Questões Militares Comentadas sobre voz ativa e passiva | passive and active voice em inglês

The regional accentism that secretly affects life prospects

        At age 22, Gav Murphy was living outside his home country Wales for the first time, working in his first job in media production in London. His South Wales Valleys accent was very thick, he recalls. He’d say ‘tha’ rather than ‘that’, for instance. He was perfectly understandable; yet a senior colleague overseeing his work insisted Murphy change his accent so all the broadcasters sounded uniform on air. The effects of adaptation were far-reaching. “It sort of broke my brain a little bit,” says Murphy. “I thought about literally every single thing I was saying, literally every time I was saying it. Moving to standard English was just laborious.”

        Foreign-accent discrimination is rampant in professional settings. But discrimination can also extend to certain native speakers of a language, because of the judgements attached to particular accents. While many employers are becoming very sensitive to other types of bias, accent bias remains challenging to root out. But it doesn’t have to be this way.

       While the cognitive shortcuts that contribute to accent bias may be universal, the degree of accent awareness and prejudice varies greatly. For instance, “The UK has a very, very fine-tuned system of accent prestige,” says Devyani Sharma, a sociolinguist at Queen Mary University of London. “It’s a combination of a very monolingual past, where English developed as a symbol of the nation, and the very acute social class hierarchy historically.” She adds that overt accent bias in the US is based more on race, whereas in the UK, it’s more tied to class.

        In some cases, accent bias is directly related to government policy. Since the 1860s, the Japanese government has modernised the country with a focus on Tokyo, says Shigeko Kumagai, a linguist at Shizuoka University, Japan. “Thus, standard Japanese was established based on the speech of educated Tokyoites.” In contrast, the Tohoku dialect spoken in northern Japan became “the most stigmatised dialect in Japan”, says Kumagai. Its image is “rural, rustic, old, stubborn, narrow-minded, backward, poor, uneducated, etc”. Young women from Tohoku are often given discriminatory treatment that makes them feel ashamed of their accents.

        A pesquisa de Kumagai mostra que a forte estereotipagem do dialeto Tohoku é perpetuada pela concentração da indústria de mídia na capital japonesa. De fato, em todo o mundo, a mídia tem um impacto enorme na percepção dos sotaques. Portanto, entendemos por que a preponderância de emissoras do Reino Unido em Londres provavelmente contribuiu para a marginalização do sotaque galês de MurphyKumagai’s research shows that the strong stereotyping of the Tohoku dialect is perpetuated by the concentration of the media industry in the Japanese capital. Indeed, the world over, the media has an enormous impact on perceptions of accents. So we understand why the preponderance of UK broadcasters in London likely contributed to the marginalisation of Murphy’s Welsh accent.

(Christine Ro. www.bbc.com, 08.05.2022. Adaptado)

Chinese Woman Opens Plane’s Emergency Exit for Some Fresh Air

     A flight was delayed for an hour and a woman detained by police after she opened the emergency exit for “a breath of fresh air” before the flight took off in central China’s Hubei province, mainland media reported. The incident happened on Xiamen Air Flight MF8215 from Wuhan to Lanzhou, which was scheduled to take off at 3.45 p.m. on September 23.

    Cabin crew had briefed the woman, who was in her 50s, about the rules when sitting next to the emergency exit and reminded her not to touch the button that opened the emergency exit. However, the woman said she needed some fresh air and touched the button to open the exit when the stewardess turned around to help others, the report said. The woman was taken away and the flight was delayed for an hour. Opening the emergency exit can be considered to be disturbing public order in an aircraft, which is punishable by police detention and a fine.

    In July last year, a woman who was flying for the first time mistook the emergency door for a lavatory door before her plane took off in Nanjing. The emergency slide was released and the flight was delayed for two hours. The woman was detained for 10 days. Some passengers have paid a heavy price for releasing the emergency slide, which may take days and considerable expense to repair and reinstall. In January 2015, a man who opened an emergency door after a plane landed in Chongqing had to pay 35,000 yuan (150,000 baht) in compensation to the airline.

    In June, a man from Hubei who was returning to China from Bangkok on a Thai Lion Air Flight opened an emergency exit before take-off. After apologising repeatedly, according to witnesses, he was held by Thai authorities for one day and given a fine of 500 baht before being deported.

Adapted from https://www.bangkokpost.com/world/1762629/chinese-woman-opens-planes-emergency-exit-for-somefresh-air

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

Culture is really an integral part of the interaction between language and thought. Cultural patterns of cognition and customs are sometimes explicitly coded in language. Conversational discourse styles, for example, may be a factor of culture. Consider the “directness” of discourse of some cultures: in the United States, for example, casual conversation is said to be less frank and more concerned about face-saving than conversation in Greece, and therefore a Greek conversation may be more confrontational than a conversation in the United States, In Japanese, the relationsltip of one’s interlocutor is almost always expressed explicitly, either verbally and/or non-verbally. Perhaps those forms shape one’s perception of others in relation to self.

(Douglas Brown. Principles of language learning and teaching. 5^th ed. Longman, 2000. P. 211. Adaptado)

Diplomat

    There are three main aspects to this profession: a diplomat has to keep his country informed about pertinent international events, promote a favorable image of his country and protect his country’s interests.

    Whoever is interested in a diplomatic career has to be extremely familiar with political, economical, scientific, cultural and administrative issues. To be a diplomat, it is essential to have a good knowledge of English, not only the conversational language, but also the technical terms in international law and diplomacy itself.

    To follow this career, besides being fluently bilingual, one needs a standard college education and has to take and do well in the Rio Branco Institute examination in Brasilia.

    English is so important in this career that in the first part of this selection exam, the applicant has to demonstrate his or her proficiency in the English language. Then, during the course, foreign language classes become a priority, giving future diplomats the necessary expertise to deal with the areas of official correspondences, diplomatic negotiation and international media.

Adapted from Inglês no mundo do trabalho.  

Leia os dois parágrafos a seguir para responder à questão.

    An international student who majors in engineering drops by the engineering department office and asks the secretary, “Can you tell me where the English department is?” The secretary smiles and responds, “I don’t know, actually. It’s probably somewhere in the Humanities Building. Do you have a campus map?” The student turns around and leaves. The secretary is taken aback and feels slightly uncomfortable. She wonders why the student left so abruptly.

     (...)

    People who interact with ESL students have commented that some seem to express gratitude excessively for small considerations, even to the point of embarrassing the person they are speaking. Others seem downright rude because they do not say thank you when they are expected to.

(Celce-Murcia, M. 2001.)

Read the text and answer question.

Iceberg ruptures in Patagonia raise alarm about global warming

Fabian Andres Cambero

Two new icebergs have broken off from the Grey Glacier in Chile’s Patagonia in recent weeks. Scientists have linked the increased frequency ice breaks to rising temperature. According to Ricardo Jana, researcher and member of the climate change area of the Chilean Antartic Institute (INACH) “In recent years temperature rises above the normal average and intense rainfall were registered with an increase in water level in the lake, factors that could explain the separation. Reseachers from universities in Germany and Brazil, together with experts from INACH and other local entities, have been studing the Grey Glacier since 2015.

http://independent.co.uk

Read the text and answer question.

Part of New Bicycle Path Collapses in Rio de Janeiro Leaving Two Deaths

    The Rio Fire Department says two people died __ Thursday, April 21, after a part __ the recently inaugurated bicycle path on Niemeyer avenue, __ the south zone of Rio de Janeiro.

    The path was named after Brazilian singer Tim Maia and is located between Niemeyer avenue and a cliff, hanging over the sea

    The path is a connection between Leblon beach and São Conrado, both in the city’s south zone. The bike path was inaugurated earlier this year, on January 17, and cost R$ 44,7 million.

Glossary

Hanging over – suspenso sobre

            Operation Desert Storm Was Not Won By Smart Weaponry Alone

      Technology has long been a deciding factor on the battlefield, from powerful artillery to new weaponry to innovations in the seas and the skies. Twenty-five years ago, it was no different, as the United States and its allies proved overwhelmingly successful in the Persian Gulf War. A coalition of U.S. Army Apache attack helicopters, cruise missiles from naval vessels, and Lockheed F-117 Nighthawk “stealth fighters” soundly broke through Saddam Hussein’s army defenses in Kuwait during Operation Desert Storm, which became known as the “100-hour war”.

      But for all the possibilities that this “Computer War” offered, Operation Desert Storm was not won by smart weaponry, alone. Despite the “science fiction”-like technology deployed, 90 percent of the pieces of ammunition used in Desert Storm were actually “dumb weapons”. The bombs, which weren’t guided by lasers or satellites, were lucky to get within half a kilometer of their targets after they were dumped from planes. While dumb bombs might not have been exciting enough to make the headlines during the attack, they were cheaper to produce and could be counted on to work. But frequency of use doesn’t change why history will remember Desert Storm for its smart weapons, rather than its dumb ones.

Adapted from http://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/ operation-desert-storm-was-not-won-smart-weaponry-alone- 180957879/

                                                         TEXT III

        A new Aviation English Test Speaks of Pilots’ voices and aviation safety

In addition ___(1) the development ___(2) various tests ___(3) response ___(4) the ICAO’s language proficiency requirement, a new test has been designed using flight simulators, ___(5) consideration of both the test takers and the ICAO’s fundamental focus ___(6) aviation safety. The test provides a familiar and work-related testing environment ___ (7) pilots, an efficient and cost-effective test system ___(8) airlines, and international credibility and valid evaluation tools to states, while fully covering both aviation and plain English Assessment needs.

                         (Jason Park and Tyler Kong ALTEON Training Asia LLC Seoul, Korea.)