Questões de Inglês

King Richard III Is Miracle Soccer Team's Most Valuable Player

http://www.wsj.com/articles/king-richard-iii-is-miracle-soccer-teams-most-valuable-player-1458915583 Acessado em 26 de março de 2016. [Adaptado]

Leicester City started winning big after his long-lost bones were reburied; a supernatural blessing?

BY JOSHUA ROBINSON

 

When the English soccer season kicked off last fall, Leicester City was considered so hopeless that bookmakers put its odds of a title at 1 in 5,000. Then, in one of the most stunning upsets in sports, the Foxes are in first place with just seven matches to play. The burning question in English soccer is: How did they do it? Theories range from an injection of verve by Leicester's new Italian manager, to a sudden arrival of parity among English teams. Or maybe the miracle arose from the bones of King Richard III. Violently killed in a battle, his body ended up stuffed in a short shallow grave, from where it was recovered around 500 years later by archeologists from the university of Leicester in 2012. After scientists confirmed that the bones were indeed

royal, they were reburied in Leicester in March 2015, with fitting pomp and circumstance. Now, not long after Richard's reburial, Leicester City is favored to win England's top soccer championship for the first time. Metaphysical logic seems to suggest that Richard, delighted with his new resting place, bestowed a supernatural blessing on the team. Mr. Soulsby, the mayor, says “The rational part of me, of course, doesn't believe it, but it's a very good story. There's a small part of me that feels it might not be a coincidence.”

 

De acordo com o texto, Richard III

De acordo com o folheto,

TEXTO II

  In 2011, following the 17th session of its 47-country-strong human rights council, the U.N. announced that it considered Internet access a human right. Four years later, more than half of the world's population still doesn't have regular access. For all its good intentions, the U.N. has no way of forcing either the world's governments or corporations to bring connectivity to the huge swaths of the planet that remain offline. But two of the world's biggest tech companies, Google and Facebook, have taken up the challenge and launched projects to provide universal Internet access.

  In a blog published October 28, Google announced that Indonesia's top three mobile-network providers will begin testing its project to deliver the Internet to the whole world. A few weeks before Google made its Indonesia plans public, Facebook co-founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg announced that his company was partnering with satellite operator Eutelsat, headquartered in France, to deliver Internet from space.

  While Facebook's and Google's projects have excited many in the tech community, critics have noted that the two companies stand to benefit from them. Though both say they hope the technology will help lift people out of poverty, by getting more people online, the two ad-supported businesses will also ensure there's a new supply of consumers for advertisers to target.

  Though their efforts may ultimately benefit their own bottom lines, the two tech giants' attempts to connect 4.2 billion people to the Internet seem likely to have real long-term benefits, such as providing access to educational software; employment opportunities; and online health care, financial and commercial services. And that may mean that sooner rather than later, most people in the world will be online.

Source: Newsweek (Adapted from: http://www.newsweek.com/, Nov/2015)

Questão 18 The sentence: \\'\\'[…]Though their efforts may ultimately benefit their own bottom lines, the two tech giants\\' attempts to connect 4.2 billion people to the Internet seem likely to have real long-term benefits […]\\'\\' talks about:

TEXT I

  Ever had the feeling your past is slipping away? There’s a simple trick that should reinforce your recollections.

Have you ever seen or heard something amazing – a scene in a film, a joke or a song – only to forget it later on? Instead of the crystal clear images you wanted to recall, you’re instead left with scraps of images and mangled sentences, or more frustratingly still, nothing at all. Even monumental events, like meeting a film star, can sometimes fade surprisingly quickly.

  There may be a disarmingly simple way to cement those memories, however. According to research by Chris Bird at the University of Sussex, all it requires is a few seconds of your time and a bit of imagination. Bird recently asked some students to lie in a brain scanner and view a series of short clips from YouTube (involving, for example, neighbors playing practical jokes on each other). Straight after some of the clips, they were given 40 seconds to replay the scene in their minds and describe it to themselves. For the others, they just moved onto a new video.

  It turned out that simply describing the event to themselves massively improved their chances of remembering it accurately a week or so later: on average, they were able to remember twice as many details. Bird also found that his brain scans appeared to reflect the strength of the memory: when the activity during their descriptions closely mirrored the activation as they watched the video itself, the students seemed to have built particularly strong foundations for later recall.

  That may, perhaps, be a sign of just how much effort and detail they were imagining as they described the scene. It could also be that it allowed the students to peg the events to other memories; one student compared a character in the clips to James Bond, for instance – instantly making him more memorable.

  In other words, if you want to make sure something sticks in your mind, just take a minute or so to describe it to yourself, consciously and deliberately picking the most vivid details.

  Bird can see how it might be particularly important in the courtroom. ―The findings have implications for any situation where accurate recall of an event is critical, such as witnessing an accident or crime,‖ he says. ―Memory for the event will be significantly improved if the witness rehearses the sequence of events as soon as possible afterwards.‖ But it could be equally helpful for anyone hoping to cling to something worth remembering.

Source: BBC

(Adapted from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/, Nov/2015)

Which alternative below has the CORRECT information about the word and its function in the text?

TEXT I

  Ever had the feeling your past is slipping away? There’s a simple trick that should reinforce your recollections.

Have you ever seen or heard something amazing – a scene in a film, a joke or a song – only to forget it later on? Instead of the crystal clear images you wanted to recall, you’re instead left with scraps of images and mangled sentences, or more frustratingly still, nothing at all. Even monumental events, like meeting a film star, can sometimes fade surprisingly quickly.

  There may be a disarmingly simple way to cement those memories, however. According to research by Chris Bird at the University of Sussex, all it requires is a few seconds of your time and a bit of imagination. Bird recently asked some students to lie in a brain scanner and view a series of short clips from YouTube (involving, for example, neighbors playing practical jokes on each other). Straight after some of the clips, they were given 40 seconds to replay the scene in their minds and describe it to themselves. For the others, they just moved onto a new video.

  It turned out that simply describing the event to themselves massively improved their chances of remembering it accurately a week or so later: on average, they were able to remember twice as many details. Bird also found that his brain scans appeared to reflect the strength of the memory: when the activity during their descriptions closely mirrored the activation as they watched the video itself, the students seemed to have built particularly strong foundations for later recall.

  That may, perhaps, be a sign of just how much effort and detail they were imagining as they described the scene. It could also be that it allowed the students to peg the events to other memories; one student compared a character in the clips to James Bond, for instance – instantly making him more memorable.

  In other words, if you want to make sure something sticks in your mind, just take a minute or so to describe it to yourself, consciously and deliberately picking the most vivid details.

  Bird can see how it might be particularly important in the courtroom. ―The findings have implications for any situation where accurate recall of an event is critical, such as witnessing an accident or crime,‖ he says. ―Memory for the event will be significantly improved if the witness rehearses the sequence of events as soon as possible afterwards.‖ But it could be equally helpful for anyone hoping to cling to something worth remembering.

Source: BBC

(Adapted from http://www.bbc.com/future/story/, Nov/2015)

The main purpose of the text is to:

Roraima is an interesting mountain located in the Guiana Highlands. The peak actually shares the border with Venezuela, Brazil, and Guyana, but the mountain is almost always approached from the Venezuela side. The Brazil and Guyana sides are much more difficult. The mountain's highest point is Maverick Rock which is at and on the Venezuela side (though some other sources may differ on this). The Guiana Highlands is a very unusual mountain range covering parts of Venezuela, Brazil, Guyana, Suriname and French Guiana. The highlands are made of ancient sedimentary rock that is over two billion years old and are some of the oldest sedimentary rocks on the planet.

The mountain is known as a Tepui, which describes a flattopped mountain with vertical sides. Many waterfalls spill off Roraima, and the other Tepuis; nearly everyone has heard of Angel Falls, which spills off another nearby Tepui. There are many interesting plants that grow on the summit, including many carnivorous plants, i.e., ones that eat insects. There is little soil on top because the constant rains wash it away.

Monte Roraima was the first of the Tepuis to be climbed and the credit goes to English botanist Everard Im Thurn on an expedition sponsored by the Royal Geographical Society in 1884. It was his subsequent lectures in England, that are believed to have inspired Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's book 'The Lost World'.

Which word below, extracted from the text, is NOT a verb?