UEL 2020 Inglês - Questões

Leia o texto a seguir.

We do a great disservice to boys in how we raise them. We stifle the humanity of boys. We define masculinity in a very narrow way. Masculinity is a hard, small cage, and we put boys inside this cage.

We teach boys to be afraid of fear, of weakness, of vulnerability. We teach them to mask their true selves, because they have to be, in Nigerian-speak—a hard man. In secondary school, a boy and a girl go out, both of them teenagers with meager pocket money. Yet the boy is expected to pay the bills, always, to prove his masculinity. (And we wonder why boys are more likely to steal money from their parents.) What if both boys and girls were raised not to link masculinity and money? What if their attitude was not “the boy has to pay,” but rather, “whoever has more should pay.” Of course, because of their historical advantage, it is mostly men who will have more today. But if we start raising children differently, then in fifty years, in a hundred years, boys will no longer have the pressure of proving their masculinity by material means. But by far the worst thing we do to males — by making them feel they have to be hard — is that we leave them with very fragile egos. The harder a man feels compelled to be, the weaker his ego is.

And then we do a much greater disservice to girls, because we raise them to cater to the fragile egos of males.

We teach girls to shrink themselves, to make themselves smaller.

We say to girls: You can have ambition, but not too much. You should aim to be successful but not too successful, otherwise you will threaten the man. If you are the breadwinner in your relationship with a man, pretend that you are not, especially in public, otherwise you will emasculate him.

CHIMAMANDA, Ngozi Adichie. New York, 2014.

jackiewhiting.net

O texto é parte de um discurso feito em 2012 por Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, uma escritora nigeriana reconhecida como uma das mais importantes jovens autoras anglófonas. Em 2014, esse discurso foi transformado em livro. Com base no texto, elabore uma resposta, em português, para cada um dos itens a seguir.

1. a) Compare as características que, segundo a autora, marcam a criação de meninos e meninas. Justifique sua resposta com trechos do texto.
   

2. b) Identifique a opinião da autora, apontando qual é o principal argumento que a sustenta.
   

Leia o texto a seguir.

E-sports on the Olympic Games

Ever since the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris first expressed interest of possibly adding electronic sports to the Olympic Games program, we’ve seen a growing interest by the International Olympic Committee (IOC) in e-sports — traditionally defined as any “organized video game competitions.”

Recognizing the growing interest in e-sports, the organizing committee of the 2024 Summer Olympics in Paris said: “The youth are interested, let’s meet them.”

As an Olympian and former world class high jumper, I struggle with the notion of e-sports becoming an Olympic sport. I am not alone. Conversations I’ve had with other Olympians reveal concerns about comparing the physical skill and demands of traditional athletic competition with e-sports. Given the IOC’s advocacy role for physical activity, e-sports seems to be a conflict with its push for an active society.

Given the growth in popularity, it’s understandable why the IOC would want to partner with e-sports. The IOC generates more than 90 per cent of its revenue from broadcast and sponsorship. Partnering with e-sports, where revenue is generated mostly through sponsorship but where more money is coming from broadcasting, could be complementary and attractive.

The marketing firm Newzoo estimated last year that with brand investment growing by 48 per cent, the global e-sports economy will reach almost $1 billion in 2018.

Still, the question remains, is e-sports — “organized video game competitions” — actually a sport?

To answer this question, perhaps we need to revisit the academic definition of sport. While differences may exist in their granular descriptions of sport, researchers appear to converge on three central attributes: The sport involves a physical component, it is competitive, and it is institutionalized, meaning a governing body establishes the rules of performance.

While e-sports can be argued to be competitive and institutionalized, the first criteria of physicality is where it falls short.

Central to the Olympic Movement and nestled within the criteria of accepting a new sport is gender equality. Interestingly, this has been an area in which e-sports has been heavily criticized.

A study that reviewed gender and gaming determined that even though there are approximately equal numbers of males and females who play video games, most professional gamers are male. Moreover, female players who achieve some level of success are marginalized. Researchers concluded the “video game culture is actively hostile towards women in the private as well as the professional spheres.”

Adaptado de: theconversation.com

Com base no texto, responda, em português, aos itens a seguir.

1. a) Identifique as motivações para a inserção de e-sports nos Jogos Olímpicos. Justifique sua resposta com trechos do texto.
   

2. b) Relacione a posição social do autor com o seu ponto de vista sobre a inserção dos e-sports nos Jogos Olímpicos, explicando as razões que justificam esse posicionamento.
   

Simpler spelling may be more relevant than ever

The complexity of English spellings has been bothering people for nearly as long as English has been written down. They argue that inconsistent spellings make English unnecessarily hard to learn. The English Spelling Society, a UK organisation pushing for easier spellings, even argues that there’s a link between difficult spelling and higher crime, with illiteracy pushing people into a life of illegality. While that argument might be a stretch, it’s clear that non-traditional spelling does create a bad impression.

Compared to the UK variants, US spellings are easier for non-native speakers to learn, being shorter and slightly more phonetic. These US spellings are a legacy of dictionary pioneer Noah Webster’s movement for simplified spelling. This movement sought to cleanse English of double and silent letters, as well as other inefficiencies related to orthography (the system of writing and spelling words).

There was a practical as well as a political element to this. Not only would learners find it easier to master simplified spellings, Webster reasoned, but humbler spellings were actually more democratic, and would help differentiate the Americans from their recent colonial masters across the pond.

Webster’s ideas led to the proliferation in the US of “labor” over “labour” and “center” over “centre”, even if not all his ideas have become the “fashon”. For one thing, English is such an irregular language that it’s impossible to iron out all the kinks. No form of English is written out completely phonetically, as anybody with a tough cough (tuf cawf?) will know. Anynew spelling rules would need plenty of exceptions.

Overall, English’s erratic spellings bear witness to the many words it has absorbed from other languages. Like the wealth of accents among English speakers, this feature both enriches the language and poses a challenge to standardised simplified spellings.

English spellings and dyslexia

One group that might be helped by simpler spellings is people with dyslexia. In linguistic terms, English is opaque, meaning that there’s little correlation and consistency between its spoken and written forms. What you read and what you say can seem very different. Finnish and Spanish, in contrast, are more transparent. So “kids learn to read English slower than kids who learned transparent languages like Spanish, Italian, Czech, German”, says Liory Fern-Pollak, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London.

As dyslexia has a neurological basis, an affected person would have dyslexia regardless of whether they were born in Finland or England. But Fern-Pollak explains that it would be easier to diagnose them in England, as they grapple with the idiosyncratic spellings of English.

English in the internet age

Webster’s ideas are perhaps newly relevant, as the language of IT and the internet increasingly influences how English is written. Globally, Google returns more results for US spellings. In computing, “program” is generally accepted over “programme”. Shorter words are more versatile in text messages and social media posts, and search engine optimisation often favours US spellings. The Googlelisation (or “Googlization”) of the internet is one reason that Thai learners, for instance, prefer American spellings.

But the internet is also exposing people to a large variety of spellings. So “people are representing their spoken dialects more through spelling in spaces like Twitter and Instagram”, says Lauren Squires, a linguist at Ohio State University. She believes that “people arebecoming more comfortable with spelling variation”, even though there’s a strong and enduring idea that only one spelling can be correct.

RO, Christine. Simpler spelling may be more relevant than ever. BBC Worklife. 13th June 2019.

Sobre o texto Simpler spelling may be more relevant than ever, considere as afirmativas a seguir.

I. A complexidade da ortografia da língua inglesa resulta da variedade de palavras das diversas línguas que a compõem.

II. Noah Webster foi líder de um movimento para simplificar a ortografia da língua inglesa em território norte-americano.

III. A proposta da simplificação ortográfica teve cunho político na medida em que permitia distinguir o inglês do norte da América do inglês da Inglaterra.

IV. Os defensores da simplificação ortográfica acreditavam que a complexidade empobrecia a língua inglesa e ameaçava a democracia norte-americana.

Assinale a alternativa correta.

Simpler spelling may be more relevant than ever

The complexity of English spellings has been bothering people for nearly as long as English has been written down. They argue that inconsistent spellings make English unnecessarily hard to learn. The English Spelling Society, a UK organisation pushing for easier spellings, even argues that there’s a link between difficult spelling and higher crime, with illiteracy pushing people into a life of illegality. While that argument might be a stretch, it’s clear that non-traditional spelling does create a bad impression.

Compared to the UK variants, US spellings are easier for non-native speakers to learn, being shorter and slightly more phonetic. These US spellings are a legacy of dictionary pioneer Noah Webster’s movement for simplified spelling. This movement sought to cleanse English of double and silent letters, as well as other inefficiencies related to orthography (the system of writing and spelling words).

There was a practical as well as a political element to this. Not only would learners find it easier to master simplified spellings, Webster reasoned, but humbler spellings were actually more democratic, and would help differentiate the Americans from their recent colonial masters across the pond.

Webster’s ideas led to the proliferation in the US of “labor” over “labour” and “center” over “centre”, even if not all his ideas have become the “fashon”. For one thing, English is such an irregular language that it’s impossible to iron out all the kinks. No form of English is written out completely phonetically, as anybody with a tough cough (tuf cawf?) will know. Anynew spelling rules would need plenty of exceptions.

Overall, English’s erratic spellings bear witness to the many words it has absorbed from other languages. Like the wealth of accents among English speakers, this feature both enriches the language and poses a challenge to standardised simplified spellings.

English spellings and dyslexia

One group that might be helped by simpler spellings is people with dyslexia. In linguistic terms, English is opaque, meaning that there’s little correlation and consistency between its spoken and written forms. What you read and what you say can seem very different. Finnish and Spanish, in contrast, are more transparent. So “kids learn to read English slower than kids who learned transparent languages like Spanish, Italian, Czech, German”, says Liory Fern-Pollak, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London.

As dyslexia has a neurological basis, an affected person would have dyslexia regardless of whether they were born in Finland or England. But Fern-Pollak explains that it would be easier to diagnose them in England, as they grapple with the idiosyncratic spellings of English.

English in the internet age

Webster’s ideas are perhaps newly relevant, as the language of IT and the internet increasingly influences how English is written. Globally, Google returns more results for US spellings. In computing, “program” is generally accepted over “programme”. Shorter words are more versatile in text messages and social media posts, and search engine optimisation often favours US spellings. The Googlelisation (or “Googlization”) of the internet is one reason that Thai learners, for instance, prefer American spellings.

But the internet is also exposing people to a large variety of spellings. So “people are representing their spoken dialects more through spelling in spaces like Twitter and Instagram”, says Lauren Squires, a linguist at Ohio State University. She believes that “people arebecoming more comfortable with spelling variation”, even though there’s a strong and enduring idea that only one spelling can be correct.

RO, Christine. Simpler spelling may be more relevant than ever. BBC Worklife. 13th June 2019.

De acordo com o texto, um dos argumentos da English Spelling Society para defender a simplificação da ortografia da língua inglesa é que

Simpler spelling may be more relevant than ever

The complexity of English spellings has been bothering people for nearly as long as English has been written down. They argue that inconsistent spellings make English unnecessarily hard to learn. The English Spelling Society, a UK organisation pushing for easier spellings, even argues that there’s a link between difficult spelling and higher crime, with illiteracy pushing people into a life of illegality. While that argument might be a stretch, it’s clear that non-traditional spelling does create a bad impression.

Compared to the UK variants, US spellings are easier for non-native speakers to learn, being shorter and slightly more phonetic. These US spellings are a legacy of dictionary pioneer Noah Webster’s movement for simplified spelling. This movement sought to cleanse English of double and silent letters, as well as other inefficiencies related to orthography (the system of writing and spelling words).

There was a practical as well as a political element to this. Not only would learners find it easier to master simplified spellings, Webster reasoned, but humbler spellings were actually more democratic, and would help differentiate the Americans from their recent colonial masters across the pond.

Webster’s ideas led to the proliferation in the US of “labor” over “labour” and “center” over “centre”, even if not all his ideas have become the “fashon”. For one thing, English is such an irregular language that it’s impossible to iron out all the kinks. No form of English is written out completely phonetically, as anybody with a tough cough (tuf cawf?) will know. Anynew spelling rules would need plenty of exceptions.

Overall, English’s erratic spellings bear witness to the many words it has absorbed from other languages. Like the wealth of accents among English speakers, this feature both enriches the language and poses a challenge to standardised simplified spellings.

English spellings and dyslexia

One group that might be helped by simpler spellings is people with dyslexia. In linguistic terms, English is opaque, meaning that there’s little correlation and consistency between its spoken and written forms. What you read and what you say can seem very different. Finnish and Spanish, in contrast, are more transparent. So “kids learn to read English slower than kids who learned transparent languages like Spanish, Italian, Czech, German”, says Liory Fern-Pollak, a cognitive neuroscientist at University College London.

As dyslexia has a neurological basis, an affected person would have dyslexia regardless of whether they were born in Finland or England. But Fern-Pollak explains that it would be easier to diagnose them in England, as they grapple with the idiosyncratic spellings of English.

English in the internet age

Webster’s ideas are perhaps newly relevant, as the language of IT and the internet increasingly influences how English is written. Globally, Google returns more results for US spellings. In computing, “program” is generally accepted over “programme”. Shorter words are more versatile in text messages and social media posts, and search engine optimisation often favours US spellings. The Googlelisation (or “Googlization”) of the internet is one reason that Thai learners, for instance, prefer American spellings.

But the internet is also exposing people to a large variety of spellings. So “people are representing their spoken dialects more through spelling in spaces like Twitter and Instagram”, says Lauren Squires, a linguist at Ohio State University. She believes that “people arebecoming more comfortable with spelling variation”, even though there’s a strong and enduring idea that only one spelling can be correct.

RO, Christine. Simpler spelling may be more relevant than ever. BBC Worklife. 13th June 2019.

De acordo com o texto, pessoas com dislexia poderiam ser beneficiadas com a simplificação da ortografia da língua inglesa porque