Questões Militares

      Una de las grandes tendencias en el consumo global que no ha frenado con la pandemia es el creciente número de mascotas frente al de hijos en los hogares y un aumento del gasto en ellas. En el caso de España, por ejemplo, se estima que hay más animales de compañía que niños menores de 15 años.

     El mercado del cuidado de los animales domésticos ofrece previsiones de crecimiento moderado, pero estables, gracias a un constante aumento del número de mascotas y del incremento del gasto en ellas. El gasto aumenta debido al precio de unos alimentos más saludables y al gasto veterinario, aunque la clave podría estar en que cada vez más los propietarios miran a sus mascotas como un miembro más de la familia, en casi todos los aspectos.

     El mayor mercado mundial es Estados Unidos con un gasto cercano a los 96.000 millones en 2019, un 5,7% más que en el ejercicio precedente (90.500 millones). Otro mercado relevante es el europeo, con Alemania, Gran Bretaña y Francia a la cabeza. En los países asiáticos los mercados son más pequeños, aunque crecen con rapidez. Por ejemplo, se estima que China podría crecer a un 14% entre 2020 y 2025 gracias al aumento de las mascotas entre la creciente clase media.

      La crisis generada por la pandemia crea dudas sobre si el gasto en mascotas cambiará. Hasta la fecha, los efectos han sido mixtos. El confinamiento ha mantenido las clínicas veterinarias cerradas durante semanas para todas las prácticas no urgentes y el cierre de las protectoras también habría frenado las adopciones. Aunque todavía puede ser un poco pronto para sacar conclusiones, parece claro que el impacto del COVID-19 podría resultar positivo para el sector.

(https://blog.selfbank.es/. Adaptado)

      “It’s a very nice book and very lively, but in the section on ‘Processes’ for example all the exercises are about unusual things for our country. We are a hot country and also have many Muslims. The exercises are about snow, ice, cold mornings, and making wine. I can tell you I can’t do making wine and smoking pot in my country!” (Experienced school teacher from the Ivory Coast, Africa)

      “Previous materials were not based on life in Brazil which is why I don’t think they worked very well …” (Brazilian teacher of English in school)

      “Sir … what is opera?” (Iraqi student in mixed nationality class using materials designed to practise reading narrative)

     The implications of these three quotations are not simply linguistic; rather, they address the problem of appropriate contextual realisation for materials. For the teacher in the Ivory Coast, the materials offered would be outside the cultural experience of his students (possibly even threatening) and thus effectively useless; conversely, for the Brazilian teacher, the choice of Brazilian settings and familiar mores would have clear advantages over distant foreign contexts as they are essentially more motivating. The quote from the Iraqi student suggests that complete unfamiliarity with the notion of opera may reduce the efficacy of the reading exercises, but in this case the student is curious and likely to regard the material as exotic rather than merely alien.

        Many assumptions of a communicative orientation towards language teaching need questioning in a global context. Ozóg (1989) discusses the idea of the ‘information gap’, which is supposed to induce students to speak. ‘Are we as Europeans’, he asks, ‘not making a cultural assumption that speakers the world over are uneasy in silence and that they have an overwhelming desire to fill gaps which occur in natural discourse?’ (p.399). Silence is a salient feature of conversation in the Malay world, he points out, a feature that has also been noted in Japan and a number of other cultures.

       Indeed, the whole question of requiring others to speak needs to be questioned in terms of both cultural and gender differences. The point here is not to exoticize some notion of cultural difference, but rather to suggest that language is a cultural practice, that both language and thinking about language are always located in very particular social, cultural and political contexts. How language (including silence, paralanguage, and so on) is used, therefore, differs extensively from one context to another, and thus any approach to language teaching based on one particular view of language may be completely inapplicable in another context. If particular language teaching practices (advertised and exported as the best, newest and most scientific) support certain views of language, then such practices clearly present a particular cultural politics and make the English language classroom a site of struggle over different ways of thinking about and dealing with language.

      Since ChatGPT can engage in conversation and generate essays and graphs that closely resemble those created by humans, educators worry students may use it to cheat. The main reason students cheat is their academic motivation. Sometimes they are just motivated to get a high grade, whereas other times they wish to learn all that they can about a topic. The decision to cheat or not often relates to how academic assignments and tests are constructed and assessed, not on the availability of technological shortcuts.

       Research demonstrates that students are more likely to cheat when assignments are designed in ways that encourage them to outperform their classmates. There is less cheating when teachers assign academic tasks that prompt them to work collaboratively and to focus on mastering content instead of getting a good grade.

      An important way to boost students’ confidence is to provide them with opportunities to experience success. For example, suppose students are asked to attempt to design a hypothetical vehicle that can use gasoline more efficiently than a traditional car. Students who struggle with the project can use ChatGPT to break down the larger problem into smaller challenges or tasks. ChatGPT might suggest they first develop an overall concept for the vehicle before determining the size and weight of the vehicle and deciding what type of fuel will be used. Teachers could also ask students to compare the steps suggested by ChatGPT with steps that are recommended by other sources. 

(Kui Xie e Eric M. Anderman. http://www.theconversation.com. 06.06.2023. Adaptado)

     Fricatives are consonants with the characteristic that air escapes through a narrow passage and makes a hissing sound. The dental fricatives are sometimes described as if the tongue were placed between the front teeth, and it is common for teachers to make their students do this when they are trying to teach them the sound. The thing is, however, that the tongue is normally placed behind the teeth; the air escapes through the gaps between the tongue and the teeth. There is a distiction between fortis (unvoiced) fricatives, as in the word “thin”, and lenis (voiced) fricatives, as in “thus”. (Roach 2003)

(Mark Roach,. English Phonetics and Phonology.

Cambridge: CUP, 2003. Adaptado)

       To share knowledge in the academic world, researchers might need to publish their research articles (RAs) in high-impact journals. And, to do that, they should improve their writing skills. Many investigations have analyzed the distribution of metadiscourse markers in RA, but no study has yet investigated the use of metadiscourse markers in RAs abstracts of applied linguistics. To bridge this gap, the present study has analyzed distribution of metadiscourse markers in 125 RA abstracts, which were extracted from five main journals. Findings show the high frequency of transitions and large use of hedges in the abstracts analyzed. Academic writing instruction is then claimed to be of utmost importance for novice authors taking graduate and post-graduate courses.

(Journal of Language and Linguistic Studies, 16(4), 2077-2096; 2020. Adaptado) 

      Um conceito essencial para o trabalho com gêneros de texto é o de capacidades de linguagem. A primeira delas é a de ação. A capacidade de ação trata das representações que o agente produtor do texto tem sobre o contexto em que o gênero será produzido.

       A segunda capacidade de linguagem envolvida na produção textual é a discursiva. Pode-se dizer que ela diz respeito aos tipos de discurso e aos tipos de sequências predominantes que um determinado gênero apresenta. A terceira capacidade é a linguístico-discursiva. É com ela que o aluno desenvolverá seu texto lançando uso correto das coesões nominais e verbais, da coerência ao longo da produção, da modalização do discurso e do paralelismo presente na sua construção.

        Most teachers recognise the need for the students’ awareness about the potential relevance and utility of the language and skills they are teaching. And researchers have confirmed the importance of this need.

        In ESP (English for specific purposes) materials, for example, it is relatively easy to convince the learners that the teaching points are relevant and useful by relating them to known learner interests and to ‘real-life’ tasks, which the learners need or might need to perform in the target language. In general English materials this is obviously more difficult; but it can be achieved by researching what the target learners are interested in and what they really want to learn the language for. An interesting example of such research was a questionnaire in Namibia which revealed that two of the most important reasons for secondary school students to wish to learn English were so they would be able to write love letters in English and so that they would be able to write letters of complaint for villagers to the village headman and from the village headman to local authorities.

        Perception of relevance and utility can also be achieved by relating teaching points to challenging classroom tasks and by presenting them in ways which could facilitate the achievement of the task outcomes desired by the learners. The ‘new’ learning points are not relevant and useful because they will help the learners to achieve longterm academic or career objectives, but because they could help the learners to achieve short-term task objectives now. Of course, this only works if the tasks are begun first and the teaching is then provided in response to discovered needs. This is much more difficult for the materials writer than the conventional approach of teaching a predetermined point first and then getting the learners to practise and then produce it.