Questões de Inglês

Text

 

  COPENHAGEN — The Nordic countries regularly appear at the top of an annual list of the world’s happiest nations, but their reputation as “happiness superpowers” masks the difficulties of a significant part of the population, a new analysis shows.

  Finland, Norway, Denmark and Iceland led the 2018 ranking of the World Happiness Report, and Sweden wasn’t far behind, placing ninth. But in the five Nordic countries, an average of 12.3 percent of the population is “struggling” or “suffering,” according to a report by the Nordic Council of Ministers and the Happiness Research Institute in Copenhagen.

  [...]

  The report, based on research conducted from 2012 to 2016, asked people to assess their satisfaction with life on a scale of zero to 10. Those who answered seven or higher were categorized as “thriving,” those who responded five or six were classified as “struggling,” and those who said four or lower were deemed to be “suffering.” Most respondents in the Nordic countries reported satisfaction of seven to nine.

  The Nordic states have a sophisticated social net that means that young people face less pressure regarding education, health or jobs than do many of their peers elsewhere. The countries have some of the world’s highest taxes, but schools and hospitals are free, parental leave is generous, and unemployment benefits and care for the elderly help those no longer working. But with that security and help come expectations to do well, and pressure to be as happy as one’s peers.

  [...]

  The trends highlighted in the report appear to be backed up by various national studies conducted in the region. In Sweden, the number of people with depression increased 20 percent in 10 years, the national board on health and welfare said last year, a rise that was particularly pronounced among the young. In Denmark, people ages 16 to 24 are more lonely than are people in their grandparents’ generation, a national survey of 180,000 people conducted this year by the Danish Health Authority showed.

  Mr. Birkjaer of the Happiness Research Institute noted that a performance culture and the growing use of social media contributed to depression, loneliness and stress.

  “These problems are difficult to solve,” he said. “Let’s say social media are a major cause, then what do we do? Ban them? Something else would come in their place.” [...]

(Source: https://www.nytimes.com, retrieved on September 15, 2018)

What title is more appropriate for the text above:

Time

 

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

 

[5] Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
[10] Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

 

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
[15] The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

 

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
[20] Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time has gone, the song is over
Thought I’d something more to say

 

Home, home again
[25] I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
[30] Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells

ROGER WATERS
letras.mus.br

The proverb which can best summarize the main idea present in the song is:

Time

 

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

 

[5] Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
[10] Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

 

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
[15] The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

 

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
[20] Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time has gone, the song is over
Thought I’d something more to say

 

Home, home again
[25] I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
[30] Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells

ROGER WATERS
letras.mus.br

Plans that either come to naught (l. 19)
Or half a page of scribbled lines (l. 20)
The underlined expressions associate the plans mentioned by the poet to the following idea:

Time

 

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day
You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way
Kicking around on a piece of ground in your home town
Waiting for someone or something to show you the way

 

[5] Tired of lying in the sunshine
Staying home to watch the rain
You are young and life is long
And there is time to kill today
And then one day you find
[10] Ten years have got behind you
No one told you when to run
You missed the starting gun

 

And you run and you run to catch up with the sun, but it’s sinking
And racing around to come up behind you again
[15] The sun is the same in a relative way, but you’re older
Shorter of breath and one day closer to death

 

Every year is getting shorter
Never seem to find the time
Plans that either come to naught
[20] Or half a page of scribbled lines
Hanging on in quiet desperation is the English way
The time has gone, the song is over
Thought I’d something more to say

 

Home, home again
[25] I like to be here when I can
And when I come home cold and tired
It’s good to warm my bones beside the fire
Far away, across the field
The tolling of the iron bell
[30] Calls the faithful to their knees
To hear the softly spoken magic spells

ROGER WATERS
letras.mus.br

You missed the starting gun (l. 12)

The fragment above ends the metaphor created in the second stanza.
This metaphor establishes a connection between “life” and the following element:

INSTRUÇÃO: Responder à questão com base nos textos 1 e 2.

 

TEXT 1 

 

Being a Better Online Reader

 

Soon after Maryanne Wolf published “Proust and the
Squid,” a history of the science and the development
of the reading brain from antiquity to the twenty-first
century, she began to receive letters from readers.
[5] Hundreds of them. While the backgrounds of the
writers varied, a theme began to emerge: the more
reading moved online, the less students seemed to
understand.

 

There were the architects who wrote to her about
[10] students who relied so heavily on ready digital
information that they were unprepared to address
basic problems on-site. There were the neurosurgeons
who worried about the “cut-and-paste chart mentality”
that their students exhibited, missing crucial details
[15] because they failed to delve deeply enough into any
one case. And there were, of course, the English
teachers who lamented that no one wanted to read
Henry James anymore.

 

As the letters continued to pour in, Wolf experienced a
[20] growing realization: reading had changed profoundly.
She called the rude awakening her “Rip van Winkle
moment,” and decided that it was important enough
to warrant another book. What was going on with
these students and professionals? Was the digital
[25] format to blame for their superficial approaches, or
was something else at work?

 

Certainly, as we turn to online reading, the physiology
of the reading process itself shifts; we don’t read the
same way online as we do on paper. Reading involves
[30] factors not usually acknowledged. The contrast of
pixels, the layout of the words, the concept of scrolling
versus turning a page, the physicality of a book versus
the ephemerality of a screen, the ability to hyperlink
and move from source to source within seconds online
[35] – all these variables translate into a different reading
experience.

 

The screen, for one, seems to encourage more
skimming behavior: when we scroll, we tend to read
faster but less deeply, as a way of coping with an
[40] overload of information. On screen, people browse
and scan to look for keywords, and to read in a less
linear, more selective fashion, instead of concentrating
more on just following the text. We become tired from
the constant need to filter out hyperlinks and possible
[45] distractions. And our eyes may grow fatigued from
the constantly shifting screens, layouts, colors, and
contrasts, so the reading approach needs to adjust,
taking mental and physical energy. __________.

 

“As children move more toward an immersion in digital
[50] media, we have to figure out ways to read deeply in
this new environment”, said Wolf. She has decided
that, despite all her training in deep reading, she, too,
needs some outside help. To finish her book, she has
ensconced herself in a small village in France with
[55] shaky mobile reception and shakier Internet. Faced
with the endless distraction of the digital world, she
has chosen to tune out just a bit of it. She’s not going
backward; she’s merely adapting.

Adapted from: https://www.newyorker.com/science/maria-konnikova/being-a-better-online-reader

 

TEXT 2

 

  Rip Van Winkle is a classic American short story written by Washington Irving based on local history _____ with influences from European folklore. It tells the story of a man who lived near the Catskill Mountains in New York before the Revolutionary War and fell asleep for twenty years. Everything he knew _____ in the town was gone. _____, he learned that he had to navigate this new world as a free citizen of the United States.

Adapted from: http://www.supersummary.com/rip-van-winkle/summary/ and https://www.bookreports.info/rip-van-winkle-summary/

 

Text 2 relates metaphorically to the ideas of text 1. What idea in text 2 best expresses this metaphor?

INSTRUÇÃO: Responder à questão com base no texto.

 

TEXT

 

  Rip Van Winkle is a classic American short story written by Washington Irving based on local history _____ with influences from European folklore. It tells the story of a man who lived near the Catskill Mountains in New York before the Revolutionary War and fell asleep for twenty years. Everything he knew _____ in the town was gone. _____, he learned that he had to navigate this new world as a free citizen of the United States.

Adapted from: http://www.supersummary.com/rip-van-winkle/summary/ and https://www.bookreports.info/rip-van-winkle-summary/

 

The alternative that brings words that fill in the blanks in text, respectively, is