Questões de Vestibular de Inglês

Texto 2

Most people would agree that learning a second language in a natural acquisition contexto or “on the street” is not the same as learning it in the classroom. Many believe that learning “on the street” is more effective.The traditional instruction environment is one where the language is being taught to a group of second or foreign language learners. In this case, the focus is on the language itself, rather than on information which is carried by the language. The teacher´s goal is to see to it that the students learn the vocabulary and grammatical rules of the target language. The goal of learners in such courses is often to pass an examination rather than to use the language for daily communicative interaction. Communicative instruction environments also involve learners whose goal is learning the language itself, but the style of instruction places an emphasis on interaction, conversation, and language use, rather than on learning about the language. The topics which are discussed in the communicative instruction environment are often topics of general interest to the learner. In these classes, the focus is not selected on the basis of teaching a specific feature of the language, but on teaching learners to use the language in a variety of contexts. Students´ success in these courses is measured in terms of their ability to ‘get things done’ in the second language, rather than on their accuracy in using certain grammatical features.

The founder of Microsoft, Bill Gates has said that the international community's efforts to fight hunger and poverty are inefficient and outdated. He said advances made by the digital revolution needed to be harnessed to help the world's poorest farmers more effectively.

Mr Gates said more needs to be done to support poor farmers in South Asia, Sub-Saharan Africa and elsewhere. He said there was a lack of coordination between governments, aid donors and the UN's agencies, like the World Food Programme. Mr Gates called for the setting up of what he called a “public score card” system.

This would make it easier to tell how well, or how badly, different countries and agencies were performing in the fight to reduce poverty.

He said the effort to help small farmers also needs to harness the power of advances made in digital technology. In an age when satellites can tell instantly exactly how much wheat is in a field, he said, it was a shame that people were still being sent out with pen, paper and tape measures to try to do the same job.

Mr Gates said that the stakes couldn't be higher for the families of poor farmers. If they don't benefit from the fruits of the digital revolution they will fall far behind. But Mr Gates believes that if they can be connected to some of the latest breakthroughs in science they will have a chance to leapfrog foward.