Questão 47 - UCPEL Verão 2010

Leia o texto e responda a pergunta.

 

[1]  WHY FRANCE IS PUSHING ITS STUDENTS TO MASTER ENGLISH

[2]  “A lot of things in France have changed under globalization in order to keep us competitive, but teaching people
[3]  English here has remained old-fashioned and inefficient”.
[4]  Earlier this month, French President Nicolas
[5]  Sarkozy unveiled an “emergency plan” for
[6]  teaching foreign languages in the nation’s schools
[7]  with the lofty objective that “all our high school
[8]  students must become bilingual, and some should
[9]  be trilingual.” Why the panic? Because as Sarkozy
[10]  noted, a nation that spends 5.8% of its annual
[11]  GDP on education — the fifth highest percentage
[12]  in the world — simply must do better than its
[13]  current rank of 69th among 109 countries on
[14]  the standardized Test of English as a Foreign
[15]  Language (TOEFL). To that end, Sarkozy has
[16]  proposed exposing students to more nativespeaking
[17]  English instructors, increasing contacts
[18]  between French and foreign high schools and shifting the focus in schools from written foreign-language instruction
[19]  to the more practical oral.
[20]  “A modern foreign language is meant to be spoken,” Sarkozy said in his latest assault on the kinds of tradition-bound
[21]  practices that he believes are holding the country back economically. “Pointing something that obvious out isn’t futile
[22]  in a country where Latin is an oral exam on the Baccalaureate while the leading modern language [English] is
[23]  evaluated in written form.”
[24]  Compelling teachers in France’s notoriously rigid education system to change their ways and encourage students to
[25]  speak more in foreign-language classes will be one challenge to overcome. Another is confronting the contradiction
[26]  that comes with promoting foreign-language study among students and continuing France’s long-standing policies
[27]  aimed at protecting and promoting the use of the French language at home. The Academie Française began its
[28]  mission of purging the French language of impurities — often words taken from other languages — way back in
[29]  1635. The key objective of the country’s 25-year-old exception culturelle is ensuring that French-language music,
[30]  film and other cultural products are not dominated by English-language imports. And a law passed in 1994 requires
[31]  that French translations accompany any foreign phrases in state documents, business contracts and even advertising.
[32]  Becoming an Anglophone isn’t cheap — but that’s not stopping students from signing up. Laetitia Marcellesi says
[33]  she had to get a job to pay for the course, while her classmate, Justine Boussin, took out a loan to finance a study
[34]  abroad trip to London. Only time will tell if future French students will start getting this type of practical training for free
[35]  at school, or whether they’ll have to keep paying for it once they graduate.
[36]  By Bruce Crumley / Paris, Time magazine, 10/31/2009
[37]  Adapted from: http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1932422,00.html

Com o objetivo de fazer com que os seus alunos dominem a língua inglesa, um dos desafios que a França encontrará será