Questões de Concursos Inglês

TEXT 2

The first step in establishing a cyber ethical culture is to ask the really tough questions, the answer to which may be politically incorrect. HR (Human resources), legal, security and top management need to work together to set the tone they wish to flow through gaming; other times off-site meetings will work.

The second step is to include cyber ethical components in corporate security awareness campaigns to keep employees clued in.

The last but most important step is to be ready to make changes rapidly when cyber ethics becomes a component of information security efforts. We cannot predict how they will change tomorrow or next year – but we need to be prepared.

(MARINOTTO, Demóstene. Reading on Info Tech (Inglês para Informática). São Paulo, Novatec, 2007.)

Read the text below to answer question

“To read these books, in this way, as an exercise in self-knowledge, carries certain risks. Risks that are both personal and political. Risks that every student of Political Philosophy has known. These risks spring from the fact that philosophy teaches us, and unsettles us, by confronting us with what we already know. There is an irony: the difficulty of this course consists in the fact that it teaches what you already know. It works by taking what we know from familiar unquestioned settings, and making it strange. [...] Philosophy estranges us from the familiar, not by supplying new information, but by inviting and provoking a new way of seeing.

But, and here is the risk, once the familiar turns strange, it is never quite the same again. Self-knowledge is like lost innocence; however unsettling you find it, it can never be 'unthought' or 'unknown'. What makes this enterprise difficult, but also riveting, is that Moral and Political Philosophy is a story, and you don't know where the story would lead, but you do know that the story is about You.”

Text taken from: “Justice: What's the Right Thing to Do?” Introduction Class ― Michael Sandel

INSTRUCTION: Read the following text to answer question.

Do Leveled Books Have Any Place in the Classroom?

“The little turtle can see the grass. The little turtle can see the trees. The little turtle can see the flowers”. These are the opening lines to one popular reading program’s leveled books: short, predictable texts designed for beginning readers. The patterned sentence structure – centered on the phrase “the little turtle can see" – invites students to rely on repetition and context clues to identify words they can’t sound out.

Leveled books have been a staple in early elementary reading instruction for more than two decades. But as the “science of reading” movement has spread, leveled books have come under fire. Initially, they encourage students to guess at words rather than use their phonics skills, researchers say, which can prevent children from mapping the letter-sound connections that allow them to become fluent readers.

A second problem is how they sort students into levels. Studies have shown that leveling systems are frequently inaccurate. These systems are usually created by the books’ publishers, which purport to match students with books that have a just-right alignment with their reading comprehension abilities.

In classrooms that are switching to a science of reading approach, educators are now wary of leveled books, because of the damage that they did, said Wiley Blevins, an educational consultant. In his opinion, when children are still learning the code of written language, it is required a “tight connection” between the letter-sound correspondences they’re learning and the text they’re reading, so that they have opportunities to practice. But leveled texts can’t do this job. Blevins said that the textdifficulty levels also don’t offer much practical use because they don’t tell educators what skills students still need to master – which doesn’t necessarily mean kids can’t ever pick up these books.

But what are leveled texts anyway? In many of the most popular reading programs of the last decade, leveled readers were some of the main texts that children worked with. Teachers used books for instruction, grouping students by their level and assigning them reading strategies to practice in the text. They have also been used for assessment since teachers listened to students read these books aloud, keeping a running record of their errors.

Publishers claimed that the text-leveling system could match students with books that were just right for their abilities – challenging enough to help them practice new skills, but not so challenging as to be frustrating or inaccessible. This idea is based on outdated theories about how children learn. Studies show that students can read books that are above their level with teacher and peer-provided support. They also indicate that restricting students to text at lower reading levels can actually widen achievement gaps.

However, other research has found that the leveling system isn’t even that accurate. A 2014 study showed that data from leveling assessments correctly predicted students’ reading ability only about 50 percent of the time.

The big problem with these books, though, is that they don’t help students develop their decoding skills, that is, their ability to sound out words by connecting letters tospoken sounds, said Kari Kurto, the National Science of Reading Project director at The Reading League – a group that advocates for evidence-based reading policy and classroom practice. Kurto complemented by saying that many of the words in these books aren’t written with constrained sound-spelling patterns, so “there’s no other strategy that a kid can use other than guessing,” Kurto said.

With all of this being said, one question pops up: how teachers can repurpose leveled readers?

As some districts have shifted their reading instructional practice, they have moved from leveled to decodable text – books written to give students practice with the letter-sound correspondences that they are learning in phonics lessons. However, decodable books shouldn’t be the only books that students ever see because at some point they will have to move on to more complex literature, said Blevins. In his point of view, teachers shouldn’t worry about matching students with a particular level, but rather see if they can find books that include some phonics patterns children know.

But can leveled texts build background knowledge? Some educators have repurposed leveled texts in a different way, using them to help students develop content knowledge about a subject. Research shows that students’ background knowledge is a key component of their reading comprehension ability.

According to Kurto, having more books available that might tap into kids’ different interests is valuable. Still, she draws the attention to the fact that many leveled books are written with simple themes and basic vocabulary and syntax. She said, “a lot of the leveled texts are just a little fluffy. If all [students are] getting beyond decodable text is leveled text, then it’s likely that they’re not being exposed to high-quality language and language structures.”

Although the debate about this matter is extensive and opinions are diverse, one thing is worth keeping in mind: what students read in class really matters.

Source: https://www.edweek.org/teaching-learning/doleveled-books-have-any-place-in-the-classroom/2024/10 Accessed on November 13, 2024. [Adapted]

Opportunity Cost

This phenomenon goes by the name of ‘opportunity cost,’ since by not investing in more equipment and a more rigid production flow, the company is forgoing the opportunity to earn increased profits. These costs are every bite as real as the payment of dollars out-of-pocket.

This notion _______ opportunity cost can be reinforced _________a famous saying ______ Benjamin Franklin, no slouch himself _________ operations management. To make the point, however, we must make a brief excursion into logic. One truth of logic is the validity of the so-called contrapositive, which says simply that if the statement “If A, then B” is true, then it is also true that “If not B, then not A.” That is, of every time A occurs B follows, then we can be sure that if B does not occur, then A did not occur as well. Enough logic then, and back to Ben Franklin.

One of his Poor Richard sayings is that “A penny saved is a penny earned.” We have all recognized the truth of that since childhood, but I assert that by this saying Ben showed us he knows everything about opportunity cost. After all, what is the contrapositive of “A penny not earned is a penny not saved (i.e., a penny sent). All we are saying by this notion of opportunity cost is that “a penny not earned (an opportunity forgone) is a penny spent.” We shall often have occasion to consider opportunity costs, in analyzing and deciding various operations issues.

SCHMENNER, Roger W. Production/Operations Management. 5th Edition. Prentice-Hall, 1993.

Opportunity Cost

This phenomenon goes by the name of ‘opportunity cost,’ since by not investing in more equipment and a more rigid production flow, the company is forgoing the opportunity to earn increased profits. These costs are every bite as real as the payment of dollars out-of-pocket.

This notion _______ opportunity cost can be reinforced _________a famous saying ______ Benjamin Franklin, no slouch himself _________ operations management. To make the point, however, we must make a brief excursion into logic. One truth of logic is the validity of the so-called contrapositive, which says simply that if the statement “If A, then B” is true, then it is also true that “If not B, then not A.” That is, of every time A occurs B follows, then we can be sure that if B does not occur, then A did not occur as well. Enough logic then, and back to Ben Franklin.

One of his Poor Richard sayings is that “A penny saved is a penny earned.” We have all recognized the truth of that since childhood, but I assert that by this saying Ben showed us he knows everything about opportunity cost. After all, what is the contrapositive of “A penny not earned is a penny not saved (i.e., a penny sent). All we are saying by this notion of opportunity cost is that “a penny not earned (an opportunity forgone) is a penny spent.” We shall often have occasion to consider opportunity costs, in analyzing and deciding various operations issues.

SCHMENNER, Roger W. Production/Operations Management. 5th Edition. Prentice-Hall, 1993.

Fake news could ruin social media, but there’s still hope

by: Guðrun í Jákupsstovu

Camille Francois, director of research and analysis at Graphika, told the audience of her talk at TNW Conference:

“Disinformation campaigns, or fake news is a concept we’ve known about for years, but few people realize how varied the concept can be and how many forms it comes in. When the first instances of fake news started to surface, they were connected with bots. These flooded conversations with alternative stories in order to create noise and, in turn, silence what was actually being said”.

According to Francois, today’s disinformation campaigns are far more varied than just bots – and much harder to detect. For example, targeted harassment campaigns are carried out against journalists and human-rights activists who are critical of governments or big organizations.

“We see this kind of campaigns happening at large scale in countries like the Philippines, Turkey, Ecuador, and Venezuela. The point of these campaigns is to flood the narrative these people try to create with so much noise that their original message gets silenced, their reputation gets damaged, and their credibility undermined. I call this patriotic trolling.”

There are also examples of disinformation campaigns mobilizing people. This was evident during the US elections in 2016 when many fake events suddenly started popping up on Facebook. One Russian Facebook page “organized” an anti-Islam event, while another “organized” a pro-Islam demonstration. The two fake events gathered activists to the same street in Texas, leading to a stand-off.

Francois explains how amazed she is that, in spite of social media being the main medium for these different disinformation campaigns, actual people also still use it to protest properly.

If we look at countries, like Turkey – where there’s a huge amount of censorship and smear campaigns directed at human right defenders and journalists – citizens around the world and in those places still use social media to denounce corruption, to organize human rights movements and this proves that we still haven’t lost the battle of who owns social media.

This is an ongoing battle, and it lets us recognize the actors who are trying to remove the option for people to use social media for good. But everyday you still have people all over the world turning to social media to support their democratic activities. This gives me hope and a desire to protect people’s ability to use social media for good, for denouncing corruption and protecting human rights.

Adapted from:<https://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2018/05/25/>. Access 09 Oct. 2018.

Glossary

bot: (short for "robot"): um programa automático que roda na Internet; to flood: inundar; trolling: fazer postagem deliberadamente ofensiva para provocar alguém; popping up: surgir, aparecer; stand-off: impasse: smear campaigns: campanhas de difamação.