Questões de Inglês

INSTRUCTION: Answer question according to text.

 

TEXT

 

Reading the work of Jorge Luis Borges for the first time is
like discovering a new letter in the alphabet, or a new note in
the musical scale. His writings are fictions filled with private
jokes and esoterica, historiography and sardonic footnotes.
[5] They are brief, often with abrupt beginnings. Borges’ use
of labyrinths, mirrors, chess games and detective stories
creates a complex intellectual landscape, yet his language is
clear, with ironic undertones. He presents the most fantastic
of scenes in simple terms, seducing us into the forking
[10] pathway of his seemingly infinite imagination.

 

Half a century ago, when Borges’ ground-breaking collection
Ficciones was first published in English translation, he was
virtually unknown outside literary circles in Buenos Aires,
where he was born in 1899, and Paris, where his work was
[15] translated in the 1950s. In 1961, he was catapulted onto the
world stage when international publishers awarded him the
first Formentor Prize for outstanding literary achievement.
He shared the prize with Samuel Beckett (the other authors
on the shortlist were Alejo Carpentier, Max Frisch and Henry
[20] Miller). The award spurred English translations of Ficciones
and Labyrinths and brought Borges widespread fame and
respect.

 

Over the decades since his death in 1986, Borges’ global
stature has continued to grow. “Today one could consider
[25] Borges the most important writer of the 20th Century,” says
Suzanne Jill Levine, translator and general editor of the
Penguin Classics five-volume Borges series. Why? “Because
he created a new literary continent between North and South
America, between Europe and America, between old worlds
[30] and modernity. In creating the most original writing of his
time, Borges taught us that nothing is new, that creation is
recreation, that we are all one contradictory mind, connected
amongst each other and through time and space, that human
beings are not only fiction makers but are fictions themselves,
[35] that everything we think or perceive is fiction, that every
corner of knowledge is a fiction.”

Adapted from http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20140902-the-20thcenturys-best-writer (acessado em setembro 2014).

The best title for this text would be:

INSTRUCTION: Answer question according to text.

 

TEXT

 

As the familiar story goes, not long ago there was an
orphan who on his 11th birthday discovered he had
a gift that set him apart from his preteen peers. Over
the years he endured the usual adolescent challenges
[5] – maturation, relationships, social conflicts, general
teenage neuroses. He also faced the less common
challenge of battling a murderous, psychopathic
wizard set on establishing a eugenic police state.
I’m referring to the young wizard Harry Potter, the
[10] protagonist in author JK Rowling’s wildly popular
fantasy book series; his nemesis is Lord Voldemort,
the story’s malevolent antagonist. And new research
suggests that Rowling’s world of house-elves, half-

giants and three-headed dogs has the potential to
[15] make us nicer people.

 

For decades it’s been known that an effective means of
improving negative attitudes and prejudices between
differing groups of people is through intergroup contact
– particularly through contact between “in-groups,”
[20] or a social group to which someone identifies, and
“out-groups,” or a group they don’t identify with or
perceive as threatening. Even reading short stories
about friendship between in- and out-group characters
is enough to improve attitudes toward stigmatized
[25] groups in children. A new study ______ in the Journal
of Applied Social Psychology ______ that reading
the Harry Potter books in particular _______ similar
effects, likely in part because Potter is continually in
contact with stigmatized groups. The “muggles” get no
[30] respect in the wizarding world as they lack any magical
ability. The “half-bloods,” or “mud-bloods” – wizards
and witches descended from only one magical parent
– don’t fare much better, while the Lord Voldemort
character believes that power should only be held by
[35] “pure-blood” wizards. He’s Hitler in a cloak.

Sep 9, 2014, By Bret Stetka http://www.scientificamerican.com/author/bret-stetka/ (adapted)

The expression “don’t fare much better” (line 33) can be translated as

INSTRUCTION: Answer question in relation to text.

 

TEXT 

 

If you think the food airline companies serve up is bland
or unappetising, it’s not necessarily their fault. Essentially,
you leave your normal sense of taste behind at the airport
departure gate. Get on board a plane and cruise to a level
[5] of thousands of feet, and the flavour of everything from
a pasta dish to a mouthful of wine becomes manipulated
in a whole host of ways that we are only beginning to
understand.

 

Taste buds and sense of smell are the first things to go at
[10] 30,000 feet, says Russ Brown, director of In-flight Dining
& Retail at American Airlines. “Flavour is a combination
of both, and our perception of saltiness and sweetness
drop when inside a pressurised cabin.”

 

Everything that makes up the in-flight experience affects
[15] how your food tastes. There are several reasons for this:
lack of humidity, lower air pressure, and the background
noise. The combination of dryness and low pressure
reduces the sensitivity of your taste buds to sweet and
salty foods by around 30%, according to a 2010 study.
[20] Interestingly, the study found that we take leave of our
sweet and salty senses only. Sour, bitter and spicy
flavours are almost unaffected.

 

But it’s not just about our taste buds. Up to 80% of what
people think is taste, is in fact smell. We need evaporating
[25] nasal mucus to smell, but in the parched cabin air our
odour receptors do not work properly, and the effect is
that this makes food taste twice as bland.

 

So airlines have to give in-flight food an extra kick, by
salting and spicing it much more than a restaurant on the
[30] ground ever would. “Proper seasoning is key to ensure
food tastes good in the air,” says Brown at American
Airlines. “Often, recipes are modified with additional salt
or seasoning to account for the cabin dining atmosphere.”

By Katia Moskvitch http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20150112-why-in-flight-foodtastes-weird (adapted)

INSTRUCTION: To answer question, consider the sentences below and the meaning of the expression “give a kick”.

 

I. The cooker was so old that the chef had to give it a kick to make it work.

II. It gives my mother a kick to cook for the family on Sundays.

III. The cook added red wine to the meat sauce to give it a kick.

 

The sentence(s) in which the expression “give a kick” is being used with the same meaning as in the text (line 28) is /are only

Player’s Safe Exit

It takes a special kind of professional football player to walk away from cheering crowds and multimilliondollar paychecks. But that is what Chris Borland, a star rookie for the San Francisco 49ers, felt compelled to do in the face of mounting evidence that the game’s repetitive head trauma could leave him gravely and permanently damaged. “I just thought to myself, ‘What am I doing?’” the 24-year-old defensive player explained in an interview with ESPN. “ ‘Is this how I’m going to live my adult life, banging my head, especially with what I’ve learned and know about the dangers?’ ”

 

What the young man so gifted at tackling had researched was increasing evidence that long-term cognitive problems are linked to the repeated head trauma suffered in the violent hits that are part of football’s popularity.

Source: Newser.com

 

Giving up his successful sports career, Chris Borland showed a high degree of...

Wii Sports cause real Injuries

Treat it like real exercise

 

Nintendo Wii players may find themselves saddled with the same sprains and fractures that haunt athletes, often because they don’t treat the virtual games like real sports; doctors tell the Washington Times.Sprains are the most common injury because Wii Sports don’t provide the same resistance that actual tennis, bowling, baseball, golf, and bosing do, which typically prevents joints from being overextended.

 

Among the scarier was a woman whose brain began bleeding when she fell while using Wii Fit to do yoga and aerobics.” You have to regard them as sports and be serious about things like warm-up, cool-down, and expectations,” says an orthopedic surgeon. Doctors also recommend getting a physical evaluation before starting, and even consulting a trainer or coach.

Source:www.newsuser.com

 

Wi athletes are likely to suffer symptoms…

In one of the alternatives below, all the words are nouns made up of suffixes: