integral to people’s views on right and wrong. But most later philosophers in the Western tradition sought to base morality on reason alone.

    Moral psychologists have recently shown that many people draw on moral perspectives that go well beyond the golden rule. Community, authority, divinity, purity, loyalty, and sanctity are important considerations not only in many non-Western countries, but also among politically influential segments of the population in advanced economies, as emphasized by proponents of moral foundations theory.

    Regardless of whether one agrees with those broader moral perspectives, familiarity with them makes it easier to understand the underlying motivations for various groups’ positions in debates on public policies. Such understanding may help in the design of policies that can muster support from a wide range of groups with differing moral values.

Adapted from: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/Addingethics-to-public-finance-Mauro

Adding ethics to public finance

    Evolutionary moral psychologists point the way to garnering broader support for fiscal policies

    Policy decisions on taxation and public expenditures intrinsically reflect moral choices. How much of your hard-earned money is it fair for the state to collect through taxes? Should the rich pay more? Should the state provide basic public services such as education and health care for free to all citizens? And so on.

    Economists and public finance practitioners have traditionally focused on economic efficiency. When considering distributional issues, they have generally steered clear of moral considerations, perhaps fearing these could be seen as subjective. However, recent work by evolutionary moral psychologists suggests that policies can be better designed and muster broader support if policymakers consider the full range of moral perspectives on public finance. A few pioneering empirical applications of this approach in the field of economics have shown promise.

    For the most part, economists have customarily analyzed redistribution in a way that requires users to provide their own preferences with regard to inequality: Tell economists how much you care about inequality, and they can tell you how much redistribution is appropriate through the tax and benefit system. People (or families or households) have usually been considered as individuals, and the only relevant characteristics for these exercises have been their incomes, wealth, or spending potential.

    There are two — understandable but not fully satisfactory — reasons for this approach. First, economists often wish to be viewed as objective social scientists. Second, most public finance scholars have been educated in a tradition steeped in values of societies that are WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic). In this context, individuals are at the center of the analysis, and morality is fundamentally about the golden rule — treat other people the way that you would want them to treat you, regardless of who those people are. These are crucial but ultimately insufficient perspectives on how humans make moral choices.

    Evolutionary moral psychologists during the past couple of decades have shown that, faced with a moral dilemma, humans decide quickly what seems right or wrong based on instinct and later justify their decision through more deliberate reasoning. Based on evidence presented by these researchers, our instincts in the moral domain evolved as a way of fostering cooperation within a group, to help ensure survival. This modern perspective harks back to two moral philosophers of the Scottish Enlightenment — David Hume and Adam Smith — who noted that sentiments are integral to people’s views on right and wrong. But most later philosophers in the Western tradition sought to base morality on reason alone.

    Moral psychologists have recently shown that many people draw on moral perspectives that go well beyond the golden rule. Community, authority, divinity, purity, loyalty, and sanctity are important considerations not only in many non-Western countries, but also among politically influential segments of the population in advanced economies, as emphasized by proponents of moral foundations theory.

    Regardless of whether one agrees with those broader moral perspectives, familiarity with them makes it easier to understand the underlying motivations for various groups’ positions in debates on public policies. Such understanding may help in the design of policies that can muster support from a wide range of groups with differing moral values.

Adapted from: https://www.imf.org/en/Publications/fandd/issues/2022/03/Addingethics-to-public-finance-Mauro

Read the text to answer.

Dear Madam:

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. Hence, I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Your very sincerely and respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln.

(Lederer, Richard. The miracle of language. Pocket Books, New York, NY.)

Analyse the image to answer.

(Available: https://comics.ha.com. Imaged by Heritage Auctions. HA. Com.)

Read the text to answer.

English teaching methods and approaches

Throughout the history of teaching languages a number of different teaching approaches and methodologies have been tried and tested with some being more popular and effective than others. It’s beneficial to be familiar with a few of these. 

1 – The Direct Method

The direct method of teaching English is also known as the Natural Method. It’s used to teach a number of different languages not just English, and the main idea of the Direct Method is that it only uses the target language that the students are trying to learn. Its main focus is oral skill and it is taught via repetitive drilling. Grammar is taught using an inductive way and students need to try and guess the rules through the teacher’s oral presentation.

 2 – The Grammar Translation Method

This is the traditional or ‘classical’ way of learning a language and it’s still commonly used. Some countries prefer this style of teaching and the main idea behind this method is that the students learn all grammar rules, so they’re able to translate a number of sentences.

3 – The Audio Lingual Method

The Audio Lingual Method otherwise known as the New Key Method or Army Method is based on a behaviourist theory that things are able to be learned by constant reinforcement. This is related to the Direct Method and just like its predecessor it only uses the target language. The biggest difference between the Audio Lingual Method and the Direct Method is its focus of teaching. The Direct Methods focuses on the teaching of vocabulary whereas the Audio Lingual Method focuses on specific grammar teachings.

4 – The Structural Approach

As the name suggests, the method is all about structure. The idea is that any language is made up of complex grammar rules. These rules, according to this approach need to be learnt in a specific order, for example the logical thing would be to teach the verb “to be” prior to teaching the present continuous which requires using the auxiliary form of the verb “to be”.

5 – Suggestopedia

This is a behaviourist theory and related to pseudoscience. This theory is intended to offer learners various choices. It relies a lot on the atmosphere and the physical surroundings of the class. It’s essential that all learners feel equally comfortable and confident. When teachers are training to use the Suggestopedia method, there’s a lot of art and music involved. Each Suggestopedia lesson is divided into three different phases – 1. Deciphering 2. Concert Session 3. Elaboration. 

6 – Total Physical Response

Total Physical Response, otherwise known as TPR is an approach that follows the idea of ‘learning by doing’. Beginners will learn English through a series of repetitive actions such as “Stand up”, “Open your book”, “Close the door”, and “Walk to the window and open it.” With TPR, the most important skill is aural comprehension and everything else will follow naturally later. 7 – Communicative Language Teaching CLT The idea behind this approach is to help learners communicate more effectively and correctly in realistic situations that they may find themselves in. This type of teaching involves focusing on important functions like suggesting, thanking, inviting, complaining, and asking for directions to name but a few.

8 – The Silent Way

The main of this way of teaching is for the teacher to say very little, so students can take control of their learning. There’s a big emphasis on pronunciation and a large chunk of the lesson focuses on it. This method of learning English follows a structural syllabus and grammar, vocabulary and pronunciation are constantly drilled and recycled for reinforcement. The teacher evaluates their students through careful observation, and it’s even possible that they may never set a formal test as learners are encouraged to correct their own language errors.

9 – Community Language Learning

This is probably one of the English teaching methods where the student feels the safest as there’s a great emphasis on the relationship and bond between the student and teacher. Unlike a lot of the other methods and approaches of teaching English as a Second Language, a lot of the L1 (mother tongue) is used for translation purposes. 

10 – Task Based Language Learning

The main aim of this approach to learning is task completion. Usually, relevant and interesting tasks are set by the teacher and students are expected to draw on their pre-existing knowledge of English to complete the task with as few errors as possible.

11 – The Lexical Approach

The Lexical syllabus or approach is based on computer studies that have previously identified the most commonly used words. This approach in teaching focuses on vocabulary acquisition and teaching lexical chunks in order of their frequency and use. Teachers of the Lexical Approach place a great emphasis on authentic materials.

(Available: http://www.huntesl.com. Adapted.)

Read the text to answer.

The Story Behind TIME’s ‘Resilience of Ukraine’ Cover

(Artwork by JR; Photograph by Artem Iurchenko. A drone was used to capture the cover image on March 14 in Lviv.)

     Since Russia’s invasion began, dozens of Ukraine’s 7.5 million children have been killed and thousands of others have fled in search of safety. Among those thousands is 5-year-old Valeriia from Kryvyi Rih, President Volodymyr Zelensky’s hometown in central Ukraine. Her image – a smiling child – appears on one of this issue’s covers.

    If you met Valeriia, you might think she’s shy, her mother Taisiia told TIME, but don’t be fooled; at home, she commands attention. She loves the same things as many little girls – her stuffed bunny; her Elsa doll fromCold Heart(which English speakers know as Frozen); and her pink backpack, which she had to leave behind as she ran off her country. Valeriia also has big dreams: in particular, starting her first year of school on Sept. 1. Now, it’s hard to say when and where Valeriia will be able to do so. On March 9, mother and daughter fled to Poland; for safety, they asked that TIME use only their first names. In an interview, Taisiia explained her decision to leave home to keep her child safe. “She is my sunshine, my joy.” 

    According to Taisiia they woke up early in the morning of Feb. 24 to learn the occupying army had started bombing military bases. “I thought about my daughter, Valeriia; for her safety, I knew we had to go. We left Ukraine before we were bombarded, so we had a chance.” Even though Valeriia is with her now, husband and son stayed in Ukraine and therefore, it was very hard to leave. The day they left, the lines for buses and trainsstretched 3 km, mostly women and children, she says, “We were packed together and had to stand for 18 hours on the train to Lviv”.

    The Russians still haven’t come to their city. The people from Kryvyi Rih have fought them off. But they are closer and closer, and you can see them approaching. In the media, Russia says they aren’t at war in Ukraine. But the war is real. People are dying for real. “And here I am, with my sister, my nephew, and my mother in Poland, in a hotel near Warsaw. They take care of us and even in this difficult situation, it was a warm reception. I cannot find the words to express how grateful I am to everyone who has helped”, ends up a crying Taisiia.

(Available: https://time.com/magazine/europe. Adapted.)

Dear Madam:

I have been shown in the files of the War Department a statement of the Adjutant-General of Massachusetts that you are the mother of five sons who have died gloriously on the field of battle. I feel how weak and fruitless must be any words of mine which should attempt to beguile you from the grief of a loss so overwhelming. But I cannot refrain from tendering to you the consolation that may be found in the thanks of the Republic they died to save. Hence, I pray that our Heavenly Father may assuage the anguish of your bereavement, and the solemn pride that must be yours to have laid so costly a sacrifice upon the altar of freedom.

Your very sincerely and respectfully,

Abraham Lincoln.

(Lederer, Richard. The miracle of language. Pocket Books, New York, NY.)