Questões de Concursos Adjetivos Adjectives

READ TEXT IV AND ANSWER THE QUESTION THAT FOLLOWS IT:

TEXT IV

What is the global situation in relation to literacy?

Great progress has been made in literacy with most recent data (UNESCO Institute for Statistics) showing that more than 86 per cent of the world’s population know how to read and write compared to 68 per cent in 1979. Despite this, worldwide at least 754 million adults still cannot read and write, two thirds of them women, and 250 million children are failing to acquire basic literacy skills. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, which caused the worst disruption to education in a century, 617 million children and teenagers had not reached minimum reading levels.

Acquiring literacy is not a one-off act. Beyond its conventional concept as a set of reading, writing and counting skills, literacy is now understood as a means of identification, understanding, interpretation, creation, and communication in an increasingly digital, text-mediated, information-rich and fast-changing world.

Literacy is a continuum of learning and proficiency in reading, writing and using numbers throughout life and is part of a larger set of skills, which include digital skills, media literacy, education for sustainable development and global citizenship as well as jobspecific skills. Literacy skills themselves are expanding and evolving as people engage more and more with information and learning through digital technology.

Literacy is a continuum of learning and proficiency in reading, writing and using numbers throughout life and is part of a larger set of skills, which include digital skills, media literacy, education for sustainable development and global citizenship as well as jobspecific skills. Literacy skills themselves are expanding and evolving as people engage more and more with information and learning through digital technology.

Adapted from https://www.unesco.org/en/literacy/need-know

TEXT 1

Anxiety has kept 28% of UK children away from school

Many children in the UK are missing school because they feel too anxious, according to a new survey. Research by stem4, a mental health charity for young people, found that 28% of children aged between 12 and 18 had missed school in the last year because of anxiety. The charity is asking the government, the health service and schools to do more to help pupils with their mental health.

More than 1,000 young people were surveyed, and almost half said that they were suffering from a mental health difficulty. Experts say that the problems have gotten worse since the coronavirus pandemic. At the moment, 38%of schools in England have a mental health support team. But the government has said that it wants to increase that to at least 50% by the end of March 2025, as well as training teachers and giving more money to the health service.

However, the survey also found that it is not only mental health that is keeping children away from school. Almost a quarter of children aged between 12 and 18 have missed school because of family problems, while 18% have stayed away because of problems with friends or other pupils. The stress of exams was also given as a reason for missing school.

Nihara Krause, the founder of stem4, said that spending a lot of time away from school can have long-lasting negative effects on children.

Adapted from: https://engoo.com.br/app/daily-news/article/anxiety-has-kept-28- of-uk-children-away-from-school/LY6CWsQ1Ee6_G7_OKvNYDg

When a person (or team or firm or government) decides how to act in dealings with other people (or teams or firms or governments), there must be some cross-effect of their actions; what one does must affect the outcome for the other. For the interaction to become a strategic game, however, we need the participants’ mutual awareness of this cross-effect. What the other person does affects you; if you know this, you can react to his actions, or take advance actions to forestall the bad effects his future actions may have on you and to facilitate any good effects, or even take advance actions so as to alter his future reactions toyour advantage. If you know that the other person knows that what you do affects him, you know that he will be taking similar actions. And so on. It is this mutual awareness of the cross-effects of actions and the actions taken as a result of this awareness that constitute the most interesting aspects of strategy.

When each participant is significant in the interaction, either because each is a large player to start with or because commitments or private information narrow the scope of the relationship to a point where each is an important player within the relationship, we must think of the interaction as a strategic game. Such situations are the rule rather than the exception in business, in politics, and even in social interactions. Therefore, the study of strategic games forms an important part of all fields that analyze these matters.

Avinash Dixit et al. Games of strategy.

New York: W.W. Norton & Coadapted, 2015 (adapted).

Read Text I and answer question.

Text I: The speed of sound

Some music fans now know 15-second sped up snippets of songs better than the real thing. It’s thanks to an emerging trend on social media, particularly TikTok, of creators changing the tempo of popular songs by 25-30%, to accompany short viral videos of dances or other themes. This phenomenon presents a very modern challenge – how can singers create the next hit tune when the one people actually listen to might sound so different?

Sped-up listening emerged in the early 2000s as “Nightcore”, launched by a Norwegian DJ duo of the same name, who sped up a song’s pitch and speed. This is now commonplace on social media apps, where the speed of podcasts, voice notes, movies and more can be increased so that people can consume them in less time. But what people might not know is that unofficial sped-up or slowed down tunes are different to a professional remix because they are far shorter and can be easily made by anyone, including on TikTok, Instagram Reels and other apps.

In 2023, more than a third of Spotify listeners in the US sped up podcasts and nearly two-thirds played songs at a quicker tempo. The streaming service recently confirmed to the BBC that it was testing a new and more widespread feature that could potentially allow its customers to remix the tempo of songs and share them. In addition, some popstars are embracing this phenomenon. In November 2022, for example, fan-made sped-up versions of RAYE’s single “Escapism” helped the artist to achieve her first ever number one on the UK Official Singles Chart, nearly three months after its original release. Furthermore, Billie Eilish has also released official fast and slow versions of songs and Sabrina Carpenter’s hits “Please Please Please” and “Espresso” received similar treatment.

Dr Mary Beth Ray, an author focused on digital music culture, says short-form video platforms like TikTok “constrain our ways of listening into snippets, but those constraints also let you experience a track in a new way”. She also said that “short clips provide a quicker line to that dopamine rush social media wants us to feel – so there is an addictive element which we’re pushed towards.”

BBC Radio 1 DJ Maia Beth feels it's now getting hard for established labels and musicians to ignore this trend because it can sometimes feel like if they don't release the sped up version, then someone else will. Beth, who admits she can't imagine sitting and listening to a sped-up version of a song the whole way through, believes the trend shouldn't necessarily be a major distraction for musicians though. “Sped-up versions of tracks can help artists break through or go viral, although that initial success may not last,” she added.

TikTok says it has noticed an increase in the number of sped-up and slowed down versions of catalogue tracks taken off the platform, then become officially released. These official changed-tempo releases are now grouped together with the original song in the UK Official Singles Chart, along with remixes, acoustic and live versions, helping artists to climb the ranks.

That said, not everyone is happy with the trend. The popularity of speed-altered versions can make it harder to distinguish original from remix while altering an artist'sintended pacing, mood and tone. However, while some artists like them and others less so, it seems they are here to stay.

Adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/cqv5x2qe8q6o Published: August 17, 2024

Reading skill will help you to improve your understanding of the language and build your vocabulary.

Social Media Across Generations

Today’s grandparents are joining their grandchildren on social media, but the different generations’ online habits couldn’t be more different. In the UK the over-55s are joining Facebook in increasing numbers, meaning that they will soon be the site’s second biggest user group, with 3.5 million users aged 55-64and 2.9 million over-65s.

Sheila, aged 59, says, I joined to see what my grandchildren are doing, as my daughter posts videos and photos of them. It’s a much better way to see what they’re doing than waiting for letters and photos in the post. That’s how we did it when I was a child, but I think I’m lucky I get to see so much more of their lives than my grandparents did.

Ironically, Sheila’s grandchildren are less likely to use Facebook themselves. Children under 17 in the UK are leaving the site – only 2.2 million users are under 17 – but they’re not going far from their smartphones. Chloe, aged 15, even sleeps with her phone. It’s my alarm clock so I have to she says. I look at it before I go to sleep and as soon as I wake up.

Unlike her grandmother’s generation, Chloe’s age group is spending so much time.......... their phones.......... home that they are missing out on spending time with their friends in real life. Sheila, on the other hand, has made contact with old friends from school she hasn’t heard...................40years. We use Facebook to arrange to meet all over the country, she says. It’s changed my social lifecompletely.

Teenagers might have their parents to thank for their smartphone and social media addiction as their parents were the early adopters of the smartphone.Peter, 38 and father of two teenagers, reports that he used to be on his phone or laptop constantly. I was always connected and I felt like I was always working, he says. How could I tell my kids to get off their phones if I was always in front of a screen myself? So, in the evenings and at weekends, he takes his SIM card out of his smartphone and puts it into an old-style mobile phone that can only make calls and send text messages. I’m not completely cut off from the world in case of emergencies, but the important thing is I’m setting a better example to my kids and spending more quality time with them.

Text

Reading skill will help you to improve your understanding of the language and build your vocabulary.

Read the text below carefully.

Social media, magazines and shop windows bombard people daily with things to buy, and British consumers are buying more clothes and shoes than ever before. Online shopping means it is easy for customers to buy without thinking, while major brands offer such cheap clothes that they can be treated like disposable items – worn two or three times and then thrown away

In Britain, the average person spends more than £1,000 on new clothes a year, which is around four per cent of their income. That might not sound like much, but that figure hides two far more worrying trends for society and for the environment. First, a lot of that consumer spending is via credit cards. British people currently owe approximately £670 per adult to credit card companies. That’s 66 per cent of the average wardrobe budget. Also, not only are people spending money they don’t have, they’re using it to buy things they don’t need. Britain throws away 300,000 tons of clothing a year, most of which goes into landfill sites.

People might not realize they are part of the disposable clothing problem because they donate their unwanted clothes to charities. But charity shops can’t sell all those unwanted clothes. Fast fashion goes out of fashion as quickly as it came in and is often too poor quality to recycle; people don’t want to buy it second-hand. Huge quantities end up being thrown away, and a lot of clothes that charities can’t sell are sent abroad, causing even more economic and environmental problems.

However, a different trend is springing up in opposition to consumerism – the ‘buy nothing’ trend. The idea originated in Canada in the early 1990s and then moved to the US, where it became a rejection of the overspending and overconsumption of Black Friday and Cyber Monday during Thanksgiving weekend. On Buy Nothing Day people organize various types of protests and cut up their credit cards. Throughout the year, Buy Nothing groups organize the exchange and repair of items they already own.

The trend has now reached influencers on social media who usually share posts of clothing and make- -up that they recommend for people to buy. Some YouTube stars now encourage their viewers not to buy anything at all for periods as long as a year. Two friends in Canada spent a year working towards buying only food. For the first three months they learned how to live without buying electrical goods, clothes or things for the house. For the next stage, they gave up services, for example haircuts, eating out at restaurants or buying petrol for their cars. In one year, they’d saved $55,000.

The changes they made meant two fewer cars on the roads, a reduction in plastic and paper packaging and a positive impact on the environment from all the energy saved. If everyone followed a similar plan, the results would be impressive. But even if you can’t manage a full year without going shopping, you can participate in the anti-consumerist movement by refusing to buy things you don’t need. Buy Nothing groups send a clear message to companies that people are no longer willing to accept the environmental and human cost of overconsumption.

source: learnenglish.britishcouncil.org