Questões de Concursos Língua Inglesa

For years, research into the best instructional approaches for students identified as English learners has pointed to the concept of translanguaging.

Identified by bilingual education researcher Ofelia García, it’s both a skill set and a total shift in the way language is thought of, used, and taught in K-12 classrooms where multiple languages are honored and addressed, even as English remains the dominant language of instruction, said Marybelle Marrero-Colon, the associate director of professional development for the Center for Applied Linguistics.

Researchers are looking into how it can be applied to formal assessments, such as state standardized tests on which English learners might struggle to demonstrate their academic proficiency because they are tested in an unfamiliar language.

Translanguaging is the ability to move fluidly between languages and a pedagogical approach to teaching in which teachers support this ability.

In translanguaging, students are able to think in multiple languages simultaneously and use their home language as a vehicle to learn academic English.

A student could be reading an article about the solar system in English, but in their brain, they are also thinking and making connections in Spanish. They might annotate in Spanish or first write down reading comprehension responses in Spanish and then figure out how to provide the responses in English, said MarreroColon. […]

Teachers can engage in a variety of activities that deliberately encourage translanguaging, ranging from providing vocabulary in multiple languages to collaborative translation opportunities. The goal is to get students translanguaging as a practice that can be leveraged toward supporting literacy outcomes and engagement, as well as other academic endeavors.

For example, two students could be assigned to solve a word problem, and one might be stuck on a word in English. The two students can then use an equivalent word in their home language to make sense of what the word problem is asking of them, Phillips Galloway said.

Or in group activities, students can be prompted to share with the rest of the class how something taught in English would make sense in Spanish by highlighting similar and different grammatical structures between the two languages, Marrero-Colon said.

“When you translate, you don’t have to do it word for word. You’re really trying to capture the feeling of that text,” MarreroColon said.

Once teachers start doing these activities, research has found that students who have not spoken before start speaking and students who were not as engaged in text-comprehension activities suddenly are, she added. That's occurring because they are being encouraged to use their home language in class to think about language use overall.

Adapted from https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/what-is-translanguagingand-how-is-it-used-in-the-classroom/2023/07

Native-speakerism is an ideology that upholdsthe idea that so-called “native speakers” are the best models and teachers of English because they represent a “Western culture” from which spring the ideals both of English and of the methodology for teaching it (Holliday, 2005, p. 6). As an ideology, it is a system of ideas that represents a distorted worldview that supports a particular vested interest. The vested interest in the case of nativespeakerism is the promotion by the ELT industry of the so-called “native speaker” brand. The realization that this is an ideologically constructed brand derives from Phillipson’s (1992) linguistic imperialism thesis that the concept of the “native speaker” as a superior model and teacher was explicitly constructed by American andBritish aid agencies in the 1960s to support their agenda of spreading English as a global product.

Further indication that the “native speaker” brand is an ideological construction is that the native-non-native speaker distinction is not self-evident on technical linguistic or even nationality grounds. It is instead a professionally popularized distinction that has been falsely associated with cultural orientation (Kubota & Lin, 2006). Teachers who are labeled “native speakers” have been falsely idealized as organized and autonomous in fitting with the common yet mistaken description of so-called “individualist cultures” of the West; while teachers who are labeled “non-native speakers” are demonized as deficient in these attributes in fitting with the common yet mistaken description of so-called “collectivist cultures” of the non-West (Holliday, 2005, p. 19, citing Kubota, Kumaravadivelu, Nayar, and Pennycook). The collectivist stereotype is itself considered to be a Western construction of non-Western cultural deficiency. An example of this is a British teacher’s reference to a superior “native speaker” “birthright” at the same time as criticizing, albeit without foundation, not only the linguistic and pedagogic performance, but also the cultural background and proficiency of his “non-native speaker” colleagues (Holliday & Aboshiha, 2009, p. 667).

The Othering of teachers who are labeled “non-native speakers” therefore results in a cultural disbelief—not believing in their ability to teach English within a Western, and indeed superficially constructed “learning group ideal” that is characterized by “active” oral expression, initiation, self-direction, and students working in groups and pairs (Holliday, 2005, p. 44). The association of the “non-native speaker” label with deficiency is also deeply rooted within a wider and equally mistaken Western perception that people from non-Western cultural backgrounds are unable to be critical and self-determined.

Excerpt extracted and adapted from: https://adrianholliday.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/02/nativespeakerism-proofs.pdf

Most English language teachers are probably comfortable using the word ‘grammar’. There is an established grammatical tradition within ELT, and terms such as ‘tense’, ‘conditional form’, or ‘defining relative clause’ are likely to be familiar even to relatively inexperienced teachers. Grammar is often thought of as something reliable and predictable, but although the term is a keyword in the ELT profession, it is somewhat under-examined. A look at the word’s history reveals a perhaps surprising amount of variation and inconsistency.

The word ‘grammar’ comes originally from Ancient Greek grammatike (‘pertaining to letters/written language’). Grammar was one of the ‘liberal arts’ taught in Ancient Greece, and in Rome from around the fifth century BC, although at this time it was a wider area of study than today, including textual and aesthetic criticism and literary history. Its study continued in Europe in medieval times and beyond, with grammar being taught at schools alongside logic and rhetoric in what was known as the ‘trivium’.

The tradition of studying the grammar of English in British schools did not emerge until the 16th century (Howatt with Widdowson 2004: 77) — until then, studying grammar at school meant studying Latin or Ancient Greek, not vernacular languages. Indeed, the first grammar of English, Bullokar’s Pamphlet for Grammar (1586), is said to have been written to demonstrate that the English language was in fact rule-based and could be analysed in the same way as Latin (Linn 2006: 74).

Grammar has lost its status as a distinct subject in the school curriculum but the word has continued (since 1530 according to the Oxford English Dictionary) to be used as a countable noun meaning ‘a book describing the grammar of a language’.

Content extracted and adapted from: https://academic.oup.com/eltj/articleabstract/74/2/198/5805512?redirectedFrom=fulltext

Most English language teachers are probably comfortable using the word ‘grammar’. There is an established grammatical tradition within ELT, and terms such as ‘tense’, ‘conditional form’, or ‘defining relative clause’ are likely to be familiar even to relatively inexperienced teachers. Grammar is often thought of as something reliable and predictable, but although the term is a keyword in the ELT profession, it is somewhat under-examined. A look at the word’s history reveals a perhaps surprising amount of variation and inconsistency.

The word ‘grammar’ comes originally from Ancient Greek grammatike (‘pertaining to letters/written language’). Grammar was one of the ‘liberal arts’ taught in Ancient Greece, and in Rome from around the fifth century BC, although at this time it was a wider area of study than today, including textual and aesthetic criticism and literary history. Its study continued in Europe in medieval times and beyond, with grammar being taught at schools alongside logic and rhetoric in what was known as the ‘trivium’.

The tradition of studying the grammar of English in British schools did not emerge until the 16th century (Howatt with Widdowson 2004: 77) — until then, studying grammar at school meant studying Latin or Ancient Greek, not vernacular languages. Indeed, the first grammar of English, Bullokar’s Pamphlet for Grammar (1586), is said to have been written to demonstrate that the English language was in fact rule-based and could be analysed in the same way as Latin (Linn 2006: 74).

Grammar has lost its status as a distinct subject in the school curriculum but the word has continued (since 1530 according to the Oxford English Dictionary) to be used as a countable noun meaning ‘a book describing the grammar of a language’.

Content extracted and adapted from: https://academic.oup.com/eltj/articleabstract/74/2/198/5805512?redirectedFrom=fulltext

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By Detroit News Film Critic A mother and her son are separated in wartime London in "Blitz," director Steve McQueen's drama about clinging onto hope in the middle of chaos.

British actress Saoirse Ronan is Rita, who has to say goodbye to her son George (newcomer Elliott Heffernan, in his first role), who joins the thousands of children who are sent by train to live in the English countryside as Germany throws bombs on London during World War II.

Their parting is tense. "Don't forget to be a good boy," she tells him, all love. "I hate you," George replies. The boy, who is bi-racial and never knew his father, is scared by the situation and terrified to be on his own.

Midway into his journey, he jumps off the train to make his way back to London on foot. He ends up in a series of mini-adventures that play out like chapters in a Charles Dickens novel.

Director McQueen efficiently identifies beauty even in the darkest of spaces, whether in a subway station where people are taking cover from air raids, or in the neighborhoods destroyed by bombs. For McQueen, the diversity of London is a constant issue in the film as is the prevalence of racism. "Blitz" is a story of struggle and never giving up in the face of imminent doom.

Available at: https://www.detroitnews.com/story/entertainment/movies/2024/11/21/blitz-review-in-wartime-london-afamilys-search-for-sanity/76474861007/ Access at: 27 Nov. 2024. Adapted.

"My God! I didn't prepare anything, because I was glad already and this is such an amazing year for female perfomances. So many actresses here that I admire so much. And, of course, I wanna thank you, Walter Salles, my partner, my friend. What a story, Walter! And, of course, I want to dedicate it to my mother.

You have no idea. She was here 25 years ago and this is like a proof that art can endure through life even in difficult moments, like this amazing Eunice Paiva, that I do, has passed. And the same thing that is happening now in the world, with so much fear and this is a film that helped us to think how to survive in tough times like these.

So, to my mother, to my family, to Andrucha (Waddington), to Selton (Mello), to my kids, to everybody. Thank you very much. Golden Globe. Michael Barker, Mara, so many people. Thank you very much. Thank you!"

Clocking out at 5 p.m. on the dot, only doing your assigned daily tasks, limiting chats with colleagues and not working overtime. These are the distinctive features of "quiet quitting," a term coined to describe how people are approaching their jobs and professional lives differently to manage burnout.

The phrase, which isn't actually intended to lead to a resignation, exploded into the popular lexicon in 2022 when a TikTok video went viral. The creator, Zaid Khan, said in the video "I recently learned about this term 'quiet quitting,' where you're not outright quitting your job, but you're quitting the idea of going above and beyond." Nonetheless, “quiet quitting” is a misnomer, at least according to Karen K. Ho, a freelance business and culture reporter. She said that the term doesn't account for the fact that people are watching their grocery bills, fuel costs and housing prices go up, often without so much as a salary increase. "You're literally stagnating as a result of not earning more, not being promoted – and that's why a lot of people are leaving jobs," she completed.

While the words "quiet quitting" are loaded, evoking images of a slacker or ne'er-do-well for some, others say that the approach frees up time to spend with family and friends or to take care of oneself. In short, it's a renewed commitment to life beyond the workplace. On the other hand, the term “quiet quitting” has also received criticism, even from those who generally favor the idea behind it.

However, while the term "quiet quitting" may be a new invention, the mentality behind it is not. The phrase "work to rule," for example, describes a labor action in which employees strictly perform the work laid out in their contract, without taking on additional work. In 2020, the COVID-19 pandemic triggered a major economic movement, The Great Resignation, which saw people leaving their jobs or switching professions in droves, as they re-evaluated their relationship with work during a lifechanging health crisis.

A May 2022 survey by RBC Insurance suggested that more than one-third of recently retired Canadians aged 55-75 had retired sooner than they planned. Another third decided to retire sooner because of the pandemic. Moreover, Statistics Canada reported that the third quarter of 2021 saw a 60% increase in job vacancies compared to pre-pandemic levels in the country.

Both Quiet Quitting and The Great Resignation indicate a marked cultural shift from the early and mid-2010s when "hustle culture" paved the way to "grinding" and "girl-bossing" – two ideas that prioritized work over everything else, with the belief that such effort made employees more desirable to managers, therefore helping them climb up the corporate ladder faster and generating more income.

In addition, it is important to highlight that employees have been re-evaluating how much time they spend commuting, working overtime and generally investing in low-pay, low-reward jobs. It seems they have realized that they work in systems where they are constantly immersed in a hustle culture – which has been repeatedly shown to be only beneficial for corporations and their managers, through bonuses, through increased productivity, through increased revenue and profits and the like.

Furthermore, some employees are advocating for policies, benefits and working conditions that strengthen work-life balance. But critics say it doesn't work as well as it should, with a glaring loophole that allows employers to take advantage by vaguely wording their policies.

Adapted from: https://www.cbc.ca/news/business/quiet-quitting-workerdisengagement-1.6560226 Last Updated: August 25, 2022