Questões de Inglês

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

Going solo: the Japanese women rejecting marriage for the freedom of living single

More Japanese women are in work and unmarried than ever before, rejecting long-held double standards about domestic
life. But cultural norms have not yet caught up.

    The bride wore a birthday cake of a dress, with a scalloped-edge bodice and a large hoop skirt. A veil sprouted from her black bob. Moments before the wedding began, she stood quietly on a staircase, waiting to descend to the ceremony.

    “Wow”, she thought. “I’m really doing this”.

    This was no conventional wedding to join two people in matrimony. Instead, a group of nearly 30 friends gathered in a banquet room in one of Tokyo’s most fashionable districts last year to witness Sanae Hanaoka, 31, as she performed a public declaration of her love – for her single self. “I wanted to figure out how to live on my own”, Hanaoka told the group, standing alone on a stage as she thanked them for attending her solo wedding. “I want to rely on my own strength”.
    Not so long ago, Japanese women who remained unmarried after the age of 25 were referred to as “Christmas cake”, a slur comparing them to old holiday pastries that cannot be sold after 25 December. Today, such outright insults have faded as a growing number of Japanese women are postponing or forgoing marriage, rejecting the traditional path that leads to what many now regard as a life of domestic drudgery. The percentage of women who work in Japan is higher than ever, yet cultural norms have not caught up: Japanese wives and mothers are still typically expected to bear the brunt of the housework, childcare and help for their ageing relatives, a factor that stymies many of their careers. Fed up with the double standard, Japanese women are increasingly opting out of marriage altogether, focusing on their work and newfound freedoms, but also alarming politicians preoccupied with trying to reverse Japan’s declining population.
    “I thought, ‘If I get married, I will just have to do more housework’”, says Kayoko Masuda, 49, a single cartoonist who stops by to croon in private at a One Kara solo karaoke salon in Tokyo. A separate section is cordoned off for women, behind sliding doors marked “Ladies Only”. “I loved my job, and I wanted to be free to do it”, she says of her unmarried status. Last year, the number of couples getting married hit the lowest level since the end of the Second World War, according to government estimates. It was the sixth straight year of decline in the nation’s marriage rate, which is falling at a much faster clip than the drop in Japan’s population overall. Not surprisingly, the number of births in Japan – a country where few people have children out of wedlock – is also tumbling. Last year, the number of babies born in the country fell to the lowest level since at least 1899, when record-keeping began.

(Disponível em: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/marriage/japan-women-marriage-relationship-independence-happy-life-a9042636.html. Acesso em 4 de setembro de 2019. Adaptado.)

A palavra “clip”, em negrito no último parágrafo, indica:

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

Going solo: the Japanese women rejecting marriage for the freedom of living single

More Japanese women are in work and unmarried than ever before, rejecting long-held double standards about domestic
life. But cultural norms have not yet caught up.

    The bride wore a birthday cake of a dress, with a scalloped-edge bodice and a large hoop skirt. A veil sprouted from her black bob. Moments before the wedding began, she stood quietly on a staircase, waiting to descend to the ceremony.

    “Wow”, she thought. “I’m really doing this”.

    This was no conventional wedding to join two people in matrimony. Instead, a group of nearly 30 friends gathered in a banquet room in one of Tokyo’s most fashionable districts last year to witness Sanae Hanaoka, 31, as she performed a public declaration of her love – for her single self. “I wanted to figure out how to live on my own”, Hanaoka told the group, standing alone on a stage as she thanked them for attending her solo wedding. “I want to rely on my own strength”.
    Not so long ago, Japanese women who remained unmarried after the age of 25 were referred to as “Christmas cake”, a slur comparing them to old holiday pastries that cannot be sold after 25 December. Today, such outright insults have faded as a growing number of Japanese women are postponing or forgoing marriage, rejecting the traditional path that leads to what many now regard as a life of domestic drudgery. The percentage of women who work in Japan is higher than ever, yet cultural norms have not caught up: Japanese wives and mothers are still typically expected to bear the brunt of the housework, childcare and help for their ageing relatives, a factor that stymies many of their careers. Fed up with the double standard, Japanese women are increasingly opting out of marriage altogether, focusing on their work and newfound freedoms, but also alarming politicians preoccupied with trying to reverse Japan’s declining population.
    “I thought, ‘If I get married, I will just have to do more housework’”, says Kayoko Masuda, 49, a single cartoonist who stops by to croon in private at a One Kara solo karaoke salon in Tokyo. A separate section is cordoned off for women, behind sliding doors marked “Ladies Only”. “I loved my job, and I wanted to be free to do it”, she says of her unmarried status. Last year, the number of couples getting married hit the lowest level since the end of the Second World War, according to government estimates. It was the sixth straight year of decline in the nation’s marriage rate, which is falling at a much faster clip than the drop in Japan’s population overall. Not surprisingly, the number of births in Japan – a country where few people have children out of wedlock – is also tumbling. Last year, the number of babies born in the country fell to the lowest level since at least 1899, when record-keeping began.

(Disponível em: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/marriage/japan-women-marriage-relationship-independence-happy-life-a9042636.html. Acesso em 4 de setembro de 2019. Adaptado.)

Um subtítulo adequado para o parágrafo que começa com “Not so long ago...” é:

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

Going solo: the Japanese women rejecting marriage for the freedom of living single

More Japanese women are in work and unmarried than ever before, rejecting long-held double standards about domestic
life. But cultural norms have not yet caught up.

    The bride wore a birthday cake of a dress, with a scalloped-edge bodice and a large hoop skirt. A veil sprouted from her black bob. Moments before the wedding began, she stood quietly on a staircase, waiting to descend to the ceremony.

    “Wow”, she thought. “I’m really doing this”.

    This was no conventional wedding to join two people in matrimony. Instead, a group of nearly 30 friends gathered in a banquet room in one of Tokyo’s most fashionable districts last year to witness Sanae Hanaoka, 31, as she performed a public declaration of her love – for her single self. “I wanted to figure out how to live on my own”, Hanaoka told the group, standing alone on a stage as she thanked them for attending her solo wedding. “I want to rely on my own strength”.
    Not so long ago, Japanese women who remained unmarried after the age of 25 were referred to as “Christmas cake”, a slur comparing them to old holiday pastries that cannot be sold after 25 December. Today, such outright insults have faded as a growing number of Japanese women are postponing or forgoing marriage, rejecting the traditional path that leads to what many now regard as a life of domestic drudgery. The percentage of women who work in Japan is higher than ever, yet cultural norms have not caught up: Japanese wives and mothers are still typically expected to bear the brunt of the housework, childcare and help for their ageing relatives, a factor that stymies many of their careers. Fed up with the double standard, Japanese women are increasingly opting out of marriage altogether, focusing on their work and newfound freedoms, but also alarming politicians preoccupied with trying to reverse Japan’s declining population.
    “I thought, ‘If I get married, I will just have to do more housework’”, says Kayoko Masuda, 49, a single cartoonist who stops by to croon in private at a One Kara solo karaoke salon in Tokyo. A separate section is cordoned off for women, behind sliding doors marked “Ladies Only”. “I loved my job, and I wanted to be free to do it”, she says of her unmarried status. Last year, the number of couples getting married hit the lowest level since the end of the Second World War, according to government estimates. It was the sixth straight year of decline in the nation’s marriage rate, which is falling at a much faster clip than the drop in Japan’s population overall. Not surprisingly, the number of births in Japan – a country where few people have children out of wedlock – is also tumbling. Last year, the number of babies born in the country fell to the lowest level since at least 1899, when record-keeping began.

(Disponível em: https://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/love-sex/marriage/japan-women-marriage-relationship-independence-happy-life-a9042636.html. Acesso em 4 de setembro de 2019. Adaptado.)

Com base no texto, considere as seguintes afirmativas:

1. O início do texto descreve uma festa de casamento atípica, em que uma mulher “casa” consigo mesma.
2. As principais razões para que as mulheres japonesas permaneçam solteiras são a alta demanda por mulheres no mercado de trabalho e a alta carga horária decorrente de suas carreiras.
3. Muito embora tenham decidido permanecer solteiras, a grande maioria das mulheres japonesas não abre mão da maternidade.
4. O cuidado e a responsabilidade pelos filhos decorrentes de um casamento são fatores que motivam as mulheres japonesas a não formar famílias.

Assinale a alternativa correta.

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

Big Brother is not the only watcher now

The problem is not that computers can recognise faces. It’s that they can’t forget them.

    Arguments about surveillance and privacy are usually framed around Big Brother – the overweening state. But the widespread use of facial recognition in private hands suggests a more urgent danger: that not just Big Brother but anyone in the family can watch, and profit from, our faces. The private landlords of the King’s Cross development in London are using facial recognition now in their closed-circuit television surveillance. It is not clear whether this is entirely legal, partly because the owners have been reluctant to disclose what it is they’re actually doing. This is a development that looks like the worst of all possible worlds. Visual recognition boosted by AI is cheap, widely available and easily programmed – one hobbyist has used it to train his catflap to open only when his cat was not trying to carry prey into the house – but it is also worryingly inaccurate. Recent trials by police forces in London and south Wales, among other places, have shown a high rate of false positives, and the rate of inaccuracy is much higher with black faces than with white. A technology that cannot in real life discriminate between individuals will only tend to increase the amount of discrimination in society as a whole. It will spread false confidence and real fear.
    The dangers then will lie not only with the collection of data, which may be unavoidable, but also with its subsequent hoarding. The cameras themselves, like most of the so-called internet of things, will present endless vulnerabilities to determined hackers. So will the databases where their information is stored. Even when it is not hacked, the recombination of facial data with material collected in other ways offers disquieting possibilities. It has been claimed that cameras can detect emotion from the way that people walk. The possible uses of that technology for manipulation is obvious – but the real problem is that it is as bogus as a lie detector. Imagine a surveillance system that falsely identifies a black man from his face and then just as falsely attributes to him aggressive intent from his expression and the way he is standing. The dangers are obvious in countries where police routinely carry guns; but even if the system doesn’t summon armed force, it could still place a damning mark against the record of the victim it believes it has identified. The legal and institutional framework within which these dangers must be managed is still unclear; the urgency of the problem, though, is obvious.

(Adaptado de: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/13/the-guardian-view-on-surveillance-big brother-is-not-the-only-watcher-now. Acesso em 1 de setembro de 2019.)

No segundo parágrafo, o autor desenha um cenário hipotético resultante do uso da tecnologia de reconhecimento facial.

 

A respeito desse cenário, assinale a alternativa correta.

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

Big Brother is not the only watcher now

The problem is not that computers can recognise faces. It’s that they can’t forget them.

    Arguments about surveillance and privacy are usually framed around Big Brother – the overweening state. But the widespread use of facial recognition in private hands suggests a more urgent danger: that not just Big Brother but anyone in the family can watch, and profit from, our faces. The private landlords of the King’s Cross development in London are using facial recognition now in their closed-circuit television surveillance. It is not clear whether this is entirely legal, partly because the owners have been reluctant to disclose what it is they’re actually doing. This is a development that looks like the worst of all possible worlds. Visual recognition boosted by AI is cheap, widely available and easily programmed – one hobbyist has used it to train his catflap to open only when his cat was not trying to carry prey into the house – but it is also worryingly inaccurate. Recent trials by police forces in London and south Wales, among other places, have shown a high rate of false positives, and the rate of inaccuracy is much higher with black faces than with white. A technology that cannot in real life discriminate between individuals will only tend to increase the amount of discrimination in society as a whole. It will spread false confidence and real fear.
    The dangers then will lie not only with the collection of data, which may be unavoidable, but also with its subsequent hoarding. The cameras themselves, like most of the so-called internet of things, will present endless vulnerabilities to determined hackers. So will the databases where their information is stored. Even when it is not hacked, the recombination of facial data with material collected in other ways offers disquieting possibilities. It has been claimed that cameras can detect emotion from the way that people walk. The possible uses of that technology for manipulation is obvious – but the real problem is that it is as bogus as a lie detector. Imagine a surveillance system that falsely identifies a black man from his face and then just as falsely attributes to him aggressive intent from his expression and the way he is standing. The dangers are obvious in countries where police routinely carry guns; but even if the system doesn’t summon armed force, it could still place a damning mark against the record of the victim it believes it has identified. The legal and institutional framework within which these dangers must be managed is still unclear; the urgency of the problem, though, is obvious.

(Adaptado de: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2019/aug/13/the-guardian-view-on-surveillance-big brother-is-not-the-only-watcher-now. Acesso em 1 de setembro de 2019.)

Ao utilizar a expressão “This is a development […]”, em negrito no primeiro parágrafo, o autor do texto se refere:

Read the sentences and choose the grammatically correct alternative.