Questões de Inglês

Malala Yousafzai was born on July 12, 1997, in Mingora, Pakistan. For the first few years of her life, her hometown remained a popular tourist spot that was known for its summer festivals. However, the area began to change as the Taliban tried to take control.

Yousafzai attended a school that her father, ZiauddinYousafzai, had founded. After the Taliban began attacking girls’ schools in Swat, Malala gave a speech in Peshawar, Pakistan, in September 2008. The title of her talk was, “How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to education?”

In early 2009, Yousafzai began blogging for the BBC about living under the Taliban’s threats to deny her an education. In order to hide her identity, she used the name Gul Makai. However, she was revealed to be the BBC blogger in December of that year

With a growing public platform, Yousafzai continued to speak out about her right, and the right of all women, to an education. Her activism resulted in a nomination for the International Children’s Peace Prize in 2011. That same year, she was awarded Pakistan’s National Youth Peace Prize. Unfortunately, it also resulted in the Taliban issuing a death threat against her. On October 9, 2012, a gunman shot Malala when she was traveling home from school.

The shooting left Malala in critical condition, so she was flown to a military hospital in Peshawar. A portion of her skull was removed to treat her swelling brain. To receive further care, she was transferred to Birmingham, England. She survived, and has continued to speak out on the importance of education. She was nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize in 2013, and again in 2014.

(Adapted from: Malala Yousafzai. The Biography.com website. Web, 2014. Source: http://www.biography.com/people/malalayousafzai-21362253. Accessed on: Oct. 10th. 2014.)

Bribery, the act of promising, giving, receiving, or agreeing to receive money or some other item of value with the corrupt aim of influencing a public official in the discharge of his official duties. When money has been offered or promised in exchange for a corrupt act, the official involved need not actually accomplish that act for the offense of bribery to be complete.

Although bribery originally involved interference with judges, its definition has since been expanded to include actions by all sorts of government officials, from the local to the national level, and to cover all public employees. Special provisions also have been enacted in various jurisdictions to punish the bribing of voters, jurors, witnesses, and other lay participants in official proceedings. Some codes also penalize bribery in designated classes of private or commercial transactions.

(Adapted from: BRIBERY. In: Britannica Online. Enciclopaedia Britannica, 2014. Web, 2014. Source: . Accessed on: Oct. 9th. 2014.)

Bribery, the act of promising, giving, receiving, or agreeing to receive money or some other item of value with the corrupt aim of influencing a public official in the discharge of his official duties. When money has been offered or promised in exchange for a corrupt act, the official involved need not actually accomplish that act for the offense of bribery to be complete.

Although bribery originally involved interference with judges, its definition has since been expanded to include actions by all sorts of government officials, from the local to the national level, and to cover all public employees. Special provisions also have been enacted in various jurisdictions to punish the bribing of voters, jurors, witnesses, and other lay participants in official proceedings. Some codes also penalize bribery in designated classes of private or commercial transactions.

(Adapted from: BRIBERY. In: Britannica Online. Enciclopaedia Britannica, 2014. Web, 2014. Source: . Accessed on: Oct. 9th. 2014.)

Something happened between the private journal we kept locked in our drawer and the portable video camera. For example, in June 2001 I led a group of Dartmouth alumni on a cruise to see a total solar eclipse in Africa. On board were a crowd of “eclipse groupies”, people who go around the world chasing eclipses. Once you see one you can understand why. A total solar eclipse is a deeply moving experience that awakens a primal connection with nature, linking us to something bigger and truly awesome about the world. It needs total commitment and focus of all senses. Yet, as totality approached, the ship’s deck was a sea of cameras and tripods, as dozens of people prepared to photograph and videotape the four-minute- -long event.

Instead of fully engaging with this most spectacular natural phenomenon, people chose to look at it from behind their cameras. I was shocked. There were professional photographers onboard and they were going to sell/give pictures away. But people wanted to take their pictures and videos anyway, even if they weren’t going to be half as good. The gadget is the eye through which they choose to see reality. What cellphones plus social media have done is to make the archiving and the sharing of images amazingly easy and efficient. The reach is much wider and the gratification (how many “likes” a photo or video gets) is quantitative. Lives become a shared social event.

Now, there is a side of this that is fine, of course. We celebrate meaningful moments and want to share with those we care about. The problem starts when we stop fully participating in the moment because we have this urge to record it.

Without trying to sound too nostalgic (but sounding), there is nothing like eye-to-eye contact or the sharing of an experience through the real act of engaging in a conversation with friends and family. The gadgets are awesome, of course. But they should not define the way we live – only complement it.

(Adapted from: GLEISER, M. Should We Live Life, Or Capture It? In NPR, 2014. Accessed on: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/ 10/01/352915256/should-we-live-life-or-capture-it?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr& utm_term= nprnews&utm_content=202401. Accessed on: Oct. 1st. 2014.)

Something happened between the private journal we kept locked in our drawer and the portable video camera. For example, in June 2001 I led a group of Dartmouth alumni on a cruise to see a total solar eclipse in Africa. On board were a crowd of “eclipse groupies”, people who go around the world chasing eclipses. Once you see one you can understand why. A total solar eclipse is a deeply moving experience that awakens a primal connection with nature, linking us to something bigger and truly awesome about the world. It needs total commitment and focus of all senses. Yet, as totality approached, the ship’s deck was a sea of cameras and tripods, as dozens of people prepared to photograph and videotape the four-minute- -long event.

Instead of fully engaging with this most spectacular natural phenomenon, people chose to look at it from behind their cameras. I was shocked. There were professional photographers onboard and they were going to sell/give pictures away. But people wanted to take their pictures and videos anyway, even if they weren’t going to be half as good. The gadget is the eye through which they choose to see reality. What cellphones plus social media have done is to make the archiving and the sharing of images amazingly easy and efficient. The reach is much wider and the gratification (how many “likes” a photo or video gets) is quantitative. Lives become a shared social event.

Now, there is a side of this that is fine, of course. We celebrate meaningful moments and want to share with those we care about. The problem starts when we stop fully participating in the moment because we have this urge to record it.

Without trying to sound too nostalgic (but sounding), there is nothing like eye-to-eye contact or the sharing of an experience through the real act of engaging in a conversation with friends and family. The gadgets are awesome, of course. But they should not define the way we live – only complement it.

(Adapted from: GLEISER, M. Should We Live Life, Or Capture It? In NPR, 2014. Accessed on: http://www.npr.org/blogs/13.7/2014/ 10/01/352915256/should-we-live-life-or-capture-it?utm_source=facebook.com&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=npr& utm_term= nprnews&utm_content=202401. Accessed on: Oct. 1st. 2014.)

When I first arrived in Brazil in 1992, it was never my intention to stay. My first months in Brazil were extremely difficult. Everything was different. Probably the thing that shocked me the most was the poverty, I lived in a rich neighborhoods surrounded by favelas. The owner of the house where I lived instructed me shortly after I arrived that when someone clapped their hands outside the fence to get attention and then asked for food, I was to ignore them. The first day I was alone I broke the rule. Who was I to deny a hungry person a cup of water and a slice of bread? On the second day, more people arrived asking for food. By the third day, lines had begun to form outside our gate. That night my host took me aside and wanted me to explain why I had disobeyed his instructions. The maid had informed him that there was a rumor circulating round the favela that a foreigner was living in his house giving away free food. Twenty years ago the communications system in Brazil was extremely bad. When a telegram arrived from New Zealand informing me the applications for the fishing inspector position I was seeking had opened, it was already past the date of inscription. I was very irritated, but things soon changed when I met a girl. After five years of commuting between Brazil and New Zealand, we married. When you marry a Brazilian, you do not just marry your spouse you marry the whole extended family. In some respects, this can be cool because you become a part of a large group, but at times it can be a little frustrating. You just need to sneeze and you can be sure that within a few hours some third cousin of my wife’s will be on the phone asking me if it is true that I am dying of pneumonia. It is extremely difficult to be alone here.

(Adapted from: Kiwi never alone in Brazil. Source: http://www.stuff.co.nz/stuff-nation/assignments/home-sweet-expat-home/ 9875411/Kiwi-never-alone-in-Brazil. Accessed on: March 29th 2014.)