The text below is part of the Japanese tale My Lord Bag of Rice:
Long, long ago there lived in Japan a brave warrior known to all as Tawara Toda or My Lord Bag of Rice. His true name was Fujiwara Hidesato and there is a very interesting story of how he came to change his name. One day he went out in search of adventures because he had the nature of a warrior and could not bear to be idle. So he picked up his two swords, took his huge bow, which was much taller than himself, in his hand, strapped his quiver on his back and started out.
He had not gone far when he came to the bridge of Seta-no-Karashi crossing one end of the beautiful Lake Biwa. As soon as he stepped on the bridge, he saw lying right across his path a huge serpent-dragon. Its body was so big that it looked like the trunk of a large pine tree and it took up the whole width of the bridge. One of its huge claws rested on the parapet of one side of the bridge while its tail lay right against the other. The monster seemed to be asleep, and as it breathed, fire and smoke came out of its nostrils.
At first, Hidesato could not help feeling alarmed at the sight of this horrible reptile lying in his path, for he must either turn back or walk right over its body.
Complete the sentence with the correct answer. Hidesato had not gone far when he came to the _______________
[1] My neighbors love Christmas, but I don’t. In fact, if I can
be completely honest, I hate Christmas. Maybe it’s because
Christmas was always a little depressing when I was a young
boy. Anyway, my neighbors really love Christmas and every
[5] year they decorate the inside and outside of their house with
big, bright lights. This year, however, they really
exaggerated: their lights are so bright that I can’t sleep at
night! Tomorrow I am going to speak to my neighbors and
ask that the lights __________ reduced or removed.
According to the text, the narrator doesn’t like Christmas, possibly because __________.
Atenção: As questões de números 37 a 46 referem-se à Metodologia de Ensino de Inglês. Quando se focaliza o produto e não a atividade social no ensino-aprendizagem da língua estrangeira a ênfase recai sobre
The ability of a helicopter to hover and land almost anywhere makes it an enormously useful machine. But helicopters have their limitations, particularly when it comes to flying fast. In a recent series of test flights, a new type of chopper has begun smashing speed records.
The x2 is an experimental helicopter being developed by Sikorsky, an American company, which hopes it will be zipping along at more than 460kph. The company, however, is interested in more than just breaking speed records. It plans to use the technology developed for the x2 in commercial helicopters.
Sikorsky reckons that future helicopters built using the x2 technology would be extremely versatile machines. They would dash to and from a medical emergency a lot faster. They would also be very agile in flight, which would increase their capabilities in combat.
(Adapted from The Economist September 11, 2010, page 98)
The Port of Santos is located in the city of Santos, Brazil. As of 2006, it is the busiest container port in Latin America. It is Brazil’s leading port in container traffic. Today it is Latin America’s largest port. Its structure is considered Brazil’s most modern.
It was once considered the ‘port of death’ in the 19th century. Ships tended to avoid docking at the wood plank port, fearing the yellow fever. The floods in the city’s area provoked illnesses and once the bubonic plague almost decimated the population.
In the early 20th century, major urbanization created the port’s modern structure seen today, eliminating the risk of diseases and providing the port with modern, industrial-age infrastructure.
The first railway link from the port to the state capital São Paulo City, 79 km away, and the state’s interior, was completed in 1864. This allowed for an easier transportation of the vast masses of migrant workers who headed to São Paulo and the state’s numerous coffee farms.
Millions of immigrants reached Brazil via the port of Santos in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, proceeding to the country’s interior by railway. Santos was for a few decades the true gateway to Brazil for millions of immigrants.
(Adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_of_Santos – acesso em 21.01.2011)
No terceiro parágrafo, o termo major é o mesmo que
Decide about the correctness of the following items in regard to adjectives, adverbs, and pronouns.
In “She drives ________” and in “She has a ________ car”, you can fill in the blanks with the word fast because both the adjective and the adverb have the same form.
Text VII questions 38 through 40World Bank Brazil country brief1 With an estimated 167 million inhabitants, Brazil has thelargest population in Latin America and ranks sixth in the world. Themajority live in the south-central area, which includes industrial cities4 such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte. 80% of thepopulation now lives in urban areas. Rapid growth in the urbanpopulation has aided economic development but also created serious7 problems for major cities.Brazils miracle years were in the late 1960s and early 1970swhen double digit-annual growth rates were recorded and the structure10 of the economy underwent rapid change.In the 1980s, however, Brazils economic performance waspoor in comparison with its potential. Annual Gross Domestic Product13 (GDP) growth only averaged 1.5 percent over the period from 1980to 1993. This reflected the economys inability to respond tointernational eventsin the late 1970s and the 1980s: the second oil16 shock; increase in international real interest rates; the Latin Americanexternal debt crisis and the ensuing cutoff of foreign credit and foreigndirect investment. This lack of responsiveness reflected the largely19 inward-looking policy orientation that had been in place since the1960s.Economic flexibility was further impaired by provisions of the22 1988 Constitution, which introduced significant rigidities in budgetingand public expenditure. An outcome of these pressures was a steadyrise in the rate of inflation, which reached monthly rates of 50% by the25 middle of 1994.Internet: <http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/Exter/abe36259ca656c4985256914005207e3?OpenDocumen> (with adaptations).Considering text VII, judge the items below.
Mexico population is not so large as the Brazilian one.
INSTRUCTIONS: Read the following text carefully and then choose the correct answer. Leonardo da Vinci
Known as the greatest artist in the history of mankind, Leonardo da Vinci was also a great philosopher and scientist. Leonardo is the most influential figure in the Italian Renaissance and he is considered to be an inventive multi-genius.
Leonardo was born in 1452 in Vinci, Italy, as the child of Piero da Vinci, a notary, and Caterina, a country girl. He stayed with his father’s family and they moved to Florence when he was just 12. At the age of 14, Leonardo started out his artist’s apprenticeship at the studio of Andrea del Verrocchio (1435-1488), an Italian sculptor, goldsmith and painter.
The art of painting made Leonardo knowledgeable about anatomy and perspective. In addition to painting, Verrocchio’s studio also offered technical and mechanical arts and sculpture. Leonardo had developed an interest in architecture so he went on to study engineering.
After a decade of highly original work as an artist, Leonardo wrote to several wealthy men to help finance his projects. The Duke of Milan, Ludovico Sforza (1452-1508), accepted his offer as Leonardo told him that he could design war weapons like guns and mines, and also structures like collapsible bridges. He lived in Milan with the Duke from 1482 to 1508, reportedly creating very innovational war machines. He also did painting and sculpture, as well as urban planning for large-scale water projects. There, he also wrote about making a telescope to view the moon.
Available at: < http://www.famousscientists.org/leonardo-da-vinci> (Edited).
According to the text, Leonardo da Vinci lived in three different cities. About his years in Florence, it is CORRECT to say that
A former Facebook executive has said social media is doing great harm to society around the world. The executive is a man called Chamath Palihapitiya. He ___________ Facebook in 2007 a n d ___________a vice president. He was responsible for increasing the number of users Facebook had. Mr Palihapitiya said he feels very guilty about getting more people to use social networks. He said the networks are destroying society because they are changing people"s behavior. Twenty years ago, people talked to each other face to face. Today, people message each other and do not talk. People also really care about what other people think of them. They post photos and wait to see how many people like the photo. They get very sad if people do not like the photo.
Mr. Palihapitiya said people should take a long break from social media so they can experience real life. He wants people to value each other instead of valuing online "hearts, likes, and thumbs-up". Palihapitiya also points out how fake news is affecting how we see the world, it is becoming easier for large websites to spread lies. It is also becoming easier to hurt other people online. Anyone can hide behind a fake user name and post lies about other people. Palihapitiya said this was a global problem. He is worried about social media so much that he has banned his children from using it. However, he did state that Facebook was a good company. He said: "Of course, it"s not all bad. Facebook overwhelmingly does good in the world."
A!l the underlined words in text I are adjectives, EXCEPT:
For more than half a century, immigrants from the Indian subcontinent and the West Indies have added variety and diversity to the rich patchwork of accents and dialects spoken in the UK. British colonisers originally exported the language to all four corners of the globe and migration in the 1950s brought altered forms of English back to these shores. ___________(1) that time, especially in urban areas, speakers of Asian and Caribbean descent have blended their mother tongue speech patterns with existing local dialects producing wonderful new varieties of English, ___________(2) London Jamaican or Bradford Asian English. Standard British English has also been enriched by an explosion of new terms, such as balti (a dish invented in the West Midlands and defined by a word that would refer to a "bucket" rather than food to most South Asians outside the UK) and bhangra (traditional Punjabi music mixed with reggae and hiphop).
The recordings on this site of speakers from minority ethnic backgrounds include a range of speakers. You can hear speakers whose speech is heavily influenced by their racial background, alongside those whose speech reveals nothing of their family background and some who are ranged somewhere in between. There are also a set of audio clips that shed light on some of the more recognisable features of Asian English and Caribbean English.
Slang
As with the Anglo-Saxon and Norman settlers of centuries past, the languages spoken by today’s ethnic communities have begun to have an impact on the everyday spoken English of other communities. For instance, many young people, regardless of their ethnic background, now use the black slang terms, nang (‘cool,’) and diss (‘insult’ — from ‘disrespecting’) or words derived from Hindi and Urdu, such as chuddies (‘underpants’) or desi (‘typically Asian’). Many also use the all-purpose tag-question, innit — as in statements such as you’re weird, innit. This feature has been variously ascribed to the British Caribbean community or the British Asian community, although it is also part of a more native British tradition - in dialects in the West Country and Wales, for instance — which might explain why it appears to have spread so rapidly among young speakers everywhere.
Original influences from overseas
The English Language can be traced back to the mixture of Anglo-Saxon dialects that came to these shores 1500 years ago. Since then it has been played with, altered and transported around the world in many different forms. The language we now recognise as English first became the dominant language in Great Britain during the Middle Ages, and in Ireland during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. From there it has been exported in the mouths of colonists and settlers to all four corners of the globe. ‘International English’, ‘World English’ or ‘Global English’ are terms used to describe a type of ‘General English’ that has, over the course of the twentieth century, become a worldwide means of communication.
American English
The first permanent English-speaking colony was established in North America in the early 1600s. The Americans soon developed a form of English that differed in a number of ways from the language spoken back in The British Isles. In some cases older forms were retained — the way most Americans pronounce the sound after a vowel in words like start, north, nurse and letter is probably very similar to pronunciation in 17th century England. Similarly, the distinction between past tense got and past participle gotten still exists in American English but has been lost in most dialects of the UK.
But the Americans also invented many new words to describe landscapes, wildlife, vegetation, food and lifestyles. Different pronunciations of existing words emerged as new settlers arrived from various parts of the UK and established settlements scattered along the East Coast and further inland. After the USA achieved independence from Great Britain in 1776 any sense of who ‘owned’ and set the ‘correct rules’ for the English Language became increasingly blurred. Different forces operating in the UK and in the USA influenced the emerging concept of a Standard English. The differences are perhaps first officially promoted in the spelling conventions proposed by Noah Webster in The American Spelling Book (1786) and subsequently adopted in his later work, An American Dictionary of the English Language (1828). Both of these publications were enormously successful and established spellings such as center and color and were therefore major steps towards scholarly acceptance that British English and American English were becoming distinct entities.
Influence of Empire
Meanwhile, elsewhere, the British Empire was expanding dramatically, and during the 1700s British English established footholds in parts of Africa, in India, Australia and New Zealand. The colonisation process in these countries varied. In Australia and New Zealand, European settlers quickly outnumbered the indigenous population and so English was established as the dominant language. In India and Africa, however, centuries of colonial rule saw English imposed as an administrative language, spoken as a mother tongue by colonial settlers from the UK, but in most cases as a second language by the local population.
English around the world
Like American English, English in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa has evolved such that they are distinct from British English. However, cultural and political ties have meant that until relatively recently British English has acted as the benchmark for representing ‘standardised’ English — spelling tends to adhere to British English conventions, for instance. Elsewhere in Africa and on the Indian subcontinent, English is still used as an official language in several countries, even though these countries are independent of British rule. However, English remains very much a second language for most people, used in administration, education and government and as a means of communicating between speakers of diverse languages. As with most of the Commonwealth, British English is the model on which, for instance, Indian English or Nigerian English is based. In the Caribbean and especially in Canada, however, historical links with the UK compete with geographical, cultural and economic ties with the USA, so that some aspects of the local varieties of English follow British norms and others reflect US usage.
An international language
English is also hugely important as an international language and plays an important part even in countries where the UK has historically had little influence. It is learnt as the principal foreign language in most schools in Western Europe. It is also an essential part of the curriculum in far-flung places like Japan and South Korea, and is increasingly seen as desirable by millions of speakers in China. Prior to WWII, most teaching of English as a foreign language used British English as its model, and textbooks and other educational resources were produced here in the UK for use overseas. This reflected the UK"s cultural dominance and its perceived ‘ownership’ of the English Language. Since 1945, however, the increasing economic power of the USA and its unrivalled influence in popular culture has meant that American English has become the reference point for learners of English in places like Japan and even to a certain extent in some European countries. British English remains the model in most Commonwealth countries where English is learnt as a second language. However, as the history of English has shown, this situation may not last indefinitely. The increasing commercial and economic power of countries like India, for instance, might mean that Indian English will one day begin to have an impact beyond its own borders.
Text VII questions 38 through 40World Bank Brazil country brief1 With an estimated 167 million inhabitants, Brazil has thelargest population in Latin America and ranks sixth in the world. Themajority live in the south-central area, which includes industrial cities4 such as São Paulo, Rio de Janeiro and Belo Horizonte. 80% of thepopulation now lives in urban areas. Rapid growth in the urbanpopulation has aided economic development but also created serious7 problems for major cities.Brazils miracle years were in the late 1960s and early 1970swhen double digit-annual growth rates were recorded and the structure10 of the economy underwent rapid change.In the 1980s, however, Brazils economic performance waspoor in comparison with its potential. Annual Gross Domestic Product13 (GDP) growth only averaged 1.5 percent over the period from 1980to 1993. This reflected the economys inability to respond tointernational eventsin the late 1970s and the 1980s: the second oil16 shock; increase in international real interest rates; the Latin Americanexternal debt crisis and the ensuing cutoff of foreign credit and foreigndirect investment. This lack of responsiveness reflected the largely19 inward-looking policy orientation that had been in place since the1960s.Economic flexibility was further impaired by provisions of the22 1988 Constitution, which introduced significant rigidities in budgetingand public expenditure. An outcome of these pressures was a steadyrise in the rate of inflation, which reached monthly rates of 50% by the25 middle of 1994.Internet: <http://lnweb18.worldbank.org/Exter/abe36259ca656c4985256914005207e3?OpenDocumen> (with adaptations).The sentence "Rapid growth in the urban population has aided economic development but also created serious problems for major cities" (R.5-7) means the same as
Rapid growth in the urban population has improved economy in major cities, but on the other hand it caused them serious problems.
What are the best energy sources? "Best" depends on many factors - how the energy is being used, where it is being used, what energy sources are available, which sources are most convenient and reliable, which5 are easiest to use, what each costs, and the effects on public safety, health, and the environment. Making smart energy choices means understanding resources and their relative costs and benefits. Some energy sources have advantages for specific10 uses or locations. For example, fuels from petroleum are well suited for transportation because they pack a lot of energy in a small space and are easily transported and stored. Small hydroelectric installations are a good solution for supplying power or mechanical energy close15 to where it is used. Coal is widely used for power generation in many fast-developing countries - including China, India, and many others - because domestic supplies are readily available. Efficiency is an important factor in energy costs.20 How efficiently can the energy be produced, delivered, and used? How much energy value is lost in that process, and how much ends up being transformed into useful work? Industries that produce or use energy continually look for ways to improve efficiency, since this is a key to25 making their products morecompetitive. The ideal energy source - cheap, plentiful, and pollution-free - may prove unattainable in our lifetime, but that is the ultimate goal. The energy industry is continuing to improve its technologies and practices, to30 produce and use energy more efficiently and cleanly. Energy resources are often categorized as renewable or nonrenewable. Renewable energy resources are those that can be replenished quickly - examples are solar power,35 biomass, geothermal, hydroelectric, wind power, and fast-reaction nuclear power. They supply about seven percent of energy needs in the United States; theother 93 percent comes from nonrenewables. The two largest categories of renewable energy now in use in the U.S.40 are biomass - primarily wood wastes that are used by the forest products industry to generate electricity and heat - and hydroelectricity. Nonrenewable energy resources include coal, oil, natural gas, and uranium-235, which is used to fuel45 slow-reaction nuclear power. Projections of how long a nonrenewable energy resource will last depend on many changeable factors. These include the growth rate of consumption, and estimates of how much of the remaining resources can be economically recovered. New exploration50 and production technologies often increase theability of producers to locate and recover resources. World reserves of fossil energy are projected to last for many more decades - and, in the case of coal, for centuries.In: http://www.classroom-energy.org/teachers/energy_tour/pg5.html
In "Industries that produce or use energy continually look for ways to improve efficien," (lines 23-24), "look for" can be correctly substituted by:
