Questões de Inglês

Based on the text below, answer question

 

How New Words Are Created

 

    Below we can find the description of five different processes that have led to the creation of new words in the English language.

    (I)                   

    Many of the new words added to the ever-growing lexicon of the English language are Just created out of the blue, and often have little or no etymological pedigree. A good example is the word dog, etymologically unrelated to any other known word, which, in the late Middle Ages, suddenly and mysteriously displaced the Old English word hound (or hund) which had served for centuries.

    (II)                   

    Some words arise simply as shortened forms of longer words (exam, gym, lab, bus, vet, phone and burger are some obvious and well- used examples). Perhaps less obvious is the derivation of words like goodbye (a shortening of God-be-with-you) and hello (a shortened form of the Old English for “whole be thou”).

    (III)                   

    Like many languages, English allows the formation of words by joining together shorter words (e.g. airport, seashore, fireplace, etc.). The concatenation of words in English may even allow for different meanings depending on the order of combination (e.g. houseboat/boathouse, casebook/bookcase, etc).

    (IV)                   

    The drift of word meanings over time often arises, often but not always due to catachresis. By some estimates, over half of all words adopted into English from Latin have changed their meaning in some way over time, often drastically. For example, smart originally meant sharp, cutting or painful; A more modern example is the changing meaning of gay from merry to homosexual (and, in some circles in more recent vears, to stupid or bad).

    (V)                   

    New words may arise due to mishearings or misrenderings. According to the “Oxford English Dictionary”, there are at least 350 words in English dictionaries (most of them thankfully quite obscure) that owe their existence purely to typos or other misrenderings (e.g. shamefaced from the original shamefast, penthouse from pentice, sweetheart from sweetard, buttonhole from button-hold, etc).

(Adapted from http://www. thehistoryofenglish.com/issues new.html)

 

The following headings have been removed from the text and replaced by (I), (II), (III), (IV) and (V).

 

Choose the alternative which presents them in the correct order.

 

1 - Change in the Meaning of Existing Words

2 - Creation from Scratch

3 - Fusion or Compounding Existing Words

4 - Truncation or Clipping

5 - Errors

Based on the text below, answer question

 

American Students Test Well in Problem Solving, but Trail Foreign Counterparts

 

    Fifteen-year-olds in the United States scored above the average of those in the developed world on exams assessing problem-solving skills, but they trailed several countries in Asia and Europe as well as Canada, according to international standardized tests results released on Tuesday.

    The American students who took the problem-solving tests in 2012, the first time they were administered, did better on these exams than on reading, math and science tests, suggesting that students in the United States are better able to apply knowledge to real-life situations than perform straightforward academic tasks.

    Still, students who took the problem-solving tests in countries including Singapore, South Korea, Japan, several provinces of China, Canada, Australia, Finland and Britain all outperformed American students.

    “The good news is that problem solving still remains a relatively strong suit for American students,” said Bob Wise, former governor of West Virginia and president of the Alliance for Excellent Education, a national policy and advocacy group focused on improving high schools. “The challenge is that a lot of other nations are now developing this and even moving ahead. So where we used to, in an earlier era, dominate in what we called the deeper learning skilis - creative thinking, critical thinking and the ability to solve problems - in terms of producing the workers that are increasingly needed in this area, other nations are coming on strong and in some cases surpassing us.

    The new problem-solving exams were administered to a subset of 15-vear-olds in 28 countries who sat for the Program for International Student Assessment, a set of tests every three years commonly known as PISA and given by the Organization for Economic (Cooperation and Development, a Paris-based group whose members include the world”s wealthiest nations. Almost 1,275 American students took the exams.

    Critics of the rankings on international tests have tended to characterize the high performance of Asian countries in particular as demonstrating the rote learning of facts and formulas. But the problem-solving results showed that students in the highest-performing nations were also able to think flexibly. Even on interactive tasks, the American students' strength, all the Asian countries that participated in this round of exams outperformed the United States.

    “To understand how to navigate a complex problem and exercise abstract reasoning is actually a very strong point for the Asian countries,” said Francesco Avvisati, an analyst on the PISA team at the O.E.C.D.

(Adapted from http://www.nytimes.com)

Considering the text, the words “trailed” (1^st paragraph) and “outperformed” (3^rd and 6^th paragraphs) mean respectively “followed                   " and “did                  ".

Based on the text below, answer question

 

How to Exercise While Sitting At Your Computer

 

    Is your work stressing you out? Is your work making you fat? Of course, it is. If you are in a relationship with vour work like me (I hate the word “workaholic”), then maybe you are also dealing with some relationship issues like stress and weight gain. Every person who has a desk job does not need to indulge in a fub of ice-cream after a particularly stressful day at work to gain the pounds. In fact, the downside of being a way too dedicated emplovee is that it will make you fat! The stress to perform plus the inactivity of a desk job will definitely increase your waist size. What's more, vou will become lethargic once four hours of inactivity can seriously send vyour metabolism levels to an all-time low. If you think that a 30 minute walk every day is enough cardio activity in a week to maintain your metabolism, you are wrong! Yes, I was surprised too! The mathematics of this is that when you perform any cardio activity, it elevates your metabolism rate for a span of time, but not the entire day. Because the rest of the day you are sitting idle on your chair without much activity, the 30 minute walk is not enough, nor is the 1-hour intense workout. What you need to do to keep vourself from pilling on the pounds is to keep your metabolism rate high all day long. For that, you need to break the no physical activity routine from 9 to 5 by exercising while sitting at your desk!

    Here are simple exercises that take 5 minutes of your day and prevent you from feeling stiff.

    A) Neck: To stretch vour neck, slowly flex your head forward and backward, side to side and look right and left. This can be done almost any time to lessen tension and strain. Never roll vyour head around your neck--this could cause damage to the Joints of the neck.

    B) Shoulders: Roll your shoulders forward around 10 times, then backward. This helps release the tension off your shoulders.

    C) Wrists: Roll vour wrists regularly, around every hour or so. Roll the wrists 10 times clockwise, then 10 times counterclockwise. This will help minimize the potential for getting carpal tunnel syndrome if you spend a lot of time typing.

    D) Ankles: Roli your ankles regularly. As with your wrists, roll the ankles in a clockwise motion three times, then counterclockwise. This helps improve blood circulation, and prevents that tingling feeling you can get when blood circulation is cut off, also known as "pins and needles".

(Adapted from http://www.buzzle.com and http://www.wikihow. com)

According to the text, which alternative is correct?

Based on the text below, answer question

 

How to Exercise While Sitting At Your Computer

 

    Is your work stressing you out? Is your work making you fat? Of course, it is. If you are in a relationship with vour work like me (I hate the word “workaholic”), then maybe you are also dealing with some relationship issues like stress and weight gain. Every person who has a desk job does not need to indulge in a fub of ice-cream after a particularly stressful day at work to gain the pounds. In fact, the downside of being a way too dedicated emplovee is that it will make you fat! The stress to perform plus the inactivity of a desk job will definitely increase your waist size. What's more, vou will become lethargic once four hours of inactivity can seriously send vyour metabolism levels to an all-time low. If you think that a 30 minute walk every day is enough cardio activity in a week to maintain your metabolism, you are wrong! Yes, I was surprised too! The mathematics of this is that when you perform any cardio activity, it elevates your metabolism rate for a span of time, but not the entire day. Because the rest of the day you are sitting idle on your chair without much activity, the 30 minute walk is not enough, nor is the 1-hour intense workout. What you need to do to keep vourself from pilling on the pounds is to keep your metabolism rate high all day long. For that, you need to break the no physical activity routine from 9 to 5 by exercising while sitting at your desk!

    Here are simple exercises that take 5 minutes of your day and prevent you from feeling stiff.

    A) Neck: To stretch vour neck, slowly flex your head forward and backward, side to side and look right and left. This can be done almost any time to lessen tension and strain. Never roll vyour head around your neck--this could cause damage to the Joints of the neck.

    B) Shoulders: Roll your shoulders forward around 10 times, then backward. This helps release the tension off your shoulders.

    C) Wrists: Roll vour wrists regularly, around every hour or so. Roll the wrists 10 times clockwise, then 10 times counterclockwise. This will help minimize the potential for getting carpal tunnel syndrome if you spend a lot of time typing.

    D) Ankles: Roli your ankles regularly. As with your wrists, roll the ankles in a clockwise motion three times, then counterclockwise. This helps improve blood circulation, and prevents that tingling feeling you can get when blood circulation is cut off, also known as "pins and needles".

(Adapted from http://www.buzzle.com and http://www.wikihow. com)

According to the text, which alternative is correct?

PART 1: READING COMPREHENSION

 

Based on the text below, answer question.

 

The War at Home: The Struggle for Veterans to Find Jobs

 

    In today's tough and competitive Job market, it can be challenging for any adult to land a decent job. Though education can definitely improve outcomes, sometimes it's not just about the degree. Experience can also play a major role in helping people find jobs. Yein some cases, if you do not have the right kind of experience, this may be of little help. Just ask one of the many college-educated military veterans who serve their country only to return to find a Job market that will treat them as rookies.
    Army veteran John Lee Dumas said he had zero anxieties about finding a job after graduating college and had been told that his military experience would give him a leg up on other candidates. But things did not turn out that way.

    “I quickly found out that I was lumped together with recent college grads for entry-level positions, and that an employee that had two vears' experience at a job in a similar industry was considered way more qualified than I was despite my four years as an officer in the army”, Dumas said.

    When Dumas did find work, he said it was difficult to acclimate to the civilian office environment.

    “I often found that my peers and above had a hard time dealing with my direct approach and attitude about tackling problems head on, often asking for forgiveness rather than permission”, he said.

    One issue is that veterans are too modest when it comes to stating their accomplishments in the military.

    “For some reason, Iíve had veterans not tell me about their awards and honors, but it should all be listed - from commander s coins to medals of honor,” Hurwitz said.

    Navy veteran Tom Graves, who has a career in world force development helping companies understand the benefits of hiring skilled and experienced military veterans, agreed.

(Adapted from http://www. onlinecollege.org)

Considering the text, which word can replace “despite” in this extract: “[...] despite my four vears of experience [...]”?

Read the article and answer the question.

 

The road to hell

 

(1) Bringing crops from one of the futuristic new farms in Brazil’s central and northern plains to foreign markets means taking a journey back in time. Loaded onto lorries, most are driven almost 2,000km south on narrow, potholed roads to the ports of Santos and Paranaguá. In the 19th and early 20th centuries they were used to bring in immigrants and ship out the coffee grown in the fertile states of São Paulo and Paraná, but now they are overwhelmed. Thanks to a record harvest this year, Brazil became the world’s largest soya producer, overtaking the United States. The queue of lorries waiting to enter Santos sometimes stretched to 40km.

(2) No part of that journey makes sense. Brazil has too few crop silos, so lorries are used for storage as well as transport, causing a crush at ports after harvest. Produce from so far north should probably not be travelling to southern ports at all. Freight by road costs twice as much as by rail and four times as much as by water. Brazilian farmers pay 25% or more of the value of their soya to bring it to port; their competitors in Iowa just 9%. The bottleneck at ports pushes costs higher still. It also puts off customers. In March Sunrise Group, China’s biggest soya trader, cancelled an order for 2m tonnes of Brazilian soya after repeated delays.

(3) All of Brazil’s infrastructure is decrepit. The World Economic Forum ranks it at 114th out of 148 countries. After a spate of railway-building at the turn of the 20th century, and road- and dam-building 50 years later, little was added or even maintained. In the 1980s infrastructure was a casualty of slowing growth and spiralling inflation. Unable to find jobs, engineers emigrated or retrained. Government stopped planning for the long term. According to Contas Abertas, a public-spending watchdog, only a fifth of federal money budgeted for urban transport in the past decade was actually spent. Just 1.5% of Brazil’s GDP goes on infrastructure investment from all sources, both public and private. The long-run global average is 3.8%. The McKinsey Global Institute estimates the total value of Brazil’s infrastructure at 16% of GDP. Other big economies average 71%. To catch up, Brazil would have to triple its annual infrastructure spending for the next 20 years.

(4) Moreover, it may be getting poor value from what little it does invest because so much goes on the wrong things. A cumbersome environmental-licensing process pushes up costs and causes delays. Expensive studies are required before construction on big projects can start and then again at various stages along the way and at the end. Farmers and manufacturers spend heavily on lorries because road transport is their only option. But that is working around the problem, not solving it.

(5) In the 1990s Mr Cardoso’s government privatised state-owned oil, energy and telecoms firms. It allowed private operators to lease terminals in public ports and to build their own new ports. Imports were booming as the economy opened up, so container terminals were a priority. The one at the public port in Bahia’s capital, Salvador, is an example of the transformation wrought by private money and management. Its customers used to rate it Brazil’s worst port, with a draft too shallow for big ships and a quay so short that even smaller vessels had to unload a bit at a

time. But in the past decade its operator, Wilson & Sons, spent 260m reais on replacing equipment, lengthening the quay and deepening the draft. Capacity has doubled. Land access will improve, too, once an almost finished expressway opens. Paranaguá is spending 400m reais from its own revenues on replacing outdated equipment, but without private money it cannot expand enough to end the queues to dock. It has drawn up detailed plans to build a new terminal and two new quays, and identified 20 dockside areas that could be leased to new operators, which would bring in 1.6 billion reais of private investment. All that is missing is the federal government’s permission. It hopes to get it next year, but there is no guarantee.

(6) Firms that want to build their own infrastructure, such as mining companies, which need dedicated railways and ports, can generally build at will in Brazil, though they still face the hassle of environmental licensing. If the government wants to hand a project to the private sector it will hold an auction, granting the concession to the highest bidder, or sometimes the applicant who promises the lowest user charges. But since Lula came to power in 2003 there have been few infrastructure auctions of any kind. In recent years, under heavy lobbying from public ports, the ports regulator stopped granting operating licences to private ports except those intended mainly for the owners’ own cargo. As a result, during a decade in which Brazil became a commodity-exporting powerhouse, its bulk-cargo terminals hardly expanded at all.

(7) At first Lula’s government planned to upgrade Brazil’s infrastructure without private help. In 2007 the president announced a collection of long-mooted public construction projects, the Growth Acceleration Programme (PAC). Many were intended to give farming and mining regions access to alternative ports. But the results have been disappointing. Two-thirds of the biggest projects are late and over budget. The trans-north-eastern railway is only half-built and its cost has doubled. The route of the east-west integration railway, which would cross Bahia, has still not been settled. The northern stretch of the BR-163, a trunk road built in the 1970s, was waiting so long to be paved that locals started calling it the “endless road”. Most of it is still waiting.

(8) What has got things moving is the prospect of disgrace during the forthcoming big sporting events. Brazil’s terrible airports will be the first thing most foreign football fans see when they arrive for next year’s World Cup. Infraero, the state-owned company that runs them, was meant to be getting them ready for the extra traffic, but it is a byword for incompetence. Between 2007 and 2010 it managed to spend just 800m of the 3 billion reais it was supposed to invest. In desperation, the government last year leased three of the biggest airports to private operators.

(9) That seemed to break a bigger logjam. First more airport auctions were mooted; then, some months later, Ms Rousseff announced that 7,500km of toll roads and 10,000km of railways were to be auctioned too. Earlier this year she picked the biggest fight of her presidency, pushing a ports bill through Congress against lobbying from powerful vested interests. The new law enables private ports once again to handle third-party cargo and allows them to hire their own staff, rather than having to use casual labour from the dockworkers’ unions that have a monopoly in public ports. Ms Rousseff also promised to auction some entirely new projects and to re-tender around 150 contracts in public terminals whose concessions had expired

(10) Would-be investors in port projects are hanging back because of the high chances of cost overruns and long delays. Two newly built private terminals at Santos that together cost more than 4 billion reais illustrate the risks. Both took years to get off the ground and years more to build. Both were finished earlier this year but remained idle for months. Brasil Terminal Portuário, a private terminal within the public port, is still waiting for the government to dredge its access channel. At Embraport, which is outside the public-port area, union members from Santos blocked road access and boarded any ships that tried to dock. Rather than enforcing the law that allows such terminals to use their own workers, the government summoned the management to Brasília for some arm-twisting. In August Embraport agreed to take the union members “on a trial basis”.

(11) Given such regulatory and execution risks, there are unlikely to be many takers for either rail or port projects as currently conceived, says Bruno Savaris, an infrastructure analyst at Credit Suisse. He predicts that at most a third of the planned investments will be auctioned in the next three years: airports, a few simple port projects and the best toll roads. That is far short of what Brazil needs. The good news, says Mr Savaris, is that the government is at last beginning to understand that it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns. Private know-how and money will be vital to get Brazil moving again.

(www.economist.com/news/special-report. Adapted)

In the sentence fragment from the last paragraph – it must either reduce the risks for private investors or raise their returns – the use of either ... or indicates an idea of