Questões de Concursos Interpretação de texto Reading comprehension

Read text III to answer the following question.

TEXT III

Realities of Race, by Mike Peed

What’s the difference between an African-American and an American-African? From such a distinction springs a deep-seated discussion of race in Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s third novel, “Americanah.” Adichie, born in Nigeria but now living both in her homeland and in the United States, is an extraordinarily self-aware thinker and writer, possessing the abil ity to lambaste society without sneering or patronizing or polemicizing. For her, it seems no great feat to balance high literary intentions with broad social critique. “Americanah” examines blackness in America, Nigeria and Britain, but it’s also a steady-handed dissection of the universal human experience — a platitude made fresh by the accuracy of Adichie’s obser vations. […]

“Americanah” tells the story of a smart, strong-willed Nigerian woman named Ifemelu who, after she leaves Africa for America, endures several harrowing years of near destitution before graduating from college, starting a blog entitled “Raceteenth or Various Observations About American Blacks (Those Formerly Known as Negroes) by a Non-American Black” and winning a fellowship at Princeton (as Adichie once did; she has acknowledged that many of Ifemelu’s experiences are her own). Ever hovering in Ifemelu’s thoughts is her high school boyfriend, Obinze, an equally intelligent if gentler, more self-effacing Nigerian, who outstays his visa and takes illegal jobs in London. (When Obinze trips and falls to the ground, a co-worker shouts, “His knee is bad because he’s a knee-grow!”)

Ifemelu and Obinze represent a new kind of immigrant, “raised well fed and watered but mired in dissatisfaction.” They aren’t fleeing war or starvation but “the oppressive lethargy of choicelessness.” Where Obinze fails — soon enough, he is deported — Ifemelu thrives, in part because she seeks authenticity. […]

Early on, a horrific event leaves Ifemelu reeling, and years later, when she returns to Nigeria, she’s still haunted by it. Meantime, back in Lagos, Obinze has found wealth as a property developer. Though the book threatens to morph into a simple story of their reunion, it stretches into a scalding assessment of Nigeria, a country too proud to have patience for “Americanahs” — big shots who return from abroad to belittle their countrymen — and yet one that, sometimes unwitting ly, endorses foreign values. (Of the winter scenery in a school’s Christmas pageant, a parent asks, “Are they teaching chil dren that a Christmas is not a real Christmas unless snow falls like it does abroad?”)

“Americanah” is witheringly trenchant and hugely empathetic, both worldly and geographically precise, a novel that holds the discomfiting realities of our times fearlessly before us. It never feels false.

(Adapted from: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/06/09/books/review/americanah-by-chimamanda-ngozi-adichie.html)

O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder à questão.

Pontus

Pontus is a non-playable faction in Rome: Total War. Pontus was a Hellenistic Kingdom on the southern coast of the Black Sea.

Pontus are an eastern faction, based in Asia Minor (Modern-day Turkey), having their origins with an ambitious Persian noble who siezed the area when Alexander's empire broke up. They were best known for their support for the pirates of Cilicia and their subsequent defeat by Pompey.

A refreshingly different faction, Pontus are similar in some ways to the Seleucids, but mainly they are unique. With a large amount of missile cavalry, chariots chariot archers, Cappadocian Lancers and Pikemen, they have a different balance to most factions, while not severely lacking in any department except heavy infantry.

Pontus is a small faction in Asia Minor. While their army is relatively weak at the low initial development levels of Asia Minor, Asia Minor itself is a relatively easy part of the map to take and hold. Trade and growth are relatively good around the area and Rhodes, Crete and the Seleucids are soon ripe for the picking. Tactically, Pontus are an eastern faction. Expect to field a mobile army of mainly missile units. There are Macedonian-influenced Pikemen though, allowing a solid infantry line to be made when dealing with the western armies and to provide more strategic options.

Pontus have mostly the basic eastern units, but with skirmisher cavalry instead of mounted archers. Scythed Chariots and Chariot Archers are also available, allowing further flexibility. The infantry is a little ticklish at times though; The early infantry suffers from poor morale and a lack of stopping power, although Eastern Infantry are very good at stopping enemy chariots. Pikemen and Cappadocian Lancers are available later on though, allowing more Seleucid-influenced tactics to be used to good effect.

It was founded by Mithridates I in 291 BC and lasted until its conquest by the Roman Empire in 63 BC. Despite being ruled by a dynasty which was a descendant of the Persian Achaemenid Empire it became hellenized due to the influence of the Greeks on the black sea and the smaller Hellenistic kingdoms in the Middle East. Pontus grew to its largest extent under Mithridates VI the great, who conquered Colchis, Cappadocia, Bithynia, Lesser Armenia, the Greek colonies of the Tauric Chersonesosand for a brief time the Roman province of Asia.

Pontus starts in north and east Asia Minor, north of the Seleucid Empire, and west of Armenia. Their cities are:

Sinope - Pontic Capital; Region - Pontus

Mazaka - Pontic Large Town; Region - Cappadocia

Pontus infantry units include the feared Bronze Shield Pikemen, the elite of the army of Pontus, among the heirs of the world-conquering phalanxes of Alexander the Great. Pontus has effective cavalry including Cappadocian Cavalry, which are are excellent horsemen, best suited to charging into and breaking through enemy formations with their lances. Pontic heavy cavalry are javelin-armed horsemen who can also fight hand-to-hand - a potent combination in one force.

After a long struggle with Rome in the Mithridatic wars, Pontus was defeated, part of it was incorporated into the Roman Empire as the province Bithynia et Pontus and the eastern half survived as a client Kingdom. The Bosporan Kingdom also remained independent under Pharnaces II as an ally and friend of Rome. Colchis was also made into a client Kingdom. Pharnaces II later made an attempt at reconquering Pontus. During the civil war of Caesar and Pompey, he invaded Asia Minor, taking Colchis, lesser Armenia, Pontus and Cappadocia and defeating a Roman army at Nicopolis. Caesar responded swiftly and defeated him at Zela, where he uttered the famous phrase 'Veni, Vidi, Vici' (i came, i saw, i conquered). Pontic kings continued to rule the client Kingdom of Pontus, Colchis and Cilicia until Polemon II was finally forced to abdicate the Pontic throne by the Romans in 62 AD.

https://totalwar.fandom.com/wiki/Pontus

Text I

The BNCC and Twenty-First Century Skills

The most ambitious feature of the BNCC, which only appeared in the document’s third version, was to establish ten core competencies that all students should develop throughout basic education, starting in early childhood. These competencies include lifelong learning, critical thinking, aesthetic sensibilities, communication skills, digital literacy, entrepreneurship, self-care, empathy, citizenship and ethics. The core competencies broaden the goals of basic education well-beyond academic skills to twenty-first century skills widely regarded as essential to preparing the next generations for the challenges of the 4th industrial revolution.

As ambitious as it was, the BNCC was criticized for the lack of explicit links between the ten core competencies and the subject specific competencies and skills, leaving cities and states with the responsibility of making these links themselves. In addition to this, the core competencies are not generally integrated into teacher training programs and are often de-prioritized for the more basic literacy and numeracy needs. In this context, the Ministry of Education and its partners in the third sector have developed orientations, produced videos and online courses aimed at filling this gap, and helped cities and states integrate the ten core competencies in their curricula.

[…]

Ensuring all Brazilian students master the ten core competencies laid out by the BNCC by the end of high school is a long-term, extremely ambitious goal. Before we can set a timeframe for when we will be able to achieve this feat, we need to know where we stand. Due to the core competencies’ complexity, each involves several skills, attitudes and sometimes values, it is unclear whether we will be capable of measuring all ten of them and by when. Until then we are in the company of the OECD, which is already tackling this challenge and will likely pave the way for Brazil in this respect

Note: BNCC: Base Nacional Comum Curricular;

OECD: The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development.

Adapted from https://link.springer.com/chapter/10.1007/978-3-030-41882-3_2

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

READ THE TEXT AND ANSWER THE QUESTION:

Chatbots could be used to steal data, says cybersecurity agency

The UK’s cybersecurity agency has warned that there is an increasing risk that chatbots could be manipulated by hackers.

The National Cyber Security Centre (NCSC) has said that individuals could manipulate the prompts of chatbots, which run on artificial intelligence by creating a language model and give answers to questions by users, through “prompt injection” attacks that would make them behave in an unintended manner.

The point of a chatbot is to mimic human-like conversations, which it has been trained to do through scraping large amounts of data. Commonly used in online banking or online shopping, chatbots are generally designed to handle simple requests.

Large language models, such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s AI chatbot Bard, are trained using data that generates human-like responses to user prompts. Since chatbots are used to pass data to third-party applications and services, the NCSC has said that risks from malicious “prompt injection” will grow.

For instance, if a user inputs a statement or question that a language model is not familiar with, or if they find a combination of words to override the model’s original script or prompts, the user can cause the model to perform unintended actions.

Such inputs could cause a chatbot to generate offensive content or reveal confidential information in a system that accepts unchecked input.

According to the NCSC, prompt injection attacks can also cause real world consequences, if systems are not designed with security. The vulnerability of chatbots and the ease with which prompts can be manipulated could cause attacks, scams and data theft. The large language models are increasingly used to pass data to third-party applications and services, meaning the risks from malicious prompt injection will grow.

The NCSC said: “Prompt injection and data poisoning attacks can be extremely difficult to detect and mitigate. However, no model exists in isolation, so what we can do is design the whole system with security in mind.”

The NCSC said that cyber-attacks caused by artificial intelligence and machine learning that leaves systems vulnerable can be mitigated through designing for security and understanding the attack techniques that exploit “inherent vulnerabilities” in machine learning algorithm.

Adapted from: The Guardian, Wednesday 30 August 2023, page 4.