Questões de Inglês

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Text 2a. Second Language Learning

    One of the principles of all learning is that we make sense of new information and ideas by relating them to our previous knowledge. There are two main kinds of previous language knowledge which second language learners can use in order to make sense of the new language they encounter: the first is their knowledge of their mother tongue and the second is the knowledge they already possess about the second language itself.

LITTLEWOOD, W. Second Language Learning. In DAVIES, A. e ELDER, C. The Handbook of Applied Linguistics, pp.504/5, Blackwell Publishing, 2010.

Text 2b. National Curriculum Parameters

    Every text is organized within a specific genre according to its communicative purposes, as part of the conditions of discourse production, which generate social uses that determine any and every text. Genres are, therefore, historically determined, and constitute relatively stable forms of utterances available in a culture. (National Curriculum Parameters, Brasil, 1988, p.21) (adaptado)

Answer the two questions below considering also texts "Second Language Learning" and "National Curriculum Parameters", above.

Text

Text 2a. Second Language Learning

    One of the principles of all learning is that we make sense of new information and ideas by relating them to our previous knowledge. There are two main kinds of previous language knowledge which second language learners can use in order to make sense of the new language they encounter: the first is their knowledge of their mother tongue and the second is the knowledge they already possess about the second language itself.

LITTLEWOOD, W. Second Language Learning. In DAVIES, A. e ELDER, C. The Handbook of Applied Linguistics, pp.504/5, Blackwell Publishing, 2010.

Text 2b. National Curriculum Parameters

    Every text is organized within a specific genre according to its communicative purposes, as part of the conditions of discourse production, which generate social uses that determine any and every text. Genres are, therefore, historically determined, and constitute relatively stable forms of utterances available in a culture. (National Curriculum Parameters, Brasil, 1988, p.21) (adaptado)

Answer the two questions below considering also texts "Second Language Learning" and "National Curriculum Parameters", above.

Why a global Language?

    ‘English is the global language.’ – A headline of this kind must have appeared in a thousand newspapers and magazines in recent years. ‘English Rules’ is an actual example, presenting to the world an uncomplicated scenario suggesting the universality of the language’s spread and the likelihood of its continuation. (…)

    These are the kinds of statement which seem so obvious that most people would give them hardly a second thought. Of course English is a global language, they would say. You hear it on television spoken by politicians from all over the world. Wherever you travel, you see English signs and advertisements. Whenever you enter a hotel or restaurant in a foreign city, they will understand English, and there will be an English menu. (…)

    But English is news. The language continues to make news daily in many countries. And the headline isn’t stating the obvious. For what does it mean, exactly? Is it saying that everyone in the world speaks English? This is certainly not true, as we shall see. Is it saying, then, that every country in the world recognizes English as an offcial language? This is not true either. So what does it mean to say that a language is a global language? Why is English the language which is usually cited in this connection? How did the situation arise? And could it change? Or is it the case that, once a language becomes a global language, it is there forever?

    These are fascinating questions to explore, whether your frst language is English or not. If English is your mother tongue, you may have mixed feelings about the way English is spreading around the world. You may feel pride, that your language is the one which has been so successful; but your pride may be tinged with concern, when you realize that people in other countries may not want to use the language in the same way that you do, and are changing it to suit themselves. We are all sensitive to the way other people use (it is often said, abuse) ‘our’ language. Deeply held feelings of ownership begin to be questioned. Indeed, if there is one predictable consequence of a language becoming a global language, it is that nobody owns it any more. Or rather, everyone who has learned it now owns it – ‘has a share in it’ might be more accurate – and has the right to use it in the way they want. This fact alone makes many people feel uncomfortable, even vaguely resentful. ‘Look what the Americans have done to English’ is a not uncommon comment found in the letter-columns of the British press.

    But similar comments can be heard in the USA when people encounter the sometimes striking variations in English which are emerging all over the world. And if English is not your mother tongue, you may still have mixed feelings about it. You may be strongly motivated to learn it, because you know it will put you in touch with more people than any other language; but at the same time you know it will take a great deal of effort to master it, and you may begrudge that effort. Having made progress, you will feel pride in your achievement, and savour the communicative power you have at your disposal, but may none the less feel that mother-tongue speakers of English have an unfair advantage over you. (…)

    These feelings are natural, and would arise whichever language emerged as a global language. They are feelings which give rise to fears, whether real or imaginary, and fears lead to conflict. Language is always in the news, and the nearer a language moves to becoming a global language, the more newsworthy it is. So how does a language come to achieve global status?

(Source: CRYSTAL, David. English as a global language. 2 ed. United Kingdom: Cambridge University Press, 2003.

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Bilingual Education for the 21st Century

Bilingual education in the 21st century must face the complexity brought about by the freer movement of people, services, and goods that characterizes our more globalized and technological world. In the second half of the 20th century, bilingual education grew around the world as a way to educate children who didn't speak the state's language or, in some cases, to recapture the heritage language of a group. This in itself was an innovation over the use of bilingual education only to educate the children of the elite.

In the 21st century, however, the complex and dynamic links created by technology and globalized markets, coupled with the importance of English and other “big” languages, challenge our old conceptions of bilingual education. UNESCO in 1953 declared that it was axiomatic that the child's native language be used to teach children to read, but basic literacy, even in one's own language, is insufficient to be a world citizen in the 21st century.

It has been predicted that by 2050, English will be accompanied by Chinese, Arabic, Spanish and Urdu, as the world's big languages, ordered not only with English at the top as it has been up to now, but with an increasing role for the other four “big” languages. Countries throughout the world are providing options to their children to be schooled in two or more languages. The European Union, for example, has recently adopted a policy of “Mother Tongue + 2” encouraging schools throughout the EU to develop children's trilingual proficiency. For those purposes, a model of teaching is being promoted that encourages the use of the languages other than the child's mother tongue in subject instruction. Ofelia Garcia is Professor of Bilingual Education at Teachers College, Columbia University

Disponível em:< http://www.educationupdate.com/archives/2004/december/html/Spot-BilingualEducationForThe

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This is how UN scientists are preparing for the end of capitalism

    Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN secretary general. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources and the shift to less efficient energy sources.
    Climate change and species extinctions are accelerating even as societies are experiencing rising inequality, unemployment, slow economic growth, rising debt levels, and impotent governments. Contrary to the way policymakers usually think about these problems these are not really separate crises at all.
    These crises are part of the same fundamental transition. The new era is characterized by inefficient fossil fuel production and escalating costs of climate change. Conventional capitalist economic thinking can no longer explain, predict or solve the workings of the global economy in this new age.

Energy shift
    Those are the implications of a new background paper prepared by a team of Finnish biophysicists who were asked to provide research that would feed into the drafting of the UN Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), which will be released in 2019.
    For the “first time in human history”, the paper says, capitalist economies are “shifting to energy sources that are less energy efficient.” Producing usable energy (“exergy”) to keep powering “both basic and non-basic human activities” in industrial civilisation “will require more, not less, effort”.
    At the same time, our hunger for energy is driving what the paper refers to as “sink costs.” The greater our energy and material use, the more waste we generate, and so the greater the environmental costs. Though they can be ignored for a while, eventually those environmental costs translate directly into economic costs as it becomes more and more difficult to ignore their impacts on our societies.
    Overall, the amount of energy we can extract, compared to the energy we are using to extract it, is decreasing across the spectrum – unconventional oils, nuclear and renewables return less energy in generation than conventional oils, whose production has peaked – and societies need to abandon fossil fuels because of their impact on the climate.
    Whether or not this system still comprises a form of capitalism is ultimately a semantic question. It depends on how you define capitalism.
    Economic activity is driven by meaning – maintaining equal possibilities for the good life while lowering emissions dramatically – rather than profit, and the meaning is politically, collectively constructed. Well, this is the best conceivable case in terms of modern state and market institutions. It can’t happen without considerable reframing of economic-political thinking, in short words: rethinking capitalism as it is nowadays.

Disponível em: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/capitalism-un-scientists-preparing-end-fossil-fuels-warning-demise-a8523856.html. Acesso em: 12 mar. 2019. (Adaptado).

Leia o texto e responda à questão.

This is how UN scientists are preparing for the end of capitalism

    Capitalism as we know it is over. So suggests a new report commissioned by a group of scientists appointed by the UN secretary general. The main reason? We’re transitioning rapidly to a radically different global economy, due to our increasingly unsustainable exploitation of the planet’s environmental resources and the shift to less efficient energy sources.
    Climate change and species extinctions are accelerating even as societies are experiencing rising inequality, unemployment, slow economic growth, rising debt levels, and impotent governments. Contrary to the way policymakers usually think about these problems these are not really separate crises at all.
    These crises are part of the same fundamental transition. The new era is characterized by inefficient fossil fuel production and escalating costs of climate change. Conventional capitalist economic thinking can no longer explain, predict or solve the workings of the global economy in this new age.

Energy shift
    Those are the implications of a new background paper prepared by a team of Finnish biophysicists who were asked to provide research that would feed into the drafting of the UN Global Sustainable Development Report (GSDR), which will be released in 2019.
    For the “first time in human history”, the paper says, capitalist economies are “shifting to energy sources that are less energy efficient.” Producing usable energy (“exergy”) to keep powering “both basic and non-basic human activities” in industrial civilisation “will require more, not less, effort”.
    At the same time, our hunger for energy is driving what the paper refers to as “sink costs.” The greater our energy and material use, the more waste we generate, and so the greater the environmental costs. Though they can be ignored for a while, eventually those environmental costs translate directly into economic costs as it becomes more and more difficult to ignore their impacts on our societies.
    Overall, the amount of energy we can extract, compared to the energy we are using to extract it, is decreasing across the spectrum – unconventional oils, nuclear and renewables return less energy in generation than conventional oils, whose production has peaked – and societies need to abandon fossil fuels because of their impact on the climate.
    Whether or not this system still comprises a form of capitalism is ultimately a semantic question. It depends on how you define capitalism.
    Economic activity is driven by meaning – maintaining equal possibilities for the good life while lowering emissions dramatically – rather than profit, and the meaning is politically, collectively constructed. Well, this is the best conceivable case in terms of modern state and market institutions. It can’t happen without considerable reframing of economic-political thinking, in short words: rethinking capitalism as it is nowadays.

Disponível em: https://www.independent.co.uk/news/long_reads/capitalism-un-scientists-preparing-end-fossil-fuels-warning-demise-a8523856.html. Acesso em: 12 mar. 2019. (Adaptado).