Questões de Concurso Para prefeitura de patos de minas - mg

Read the text to answer 

On Education, Republican Candidates Retreat From National Standards

                                                                                                  BY EMILY CADEI 8/20/15 AT 4:40 AM

           After 15 years of rising federal involvement in K through 12 schools, U.S. education policy is poised for a big shift in direction. If that wasn’t already apparent, it certainly became clear on Wednesday, when six of the Republican party’s leading 2016 contenders spoke about their views on educating America’s youth, and what their priorities would be should they make it to the White House. The consensus: national‐level reform efforts are out. Ceding control to state and local school districts is in.

     That’s always been the preference for some segments of the Republican party. But under President George W. Bush, a crop of GOP leaders interested in business‐backed education reforms banded together with Democrats eager to expand public funding for schools, particularly for underachieving schools, to carve out a more assertive federal role. That coalition helped pass the 2001 law known as No Child Left Behind, which set national standards for schools and used federal funding to create incentives to meet them.

      Though there is now broad agreement that parts of No Child Left Behind were ill‐conceived, the Obama administration has continued Bush’s muscular approach to education, prodding states to participate in national programs with offers of federal cash. But that coalition of Democratic and Republican reformers is now looking wobbly. The House and Senate have both passed updated versions of No Child Left Behind that would rein in the federal government’s role in setting K through 12 education policy, though not nearly as much as conservatives would like. The next step is reconciling differences between the bills in a way that keeps the more conservative House happy, without jeopardizing President Barack Obama’s signature. That’s going to be a tough task for Congress this fall. On the presidential trail, Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have made clear that they side with teachers’ unions who are critics of expanding charter schools and more teacher accountability, which both Bush and Obama tried to promote nationally.

      On the Republican side, meanwhile, the six candidates who spoke at the American Federation for Children’s Education Summit 2015 in New Hampshire fell all over themselves trying distance their agendas from current education policies and declare their support for local autonomy.

                                                                                (Available: http://www.newsweek.com/education)

Read the text to answer 

The nature of approaches and methods in language teaching

        Although specific theories of the language may provide the basis for a particular teaching method, other methods derive primarily from a theory of language learning. A learning theory underlying an approach or method responds to two questions: (a) What are the psycholinguistic and cognitive processes involved in language learning? and (b) What are the conditions that need to be met in order for these learning processes to be activated? Learning theories associated with a method at the level of approach may emphasize either one or both of these dimensions. Process‐ oriented theories build on learning processes, such as habit formation, induction, inferencing, hypothesis testing, and generalization. Condition‐oriented theories emphasize the nature of the human and physical context in which language learning takes place.  

        Stephen D. Krashen’s Monitor Model of second language development (1981) is an example of a learning theory on which a method (the Natural Approach) has been built. At the level of process, Krashen distinguishes between acquisition and learning. Acquisition refers to the natural assimilation of language rules through using language for communication. Learning refers to the formal study of language rules and is a conscious process. Krashen’s theory also addresses the conditions necessary for the process of “acquisition” to take place. He describes these in terms of the type of “input” the learner receives. Input must be comprehensible, slightly above the learner’s present level of competence, interesting or relevant, not grammatically sequenced, in sufficient quantity, and experience in low‐anxiety contexts.

         Tracy Terrell’s Natural Approach (1977) is an example of a method derived primarily from a learning theory rather than from a particular view of language. Although the Natural approach is based on a learning theory that specifies both processes and conditions, the learning theory underlying such methods as Counseling‐Learning and the Silent Way addresses primarily the conditions held to be necessary for learning to take place without specifying what the learning processes themselves are presumed to be.

          Charles A. Curran in his writings on the Counseling‐Learning (1972), for example, focuses on the conditions necessary for successful learning. James Asher’s Total Physical Response (Asher 1977) is likewise a method that derives from a learning theory. Caleb Gattemo’s Silent Way (1972, 1976) is built around a theory of the conditions necessary for successful learning to be realized. Many of the techniques used in the method are designed to train learners to consciously use their intelligence to heighten learning potencial.

(Richards, Jack C. and Rodgers, Theodore S. Approaches and Methods in Language Teaching. 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2004. P. 22‐23. Adapted.)