Questões de Concursos Sinônimos Synonyms

LA UNIDAD DEL ESPAÑOL

En su intervención Villanueva ha descrito los momentos más transcendentales de la historia del español: «El primero es, obviamente, el fundacional, la constitución del romance castellano y su expansión por la Península ocupada por los árabes. El segundo comienza en 1492, el año de la Gramática de Nebrija, con la llegada de Colón a América. Y el tercero es el que hace del español una lengua ecuménica, la segunda por el número de hablantes nativos en todo el mundo: con este tercer momento me refiero al proceso de la independencia y constitución de las Repúblicas americanas a partir de finales del segundo decenio del siglo XIX».

El director de la RAE ha subrayado que «en la unidad de nuestra lengua universal, bien perceptible hoy gracias a la fluida comunicación que la movilidad de las personas y la transmisión a través de los medios de nuestras respectivas hablas facilita, tuvo mucho que ver, en este trascendental siglo XIX, la labor académica».

Darío Villanueva explicó que en 1871 se creó la Academia Colombiana de la Lengua, «la decana, detrás de la RAE, de las hoy existentes. La penúltima, cronológicamente hablando, sería precisamente la ANLE, constituida en 1973. La última establecida hasta el momento, ya en pleno siglo XXI, ha sido la del único país de África que tiene el español como lengua oficial: La Academia Ecuatoguineana. Sería de desear que esa nómina se cerrase con una vigesimocuarta Academia, que no sería otra que la del judeoespañol, la lengua que los judíos sefardíes, expulsados de España en 1492, mantuvieron viva hasta hoy en sus comunidades extendidas por gran parte de Europa, por el Imperio Otomano y algunos enclaves del Nuevo Mundo».

Texto extraído de www.rae.es

Aborto: las luces verdes se apagaron entre lágrimas, bronca y desazón

INGLESIAS, Mariana. Disponible en . Accesado en 12 de ago. 2018. Adaptado.

Read the text and answer question

How to Make Friends While Traveling Solo

Even in the best cases, traveling alone can get lonely. Here’s how to connect safely with the people you meet along the way.

Text

A French art expert believes a charcoal drawing kept in a collection for more than 150 years may be a preparatory sketch made by Leonardo da Vinci of the Mona Lisa.

The black-and-white drawing of a woman, nude from the waist up, known as the Monna Vanna, was previously attributed to Leonardo’s studio, suggesting it was done in his style by a pupil or follower, not by the master himself.

But after preliminary tests at the Louvre Museum, experts believe the sketch may well have been drawn by Leonardo.

Among the signs, according to curator Mathieu Deldicque, are the fact the drawing was made during the same period as the Mona Lisa, the paper is from the same region of Italy, and the technique is very similar to that of the Mona Lisa.

“We know the drawing was made during the lifetime of Leonardo da Vinci, we know that the paper was made in Italy, between Venice and Florence, and the third discovery is the high quality of this drawing in the face of the Monna Vanna and in her arms,” Deldicque told reporters.

“That’s very interesting because the arms are the same as the Mona Lisa‘s.”

Leonardo, who lived from 1452 to 1519, was an engineer, scientist, inventor and sculptor, as well as one of the finest artists of the Italian Renaissance.

He painted the Mona Lisa, also known as La Gioconda and regarded as the world’s most valuable artwork, at the beginning of the 16th century. It is believed to depict Lisa Gherardini, the wife of a successful merchant.

EXCITING

The charcoal portrait, in which the woman is holding a similar pose to the Mona Lisa but with her body more side-on and her head turned further over her left shoulder, has been held in a collection at the Conde Museum at the Palace of Chantilly, north of Paris, since 1862.

The Mona Lisa and Monna Vanna hold their hands in very similar ways, the right hand across the left and resting on the forearm, the fingers gently extended.

Deldicque said that while it was exciting to think the charcoal drawing was created by Leonardo, there were more tests to be done.

“We have one more month of analysis and then a very slow process of history of art with a collection of analysts and advice by specialists,” he said.

It is possible that process will determine that the authorship is the same. But it may also be inconclusive, he said, adding:

“Maybe the mystery will remain.”

(Source: adapted from http://www.reuters.com/article/us-france-monalisa-sketch/is-16th-century-charcoal-sketch-a-naked-mona-lisa-idUSKCN1C42LD, retrieved on October 1, 2017)

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.

If you take a look at my smartphone, you’ll know that I like to order out. But am I helping the small local businesses? You would think that if you own a restaurant you’d be thrilled to have an outsourced service that would take care of your delivery operations while leveraging their marketing might to expand your businesses’ brand. However, restaurant owners have complained of lack of quality control once their food goes out the door. They don’t like that the delivery people are the face of their product when it gets into the customer’s hand. Some of the delivery services have been accused of listing restaurants on their apps without the owners’ permission, and oftentimes publish menu items and prices that are incorrect or out of date.

But there is another reason why restaurant owners aren’t fond of delivery services. It’s the costs, which, for some, are becoming unsustainable. Even with the increased revenues from the delivery services, the fees wind up killing a restaurant’s margins to the extent that it’s at best marginally profitable. Therefore, some restaurants are pushing harder to drive orders from their own websites and offering special deals for customers that use their in-house delivery people.

The simple fact is that these delivery apps are here to stay. They are enormously popular and have significantly grown. I believe that restaurant owners that resist these apps are hurting their brands by missing out on potential customers. The good news is that the delivery platforms are not as evil as some would portray them. They have some skin in the game. They are competing against other services. They want their listed restaurants to profit. Maybe instead of fighting, the nation’s restaurant industry needs to proactively embrace the delivery service industry and figure out ways to profitably work together.

The Guardian. 02 December, 2020. Adaptado.

Read the following text to answer the question.

By Leo Selivan

In this article, informed by the Lexical Approach, I reflect on grammar instruction in the classroom […]. I consider the problems with ‘traditional’ grammar teaching before arguing that what we actually need is more grammar input as well as showing how lexis can provide necessary ‘crutches’ for the learner.

Lexis = vocabulary + grammar

The shift in ELT from grammar to lexis mirrors a similar change in the attitude of linguists. In the past linguists were preoccupied with the grammar of language; however the advances in corpus linguistics have pushed lexis to the forefront. The term ‘lexis’, which was traditionally used by linguists, is a common word these days and frequently used even in textbooks.

Why use a technical term borrowed from the realm of linguistics instead of the word ‘vocabulary’? Quite simply because vocabulary is typically seen as individual words (often presented in lists) whereas lexis is a somewhat wider concept and consists of collocations, chunks and formulaic expressions. It also includes certain patterns that were traditionally associated with the grammar of a language, e.g. If I were you…, I haven’t seen you for ages etc.

Recognising certain grammar structures as lexical items means that they can be introduced much earlier, without structural analysis or elaboration. Indeed, since the concept of notions and functions made its way into language teaching, particularly as Communicative Language Teaching (CLT) gained prominence, some structures associated with grammar started to be taught lexically (or functionally). I’d like to is not taught as ‹the conditional› but as a chunk expressing desire. Similarly many other ‹traditional› grammar items can be introduced lexically relatively early on.

Less grammar or more grammar?

You are, no doubt, all familiar with students who on one hand seem to know the ‘rules’ of grammar but still fail to produce grammatically correct sentences when speaking or, on the other, sound unnatural and foreign-like even when their sentences are grammatically correct. Michael Lewis, who might be considered the founder of the Lexical Approach, once claimed that there was no direct relationship between the knowledge of grammar and speaking. In contrast, the knowledge of formulaic language has been shown by research to have a significant bearing on the natural language production.

Furthermore, certain grammar rules are practically impossible to learn. Dave Willis cites the grammar of orientation (which includes the notoriously difficult present perfect and the uses of certain modal verbs) as particularly resistant to teaching. The only way to grasp their meaning is through continuous exposure and use.

Finally, even the most authoritative English grammars never claim to provide a comprehensive description of all the grammar, hence the word ‘introduction’ often used in their titles (for instance, Huddleston & Pullum’s A Student’s Introduction to English Grammar or Halliday’s An Introduction to Functional Grammar).

If grammarians do not even attempt to address all areas of grammar, how can we, practitioners, cover all the aspects of grammar in our teaching, especially if all we seem to focus on is a limited selection of discrete items, comprised mostly of tenses and a handful of modal verbs? It would seem that we need to expose our students to a lot of naturally occurring language and frequently draw their attention to various grammar points as they arise.

For example, while teaching the expression fall asleep / be asleep you can ask your students:

• Don’t make any noise – she’s fallen asleep.

• Don’t make any noise – she’s asleep.

What does’s stand for in each of these cases (is or has)?

One of the fathers of the Communicative Language Teaching Henry Widdowson advocated using lexical items as a starting point and then ‘showing how they need to be grammatically modified to be communicatively effective’ (1990:95). For example, when exploring a text with your students, you may come across a sentence like this:

• They’ve been married for seven years.

You can ask your students: When did they get married? How should you change the sentence if the couple you are talking about is no longer married?

The above demonstrates how the teacher should be constantly on the ball and take every opportunity to draw students’ attention to grammar. Such short but frequent ‘grammar spots’ will help to slowly raise students’ awareness and build their understanding of the English grammar system.

[…]

Conclusion

So is there room for grammar instruction in the classroom? Certainly yes. But the grammar practice should always start with the exploitation of lexical items. Exposing students to a lot of natural and contextualised examples will offer a lexical way into the grammar of the language.

To sum up, grammar should play some role in language teaching but should not occupy a big part of class time. Instead grammar should be delivered in small but frequent portions. Students should be encouraged to collect a lot of examples of a particular structure before being invited to analyse it. Hence, analysis should be preceded by synthesis.

Lastly, language practitioners should bear in mind that grammar acquisition is an incremental process which requires frequent focus and refocus on the items already studied.

Available at: https://www.teachingenglish.org.uk/professionaldevelopment/teachers/knowing-subject/articles/grammar-vs-lexisor-grammar-through. Accessed on: April 29, 2024.

Read the Text I and answer the question that follow it.

Text I

Correspondence

Human genome editing: potential seeds of conflict

Recently, The Lancet published an important declaration regarding the necessity of regulating and legislating for human genome editing. We agree with their opinions that the human genome editing technology and resulting research can have both positive and negative effects on human society. The use of genome editing for research and commercial purposes has sparked debates in both biological and political realms. However, most of them have mainly focused on the effects of human genome editing on the patients themselves, and little attention has been paid to their offspring.

Several films, such as Gattaca and Gundam SEED, have addressed the conflicts that arise from human genome editing. Such conflicts not only exist within the generation who have experienced editing but are also transmitted to their offspring. For example, in these films, the offspring of people without genome editing felt a sense of unfairness regarding the inferiority of their physical (or other non-edited domains) status, whereas the offspring of people with genome editing grew up in a biased, discriminated against, and ostracized environment. They could have lived in peace with a strong and well regulated government; however, when the tenuous grip of government weakens, jealousy and resentment can lead to ruins. Although these scenes still exist in films, they might become increasingly plausible in decades to come. Using the concept of preparedness, access, countermeasures, tools, and trust, we should prepare legitimate human genome editing, establish access to deal with imminent or potential discrimination, develop countermeasures and tools for prevention and resolution of conflict, and entrust future generations with the responsibility to use them wisely.

Bing-Yan Zeng, Ping-Tao Tseng, *Chih-Sung Liang

Adapted from: www.thelancet.com, vol. 401, June 24, 2023 at https://www.thelancet.com/action/showPdf?pii=S0140-6736%2823%2901084-X