Questões de Concursos Professor de Inglês

Text 7A1-II

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken. 1916 (adapted).

Text 1

The Courage to Be Imperfect

Perfectionism, self-examination and the kissing of frogs

Michael J. Formica

Posted July 9, 2009

Someone once said that there are two kinds of people in the world - those who are right... And nowhere are we more inclined to want to be right than with regard to ourselves. In fact, more often than not, we want to be perfect. What this striving for perfection often leads to is a kind of social paralysis.

If we are constantly focused on making the right decision, we will sometimes find ourselves in a place ranging from morbid indecision to outright fear. Getting it right, making the good choice and avoiding the faux pas endorse in us a rigidity of character and action that is limiting and, in derailing our momentum, deflects our potential evolution.

The willingness to be wrong or, as more properly suggested here, the courage to be imperfect, allows us the opportunity to discover many things about ourselves. Without exercising this courage, we put ourselves into a straightjacket of sorts, setting our thoughts and actions in a dismally fettered pattern.

This line of thinking was prompted by a conversation that I had with a client yesterday where in she had come to the conclusion that she was a bit of a perfectionist. What she had puzzled out for herself was that her perfectionism, rather than serving her, was actually hindering her ability to be flexible, open to new possibilities and clear about what she wanted for herself and her life.

At some point, I suggested that the fairy tale about the princess kissing frogs to find the prince was a good metaphor for stepping outside of one's comfort zone and "trying something on for size' without an overly self-conscious regard for the potential consequences of the choice. She mentioned that a few days earlier she had seen the trailer for a movie in which the princess kissed a frog and turned into a frog herself. Brilliant.

If we are unwilling to kiss a few frogs - to explore the possibilities that are presented to us in anticipation of finding something unexpected - then we, ourselves, may turn into frogs. That is, become stuck in our place and condemned to something that is not us. We can, without the willingness to be open to making mistakes, limit ourselves right into a state of personal inauthenticity.

Available

in:<https://www.psychologytoday.com/intl/blog/enlightened-living/200907/the-courage-be-imperfect>

Text 7A2-II

In October 1971, a gentleman called Frieder Nake published a note entitled, There Should Be No Computer Art, which I quote here. “Soon after the advent of computers, it became clear that there was a great potential application for them in the area of artistic creation”, he began. “Before 1960, amazing, large, expensive, digital computers helped to produce poetic text and music. Analog computers, or only oscilloscopes, generated drawings of sets of mathematical curves and representations of oscillations. It was not before the first exhibitions of computer produced pictures were held in 1965 that a greater public took notice of this threat, as some said, progress, as some thought. I was involved in this development from its beginning.

I think that the way the art scene reacted to the new creations is interesting, pleasing, and stupid. I stated in 1970 that I was no longer going to take part in exhibitions. I find it easy to admit that computer art did not contribute to the advancement of art if we compare the computer products to all existing works of art. In other words, the repertoire of results of aesthetic behavior has not been changed by the use of computers. This point of view, namely, that of art history, is shared and held against computer art by many art critics. There is no doubt in my mind”, Frieder Nake said, “that interesting new methods have been found in the last decade which can be of some significance for the creative artist”.

As you might imagine, this was a bit of a controversial take. Here was a man who had for part of the previous decade been an insider, an advocate for the use of algorithmic and generative processes to create art. However, he was now seeing things from another perspective. I’ll just finish with another piece from what he posted in that article: “Questions like ‘is a computer creative’, or ‘is a computer an artist’, or the like, should not be considered serious questions, period. In the light of what we are facing at the end of the 20th century, those irrelevant questions do not matter”.

Where is the Art? A History in Technology.

Internet: <https://www.infoq.com> (adapted).