Questões de Inglês

Eating Disorders a New Front in Insurance Fight

By ANDREW POLLACK

Published: October 13, 2011

 

  People with eating disorders like anorexia have opened up a new battleground in the insurance wars, testing the boundaries of laws mandating equivalent coverage for mental illnesses.

  Through claims and court cases, those with severe cases of anorexia or bulimia are fighting insurers to pay for stays in residential treatment centers, arguing that the centers offer around-the-clock monitoring so that patients do not forgo eating or purge their meals.

  But in the last few years, some insurance companies have re-emphasized that they do not cover residential treatment for eating disorders or other mental or emotional conditions. The insurers consider residential treatments not only costly — sometimes reaching more than $1,000 a day — but unproven and more akin to education than to medicine. Even some doctors who treat eating disorders concede there are few studies proving that residential care is effective, although they believe it has value.

(Disponível em: <http://www.nytimes.com/2011/10/14/business/rulingoffers-hope-to-eating-disorder-sufferers.html?hp>. Acesso em: 5 out. 2011).

It is correct to say that the main idea of the newspaper article deals with

According to the context of the lines of the characters:

I. The expression “real estate market” is a reference to the market of buying and selling of houses.
II. The expression “it better” suggests certainty.
III. The phrasal verb “sprouting up” means selling a lot.
IV. The expression “it better” indicates an economic growth.
V. The word “weeds” suggests an undesirable plant growing wild.

Mark the CORRECT answer

Molly Malone

(Traditional Irish Song)

 

In Dublin's fair city,

Where girls are so pretty,

I first set my eyes on sweet Molly Malone,

As she pushed her wheelbarrow

Through streets broad and narrow,

Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh"!

 

Chorus

Alive, alive oh! alive, alive oh!

Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh"!

 

Now she was a fishmonger,

And sure twas no wonder,

For so were her mother and father before,

And they each wheeled their barrow,

Through streets broad and narrow,

Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh"!

 

Chorus

 

She died of a fever,

And no one could save her, And that was the end of sweet Molly Malone.

Now her ghost wheels her barrow,

Through streets broad and narrow,

Crying, "Cockles and mussels, alive, alive oh"!

Chorus

Available at: < http://goireland.about.com/od/irishtradandfolkmusic/qt/irishfolkmollym.htm> April 24th, 2012.

Glossary

Cockles: a small rounded sea creature with a shell, common in Europe, which can be eaten.

Fishmonger: a dealer in fish.

Mussels: a small sea animal that can be eaten and which lives inside a black shell with two parts that close tightly together.

Twas: old use short form of it was.

Wheelbarrow: a small cart with one wheel and two shafts for carrying garden loads.

Mark T (true) or F (false) according to the text:
I. Fishing was Molly\'s family job.
II. Molly\'s parents had also worked selling fish on Dublin\'s streets.
III. The famous Dublin\'s yellow fever killed Molly’s parents.
IV. Tears were rolling down on Molly\'s face while she was selling fish through Dublin’s streets.
V. Molly\'s ghost still pushes a wheelbarrow through Dublin\'s streets. 

The rocking horse winner

D. H. Lawrence

 

  There was a woman who was beautiful, who started with all the advantages, yet she had no luck. She married for love, and the love turned to dust. She had bonny children, yet she felt they had been thrust upon her, and she could not love them. They looked at her coldly, as if they were finding fault with her. And hurriedly she felt she must cover up some fault in herself. Yet what it was that she must cover up she never knew. Nevertheless, when her children were present, she always felt the centre of her heart go hard. This troubled her, and in her manner she was all the more gentle and anxious for her children, as if she loved them very much. Only she herself knew that at the centre of her heart was a hard little place that could not feel love, no, not for anybody. Everybody else said of her: "She is such a good mother. She adores her children." Only she herself, and her children themselves, knew it was not so. They read it in each other's eyes. There were a boy and two little girls. They lived in a pleasant house, with a garden, and they had discreet servants, and felt themselves superior to anyone in the neighbourhood.

  Although they lived in style, they felt always an anxiety in the house. There was never enough money. The mother had a small income, and the father had a small income, but not nearly enough for the social position which they had to keep up. The father went into town to some office. But though he had good prospects, these prospects never materialised. There was always the grinding sense of the shortage of money, though the style was always kept up.

  At last the mother said: "I will see if I can't make something." But she did not know where to begin. She racked her brains, and tried this thing and the other, but could not find anything successful. The failure made deep lines come into her face. Her children were growing up, they would have to go to school. There must be more money, there must be more money. The father, who was always very handsome and expensive in his tastes, seemed as if he never would be able to do anything worth doing. And the mother, who had a great belief in herself, did not succeed any better, and her tastes were just as expensive.

  And so the house came to be haunted by the unspoken phrase: There must be more money! There must be more money! The children could hear it all the time though nobody said it aloud. They heard it at Christmas, when the expensive and splendid toys filled the nursery. Behind the shining modern rocking-horse, behind the smart doll's house, a voice would start whispering: "There must be more money! There must be more money!" […]

Available at: <http://www.dowse.com/fiction/Lawrence.html > (adapted) April 24th, 2012.

Mark the INCORRECT affirmative according to the text:

Not far from the tree

By Mariana de Viveiros

 

They say the apple doesn’t fall far from the tree. So, the son of a circus performer is likely to be also an artist himself. 12-year-old Matheus Felipe Jesus Silva was born in the circus. That is, ever since he was a baby, he’s lived in a trailer (a mobile home pulled by a car or a truck). His mother is a ballet dancer at CircoSpacial, where Matheus himself is also a performer since the age of 3. He started doing presentations with clowns and nowadays he is a trapeze artist (just like his dad, who works in Europe), equilibrist and acrobat.

As the circus travels all over Brazil, Matheus changes schools very often. He studies in the morning, has rehearsals in the afternoon and, at weekends, he performs in the circus ring. He says that this routine doesn’t disturb his studies and he wants to graduate in Physical Education. “But I want to work in the circus forever.” On account of the mobility of his life and his outgoing nature, Matheus makes new friends wherever he goes and keeps in touch with them through the internet. “Kids think that I have a peculiar way of life and come to the circus to watch my show,” he adds. On his days off, he likes to go to the movies, to the mall and to shows. Read on to see his favorite film, book, CD and website.

Revista TAM Kids, julho/agosto 2011.

One may say that Matheus

Text II

Countdown to seven billionth baby

 

Today begins the one-week countdown to 31st October when the world population is predicted to reach seven billion.

 

That's a rise of two billion in less than a quarter century.

 

Seven days from now the world's seven billionth baby will be born. That's according to the UN's projections, and it's using the milestone to take stock of trends in population growth.

 

The big question is how long the planet can continue to satisfy the voracious appetite of its growing number of human inhabitants.

 

In fact, over the past six decades, the global fertility rate has been cut in half. Statistically from five children per woman to 2.5. But 78 million babies are still being born every year, almost all of them in developing countries.

 

The UN says women in these countries are having so many babies because of poverty, lack of education, income and access to birth control.

 

Not only that, they and their children face a high risk of poor health, and early death. So the UN is highlighting the need to boost education and employment opportunities for poor women: in other words, address the poverty, and the demography will look after itself, as it did in Europe.

By Barbara Plett, BBC News, New York

(FONTE: http://www.bbc.co.uk/worldservice/)

When you make a countdown, you count