PUC-RJ 2003 Inglês - Questões

CLICK BY CLICK, TEENS IMPROVE THEIR WRITING

Instant messaging and e-mail are creating a new generation of teenage (12) writers, accustomed to translating their (7) every thought and feeling into words. They write more than any generation has since the days when telephone calls (13) were rare and the mailman rounded more than once a day (1).

Some grammarians fear the rule-free nature of online correspondence – not to mention use of teen code, such as shortening “you” to “u” and typing “ttyl” for “talk to you later” – will flow into their (8) students’ formal (14) writing. But more and more teachers are concluding that kids’ comfort with language actually might improve their (9) writing, if that interest can be exploited in the right way (2).

“These kids are very aware of the power of the written word,” said Gloria Jacobs, who is writing her doctoral thesis at the University of Rochester on teenagers and instant messaging. “They have this fluency with writing online. They are practically attached to their keyboard, and I think that will help their writing skills.” (3)

More than half of teenagers 17 and younger who have access to the Internet at home send e-mail or instant messages at least once a week, according to a study by a California research firm and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Many kids spend hours each night sending messages to friends and strangers. In the process, they are creating a new social world online, one that often excludes parents. That has brought with it well-known worries about online predators and concerns that children spend too much time on the computer, at the expense of schoolwork, sports or socializing face to face (4).

The positive side, researchers and teachers say, is that e-mail presents a new chance for teenagers to develop some skills needed for effective (15) writing – learning to pick their words and tone carefully to communicate their (10) message (5).

Naomi S. Baron, a professor of linguistics at American University, has researched college students’ electronic messaging and found that many consider abbreviations babyish. Younger children, she said, “try to show that they are smart. One way to do that is to come up with (17) clever abbreviations and use acronyms that others may not know.”

What kids might not lose, however (16), is an intuitive understanding that writing has a purpose and an audience. Kids learn that how they write will determine whether their (11) meaning is received correctly, the researchers said.

“Writing is about communicating with others. This is a very important insight to learn. So often in classrooms students fail to understand that they are actually writing for someone”, said David Bloome, a professor of education at Vanderbilt University and the president of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Students also love writing online, seeing it as recreation rather than schoolwork. That opens up possibilities for teachers to exploit the medium. “For a while, people were not writing anything,” said Barbara Bash, the director of the Maryland Writing Project (where she works with public school teachers from across the state to improve writing instruction). “Now, people are actually seeing words on paper. And that’s good.” (6)

(By Rosalind S. Helderman) (www.washingtonpost.com) (Tuesday, May 20, 2003; Page B01)

According to the teachers and researchers mentioned in Text 1, e-mails have been improving teenage writing because:

CLICK BY CLICK, TEENS IMPROVE THEIR WRITING

Instant messaging and e-mail are creating a new generation of teenage (12) writers, accustomed to translating their (7) every thought and feeling into words. They write more than any generation has since the days when telephone calls (13) were rare and the mailman rounded more than once a day (1).

Some grammarians fear the rule-free nature of online correspondence – not to mention use of teen code, such as shortening “you” to “u” and typing “ttyl” for “talk to you later” – will flow into their (8) students’ formal (14) writing. But more and more teachers are concluding that kids’ comfort with language actually might improve their (9) writing, if that interest can be exploited in the right way (2).

“These kids are very aware of the power of the written word,” said Gloria Jacobs, who is writing her doctoral thesis at the University of Rochester on teenagers and instant messaging. “They have this fluency with writing online. They are practically attached to their keyboard, and I think that will help their writing skills.” (3)

More than half of teenagers 17 and younger who have access to the Internet at home send e-mail or instant messages at least once a week, according to a study by a California research firm and the Corporation for Public Broadcasting. Many kids spend hours each night sending messages to friends and strangers. In the process, they are creating a new social world online, one that often excludes parents. That has brought with it well-known worries about online predators and concerns that children spend too much time on the computer, at the expense of schoolwork, sports or socializing face to face (4).

The positive side, researchers and teachers say, is that e-mail presents a new chance for teenagers to develop some skills needed for effective (15) writing – learning to pick their words and tone carefully to communicate their (10) message (5).

Naomi S. Baron, a professor of linguistics at American University, has researched college students’ electronic messaging and found that many consider abbreviations babyish. Younger children, she said, “try to show that they are smart. One way to do that is to come up with (17) clever abbreviations and use acronyms that others may not know.”

What kids might not lose, however (16), is an intuitive understanding that writing has a purpose and an audience. Kids learn that how they write will determine whether their (11) meaning is received correctly, the researchers said.

“Writing is about communicating with others. This is a very important insight to learn. So often in classrooms students fail to understand that they are actually writing for someone”, said David Bloome, a professor of education at Vanderbilt University and the president of the National Council of Teachers of English.

Students also love writing online, seeing it as recreation rather than schoolwork. That opens up possibilities for teachers to exploit the medium. “For a while, people were not writing anything,” said Barbara Bash, the director of the Maryland Writing Project (where she works with public school teachers from across the state to improve writing instruction). “Now, people are actually seeing words on paper. And that’s good.” (6)

(By Rosalind S. Helderman) (www.washingtonpost.com) (Tuesday, May 20, 2003; Page B01)

In Text 1 we learn that abbreviations in electronic messages are:

A FAT NATION

America’s ‘supersize’ diet is fattier and sweeter - and deadlier

Pretty, dark-haired Katie Young has been successful at most things. She’s an excellent student, a star on her softball team, and a good dancer. But like so many Americans - kids and adults alike - the New Orleans 10-year-old struggles with one thing: keeping her weight under control.

When Katie started day camp in June, she discovered a snack bar where she could buy pizza, hot dogs, candy, ice cream, chips, soft drinks, and more. “Katie went nuts,” says her mother, Judy Young. In the first two weeks of camp, Katie spent nearly (11) $40 on snack foods. “I bought a lot of pizza,” Katie says. “And I bought candy and everything. I didn’t feel good seeing the other kids eat those things. I wanted them (6) too.”

Of course she did. Katie was acting on a basic driving force of human biology: Eat whenever food is available and eat as much of it as possible. Throughout most of human history, food was scarce, and getting a hold of it (7) required a great deal of physical energy. Those who ate as many calories as they could were protected against famine and had the energy to reproduce. The problem today, says Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, is that there’s “a complete mismatch” between biology and the environment.

America has become a fat nation. More than 61 percent of adults are overweight, and 27 percent of them - 50 million people - are obese, according to a U.S. surgeon general’s report released last December. In the next decade (1), weight-related illnesses threaten to overwhelm the healthcare system (1).

Weight is also taking a heavy toll on the nation’s children. The percentage of 6-to-11-year-olds who are overweight has nearly doubled in two decades, and for adolescents the percentage has tripled. Pediatricians are treating conditions rarely (12) before diagnosed in young people. In a recent study of 813 overweight Louisiana schoolchildren, for example, 58 percent had at least one heart disease risk factor, such as high blood pressure or cholesterol. (...)

Eating opportunities (2) are endless because food is sold almost everywhere. “Just go back 20 years,” says Yale’s Brownell. “You never used to find more than a candy counter in a drugstore. Now there are aisles and aisles of food (2). If you see a gas station that does not have a food store attached, people are afraid to use it (8). There are food courts (3) in shopping malls. And in the schools, there are vending machines and soft-drink machines - and they (9) aren’t selling carrot juice (3).” (...)

Obesity has been linked (4) to everything from the decline of the family dinner to the popularity of computers and video games to supersize portions of fast food (4). But it (10) all comes down to a simple calculation, says University of Colorado nutrition researcher James Hill: “The primary reason (5) America is fat is that we eat too much compared to our activity level (5).”

By Amanda Spake. U.S. News & World Report, Aug. 18, 2002

A strategy for reading a text with understanding is to find the plan for the paragraphs. Mark the INCORRECT statement about the function of one (or two) of the paragraphs in Text 1.

A FAT NATION

America’s ‘supersize’ diet is fattier and sweeter - and deadlier

Pretty, dark-haired Katie Young has been successful at most things. She’s an excellent student, a star on her softball team, and a good dancer. But like so many Americans - kids and adults alike - the New Orleans 10-year-old struggles with one thing: keeping her weight under control.

When Katie started day camp in June, she discovered a snack bar where she could buy pizza, hot dogs, candy, ice cream, chips, soft drinks, and more. “Katie went nuts,” says her mother, Judy Young. In the first two weeks of camp, Katie spent nearly (11) $40 on snack foods. “I bought a lot of pizza,” Katie says. “And I bought candy and everything. I didn’t feel good seeing the other kids eat those things. I wanted them (6) too.”

Of course she did. Katie was acting on a basic driving force of human biology: Eat whenever food is available and eat as much of it as possible. Throughout most of human history, food was scarce, and getting a hold of it (7) required a great deal of physical energy. Those who ate as many calories as they could were protected against famine and had the energy to reproduce. The problem today, says Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, is that there’s “a complete mismatch” between biology and the environment.

America has become a fat nation. More than 61 percent of adults are overweight, and 27 percent of them - 50 million people - are obese, according to a U.S. surgeon general’s report released last December. In the next decade (1), weight-related illnesses threaten to overwhelm the healthcare system (1).

Weight is also taking a heavy toll on the nation’s children. The percentage of 6-to-11-year-olds who are overweight has nearly doubled in two decades, and for adolescents the percentage has tripled. Pediatricians are treating conditions rarely (12) before diagnosed in young people. In a recent study of 813 overweight Louisiana schoolchildren, for example, 58 percent had at least one heart disease risk factor, such as high blood pressure or cholesterol. (...)

Eating opportunities (2) are endless because food is sold almost everywhere. “Just go back 20 years,” says Yale’s Brownell. “You never used to find more than a candy counter in a drugstore. Now there are aisles and aisles of food (2). If you see a gas station that does not have a food store attached, people are afraid to use it (8). There are food courts (3) in shopping malls. And in the schools, there are vending machines and soft-drink machines - and they (9) aren’t selling carrot juice (3).” (...)

Obesity has been linked (4) to everything from the decline of the family dinner to the popularity of computers and video games to supersize portions of fast food (4). But it (10) all comes down to a simple calculation, says University of Colorado nutrition researcher James Hill: “The primary reason (5) America is fat is that we eat too much compared to our activity level (5).”

By Amanda Spake. U.S. News & World Report, Aug. 18, 2002

In all the lines below the author presents arguments to justify why America is becoming a fat nation, EXCEPT in:

A FAT NATION

America’s ‘supersize’ diet is fattier and sweeter - and deadlier

Pretty, dark-haired Katie Young has been successful at most things. She’s an excellent student, a star on her softball team, and a good dancer. But like so many Americans - kids and adults alike - the New Orleans 10-year-old struggles with one thing: keeping her weight under control.

When Katie started day camp in June, she discovered a snack bar where she could buy pizza, hot dogs, candy, ice cream, chips, soft drinks, and more. “Katie went nuts,” says her mother, Judy Young. In the first two weeks of camp, Katie spent nearly (11) $40 on snack foods. “I bought a lot of pizza,” Katie says. “And I bought candy and everything. I didn’t feel good seeing the other kids eat those things. I wanted them (6) too.”

Of course she did. Katie was acting on a basic driving force of human biology: Eat whenever food is available and eat as much of it as possible. Throughout most of human history, food was scarce, and getting a hold of it (7) required a great deal of physical energy. Those who ate as many calories as they could were protected against famine and had the energy to reproduce. The problem today, says Kelly Brownell, director of the Yale Center for Eating and Weight Disorders, is that there’s “a complete mismatch” between biology and the environment.

America has become a fat nation. More than 61 percent of adults are overweight, and 27 percent of them - 50 million people - are obese, according to a U.S. surgeon general’s report released last December. In the next decade (1), weight-related illnesses threaten to overwhelm the healthcare system (1).

Weight is also taking a heavy toll on the nation’s children. The percentage of 6-to-11-year-olds who are overweight has nearly doubled in two decades, and for adolescents the percentage has tripled. Pediatricians are treating conditions rarely (12) before diagnosed in young people. In a recent study of 813 overweight Louisiana schoolchildren, for example, 58 percent had at least one heart disease risk factor, such as high blood pressure or cholesterol. (...)

Eating opportunities (2) are endless because food is sold almost everywhere. “Just go back 20 years,” says Yale’s Brownell. “You never used to find more than a candy counter in a drugstore. Now there are aisles and aisles of food (2). If you see a gas station that does not have a food store attached, people are afraid to use it (8). There are food courts (3) in shopping malls. And in the schools, there are vending machines and soft-drink machines - and they (9) aren’t selling carrot juice (3).” (...)

Obesity has been linked (4) to everything from the decline of the family dinner to the popularity of computers and video games to supersize portions of fast food (4). But it (10) all comes down to a simple calculation, says University of Colorado nutrition researcher James Hill: “The primary reason (5) America is fat is that we eat too much compared to our activity level (5).”

By Amanda Spake. U.S. News & World Report, Aug. 18, 2002

Mark the correct statement concerning reference.