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Sobre interpretação de texto | reading comprehension em inglês
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In San Antonio, Texas, there is a purple house. This house is the home of Sandra Cisneros. Ms. Cisneros is a Mexican-American writer. She is famous for her interesting stories. The house has a porch with a pink floor. The rooms are green, pink and purple. There are many books and colorful paintings. Many other house near Ms. Cisnero’s house are white or beige, so her house is very different. Some of her neighbors think her house is very colourful, but Ms. Cisneros loves it.
O texto fala sobre:
According to the article, we can conclude that…
One day young – on babies and moms
Motherhood may be a pressing subject for modern British women, but the realities of giving birth for the first time remains deeply misunderstood in British culture. Throughout the ages, motherhood has been depicted as merely beautiful and uncomplicated, or as compromised by other, more complex feelings. This misconception drove London-based photographer Jenny Lewis to create her ongoing series One Day Young. She, for the past seven years, has taken photographs of new mothers and their babies in London, UK. Lewis photographs mothers at the very start of parenthood. “I wanted to concentrate on the first 24 hours, when a woman’s body is still engulfed by hormones, to capture the unrelenting physicality of the moment, straight from the battlefield,” she says. Adapted from BBC
Mark the right affirmation about the article.
When Milva McDonald sent her oldest daughter to Newton public school kindergarten in 1990, she was disturbed by what she saw. The kids were being tracked, even at that young age. And then there were the endless hours the small children spent sitting at their desks. It felt unnatural. In the real world, you wouldn’t be stuck in a room with people all the same ages with one person directing them, she thought.
During that single year her daughter was in the school system, McDonald saw enough to convince her that she could do better on her own. That would be no small feat: Newton’s public schools have long been rated as among the best in the state (in our Greater Boston rankings this year, they’re 10th.). But she’d always worked part time—she’s now an online editor—and she was fortunate that she could maintain a flexible schedule. So she yanked her daughter out of school, and over the next two decades homeschooled all four of her children—including her youngest, Abigail Dickson, who’s now 16.
McDonald’s first homeschool rule was to throw out the book and let her children guide their learning, at their own pace. In lieu of a curriculum or published guides, McDonald improvised, taking advantage of the homeschooling village that had sprouted up around her. One mother ran a theater group, a dad ran a math group, and McDonald oversaw a creative-writing club. Their children took supplementary classes at the Harvard Extension School and Bunker Hill Community College. “I wanted them to be in charge of their own education and decide what they were interested in, and not have someone else telling them what to do and what they were good at,” she says.
And by any measure, it’s working. McDonald’s daughter Claire—the third of her four children to be homeschooled—will enter Harvard College as a freshman this fall.
Back in the ’90s, McDonald was considered a homeschooling pioneer; now she’s joined by a growing movement of parents who are abstaining from traditional schooling, not on religious grounds but because of another strong belief: that they can educate their kids better than the system can. Though far from mainstream (an estimated 2.2 million students are home-educated in the U.S.), secular homeschooling is trending up. Last year, 277 children were homeschooled in Boston, more than double the total from 2004; in Cambridge the number was 46. (In surrounding towns, the numbers are growing, too: During the 2013–2014 school year, Arlington had 55; Somerville, 36; Winthrop, 5; Brookline, 11; Natick, 36; Newton, 33; and Watertown, 24.)
There’s enough momentum that major cultural institutions—from the Franklin Park Zoo and the New England Aquarium to the Museum of Fine Arts and MIT’s Edgerton Center—now regularly offer classes for homeschoolers. Tellingly, even public school systems are becoming more accommodating. In Cambridge, for example, homeschoolers have the option to attend individual classes in the district’s schools. Some take math or science classes and participate in sports—last year, one homeschooler took music and piano lessons. Carolyn Turk, deputy superintendent for teaching and learning at Cambridge Public Schools, says she’s seeing more of this “hybrid” approach than in the past. “In Cambridge we look at homeschooling as a choice,” she says. “Cambridge is a city of choice.”
The Boston Public Schools, meanwhile, have begun to view homeschooling as one of the many laboratories in which it can explore new teaching methods. “These people are looking to do instructive, nontraditional education. It’s all different types of people from all incomes,” says Freddie Fuentes, the executive director of educational options for Boston Public Schools. Fuentes, who personally helps parents with academic plans, finds that many homeschooling parents want “very deep, expeditionary learning” for their children. “A lot of them are looking at innovative ways of learning,” he says. “We as a school system need to think about innovation and the cutting edge.”
In other words, homeschooling is arriving here in a very Boston-like way: It’s aspirational, intellectual, entrepreneurial, and innovative.
(http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2015/08/25/homeschooling-in-boston/)
According to the text, parents are opting for homeschooling because they think
Andrew F. Cooper. The changing nature of diplomacy. In: Andrew F. Cooper and Jorge Heine. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. p. 36 (adapted).
In relation to the content and the vocabulary of the text, decide whether the following statements are right (C) or wrong (E).
As far as textual unity is concerned, “Yet” provides a transition from the first to the second paragraphs, and establishes a contrast between the ideas in each of them.
Yet, while the theme of complexity radiates through the pages of this book, changed circumstances and the 19 stretching of form, scope, and intensity do not only produce fragmentation but centralization in terms of purposive acts. Amid the larger debates about the diversity of principals, 22 agents, and intermediaries, the space in modern diplomacy for leadership by personalities at the apex of power has expanded. At odds with the counter-image of horizontal breadth with an 25 open-ended nature, the dynamic of 21st-century diplomacy remains highly vertically oriented and individual-centric.
To showcase this phenomenon, however, is no to 28 suggest ossification. In terms of causation, the dependence on leaders is largely a reaction to complexity. With the shift to multi-party, multi-channel, multi-issue negotiations, with 31 domestic as well as international interests and values in play, leaders are often the only actors who can cut through the complexity and make the necessary trade-offs to allow 34 deadlocks to be broken. In terms of communication and other modes of representation, bringing in leaders differentiates and elevates issues from the bureaucratic arena.
37 In terms of effect, the primacy of leaders reinforces elements of both club and network diplomacy. In its most visible manifestation via summit diplomacy, the image of club 40 diplomacy explicitly differentiates the status and role of insiders and outsiders and thus the hierarchical nature of diplomacy. Although “large teams of representatives” are 43 involved in this central form of international practice, it is the “organized performances” of leaders that possess the most salience. At the same time, though, the galvanizing or catalytic 46 dimension of leader-driven diplomacy provides new avenues and legitimation for network diplomacy, with many decisions of summits being outsourced to actors who did not participate 49 at the summit but possess the technical knowledge, institutional credibility, and resources to enhance results.
Andrew F. Cooper. The changing nature of diplomacy. In: Andrew F. Cooper and Jorge Heine. The Oxford Handbook of Modern Diplomacy. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2013. p. 36 (adapted).
In relation to the content and the vocabulary of the text, decide whether the following statements are right (C) or wrong (E).
From the third paragraph, it is correct to infer that the more complex the diplomatic scenario, the more necessary the presence of leaders is.
Source: http://www.businessenglishmaterials.com/mcdonalds.html
Regarding the use of referents underlined on the text, choose the best alternative:
( ) People prefer newer homes because they are better for your health. ( ) The risk of gaining weight diminishes if you live older, more walkable neighborhoods. ( ) More residents in Salt Lake County live in neighborhoods built before 1950. ( ) Ken Smith believes that changing one’s behavior is hard to do. ( ) Teenagers’ data were not taken into consideration in the research carried on by DR. Smith and his colleagues.
Choose the alternative which presents the correct sequence:
Among other things, the British psychologist thinks that parents mustn’t fear telling adolescents off if they are not behaving properly either at home or at school. Also, parents have the right to phone teachers to find out whether their teenage son or daughter has been missing classes recently. In fact, parents must be on the alert for any strange attitude their children might take.
Some recent interviews with parents show they are very much worried that their teenage sons and daughters might become troublemakers. Speaking to a magazine reporter, William Wavy (62) said that his son, Phil, did not want to work or study when he was younger. Wavy added that, when Phil turned twenty, things got much worse. One night, the father found out that his son had stolen a car and had been taken to a police station. “I simply got desperate and tried to help my son”, says William. He managed to take his son home, but a few days later the police called again. Phil had been arrested for robbing a house. This time William did not raise a finger and Phil is doing time in a state prison.
Should Willian have tried to free his son again? Did he do the right thing? These are questions which will remain unanswered for some time. Willian now feels that it may have been his son’s upbringing that went wrong. He says that he should have searched his son’s bedroom and got to know his friends. But he also feels that now he has the right to live in peace and that his son must be held responsible for his own acts.
In the sentence “In his opinion, children who have too much freedom Will become ‘difficult’ adolescents”, Will suggests:
The Guardian newspaper in the UK invited people to send in their opinions about the phenomenon of young teenagers turning to drink and drugs. Below is a selection of ome of those opinions:
I'm 27. Since the age of about 13 I've been drinking and smoking. Why? Let me attempt to answer. My generation's culture is accelerating at a pace never before experienced. We have instant solutions to everything. We want information - we log onto the net. We want to contact someone - we have our mobile phone. We want entertainment - we turn on the TV or the games console. With so many ways to instantly gratify ourselves is it any wonder than when things aren't going so well we turn to the quickest solution: drink and drugs?
Andrea, Manchester
I am sickened by teenagers who blame society for their drinking habits. These kids say that society doesn't provide enough for them and that they are bored and that's why they turn to drink and drugs. Well, I grew up in a rural village that had absolutely nothing: no bars, cinemas, sports centres, youth clubs - NOTHING! But we didn't take drugs and I had my first drink when I was 17. Boredom is no excuse.
G. Winterbottom, Greenwich
Let's remember how influential TV can be. Inevitably TV shows things that look good on the screen. This means they focus on people doing crazy things, being hip and generally acting like a true party animal. Filming university lecturers talking about good books is no way to attract a mass audience. Repeatedly kids are bombarded with images implying that life is about excitement and craziness - a message that entails a total disregard for the virtues that stop adult society falling apart. This must make young people nowadays much more demanding than kids in the past, and it must make them much more likely to look for easy ways of forgetting the thoroughly unexciting demands of adult life.
Yazoo, Brazil
All 14-year-olds want to do is go out and do exactly what the 18 year olds are doing. I am constantly hearing tales from my friend's 14-year-old sister about how she's been sick in a club. She thinks it's great, and says it's what everybody does. She also tells me that the most popular radio station in the UK has a program on Saturday morning where teenagers regularly phone in and talk to the DJ about how drunk they got the previous night. Everybody just laughs.
Andrew, Birmingham
If your future is going to consist of fifty or sixty years stuck in a tedious 9 to 5 job like a rat on a treadmill, chemicals are the way to go.
Naz, UK
When I was young I turned to drink for the following reasons: I always felt like an outsider. Teachers and adults never valued my thoughts and contributions, I was a second class citizen because of my age. Yet when I went out at the weekend and drank I forgot all about that, and for a few hours I felt on top of the world.
Alan, New Zealand
In Holland there isn't this idea that sex, drink and drugs (at least soft drugs) are something bad. The whole system is more relaxed and people are much more open about these issues. Of course there are problems but I don't think the solution is stricter legislation. Britain has much stricter legislation and the problems there are far worse. Take teenage pregnancies as an example. The age of consent for sex in the UK is 16, whereas in Holland it is 12, and we have the lowest rate of teenage pregnancy in Europe.
Helga, Amsterdam
(http://fullspate.digitalcounterrevolution.co.uk/archive/drugs2.html)
The text presents people’s opinions on the consumption of alcohol and drugs by young adolescents. Most of these people try to give a reason for the young adolescents’ drinking habits and drug use but
7 Reece Mews was tiny, and apart from the studio 16 consisted of two rooms — a kitchen that contained a bath, and a living room that doubled as a bedroom. The studio had one skylight, and Bacon usually worked there in the mornings. He 19 tried to paint elsewhere — in South Africa, for example, when he was visiting family, but couldn’t. (Too much light, was the rather surprising objection.) He liked the size and general 22 frugality, too.
Dawson recognised that the studio was the making of Bacon’s art in a more profound sense than just being a 25 comfortable space to paint in, and determined that it should not be dismantled. John Edwards, to whom Bacon had bequeathed Reece Mews, felt similarly, and after months of painstaking 28 cataloguing by archaeologists, conservators and photographers, the Hugh Lane Gallery took delivery of the studio, in 1998. It was opened to the public in 2001.
31 What is visible now, in a climate-controlled corner of the gallery, a gracious neo-classical building on Parnell Square in Dublin, is in fact a kind of faithful “skin” of objects; the 34 tables and chairs have all been returned to their original places, the work surfaces seem as cluttered as they were — but the deep stuff, the bedrock, has been removed and is kept in 37 climate-controlled archival areas. In the end, there were 7,500 items — samples of painting materials, photographs, slashed canvasses, umpteen handwritten notes, drawings, books, 40 champagne boxes.
Bacon was homosexual at a time when it was still illegal, and while he was open about his sexuality, his notes for 43 prospective paintings refer to “bed[s] of crime]”, and his homosexuality was felt as an affliction, says Dawson. It wasn’t easy. The sense of guilt is apparent in his work, as well as his 46 fascination with violence. “His collections of pictures, dead bodies, or depictions of violence — he’s not looking at violence from the classic liberal position”. It was all, concedes 49 Dawson, accompanied by intellectual rigour, and an insistent attempt at objectivity — “he’s trying to detach from himself as well.”
52 Everything was grist, and in his studio even his own art fed other art. He returned to his own work obsessively, repeating and augmenting. And of course, he responded 55 negatively — and violently — as well as positively; a hundred is a lot of slashed canvasses to keep around you when you’re working, especially when they are so deliberately slashed. In 58 a way, all this might serve as a metaphor for the importance of our understanding of his studio as a whole.
Aida Edemarian. Francis Bacon: box of tricks. Internet: <www.theguardian.com> (adapted).
Decide whether the statements below are right (C) or wrong (E) according to the ideas and facts mentioned in the text.
Bacon believed that his inability to work in South Africa was due to the visits of his relatives.
7 Reece Mews was tiny, and apart from the studio 16 consisted of two rooms — a kitchen that contained a bath, and a living room that doubled as a bedroom. The studio had one skylight, and Bacon usually worked there in the mornings. He 19 tried to paint elsewhere — in South Africa, for example, when he was visiting family, but couldn’t. (Too much light, was the rather surprising objection.) He liked the size and general 22 frugality, too.
Dawson recognised that the studio was the making of Bacon’s art in a more profound sense than just being a 25 comfortable space to paint in, and determined that it should not be dismantled. John Edwards, to whom Bacon had bequeathed Reece Mews, felt similarly, and after months of painstaking 28 cataloguing by archaeologists, conservators and photographers, the Hugh Lane Gallery took delivery of the studio, in 1998. It was opened to the public in 2001.
31 What is visible now, in a climate-controlled corner of the gallery, a gracious neo-classical building on Parnell Square in Dublin, is in fact a kind of faithful “skin” of objects; the 34 tables and chairs have all been returned to their original places, the work surfaces seem as cluttered as they were — but the deep stuff, the bedrock, has been removed and is kept in 37 climate-controlled archival areas. In the end, there were 7,500 items — samples of painting materials, photographs, slashed canvasses, umpteen handwritten notes, drawings, books, 40 champagne boxes. Bacon was homosexual at a time when it was still illegal, and while he was open about his sexuality, his notes for 43 prospective paintings refer to “bed[s] of crime]”, and his homosexuality was felt as an affliction, says Dawson. It wasn’t easy. The sense of guilt is apparent in his work, as well as his 46 fascination with violence. “His collections of pictures, dead bodies, or depictions of violence — he’s not looking at violence from the classic liberal position”. It was all, concedes 49 Dawson, accompanied by intellectual rigour, and an insistent attempt at objectivity — “he’s trying to detach from himself as well.”
52 Everything was grist, and in his studio even his own art fed other art. He returned to his own work obsessively, repeating and augmenting. And of course, he responded 55 negatively — and violently — as well as positively; a hundred is a lot of slashed canvasses to keep around you when you’re working, especially when they are so deliberately slashed. In 58 a way, all this might serve as a metaphor for the importance of our understanding of his studio as a whole.
Aida Edemarian. Francis Bacon: box of tricks. Internet: <www.theguardian.com> (adapted).
Decide whether the statements below are right (C) or wrong (E) according to the ideas and facts mentioned in the text.
The two driving forces behind the Hugh Lane Gallery project were Dawson and Edwards.
Aida Edemarian. Francis Bacon: box of tricks. Internet: <www.theguardian.com> (adapted).
Decide whether the statements below are right (C) or wrong (E) according to the ideas and facts mentioned in the text.
Bacon left part of his properties to Edwards.
Aida Edemarian. Francis Bacon: box of tricks. Internet: <www.theguardian.com> (adapted).
Decide whether the statements below are right (C) or wrong (E) according to the ideas and facts mentioned in the text.
The author of the text claims that the fact that George Michael liked having his profile photographed revealed a lot about his personality.
When Milva McDonald sent her oldest daughter to Newton public school kindergarten in 1990, she was disturbed by what she saw. The kids were being tracked, even at that young age. And then there were the endless hours the small children spent sitting at their desks. It felt unnatural. In the real world, you wouldn’t be stuck in a room with people all the same ages with one person directing them, she thought.
During that single year her daughter was in the school system, McDonald saw enough to convince her that she could do better on her own. That would be no small feat: Newton’s public schools have long been rated as among the best in the state (in our Greater Boston rankings this year, they’re 10th.). But she’d always worked part time—she’s now an online editor—and she was fortunate that she could maintain a flexible schedule. So she yanked her daughter out of school, and over the next two decades homeschooled all four of her children—including her youngest, Abigail Dickson, who’s now 16.
McDonald’s first homeschool rule was to throw out the book and let her children guide their learning, at their own pace. In lieu of a curriculum or published guides, McDonald improvised, taking advantage of the homeschooling village that had sprouted up around her. One mother ran a theater group, a dad ran a math group, and McDonald oversaw a creative-writing club. Their children took supplementary classes at the Harvard Extension School and Bunker Hill Community College. “I wanted them to be in charge of their own education and decide what they were interested in, and not have someone else telling them what to do and what they were good at,” she says.
And by any measure, it’s working. McDonald’s daughter Claire—the third of her four children to be homeschooled—will enter Harvard College as a freshman this fall.
Back in the ’90s, McDonald was considered a homeschooling pioneer; now she’s joined by a growing movement of parents who are abstaining from traditional schooling, not on religious grounds but because of another strong belief: that they can educate their kids better than the system can. Though far from mainstream (an estimated 2.2 million students are home-educated in the U.S.), secular homeschooling is trending up. Last year, 277 children were homeschooled in Boston, more than double the total from 2004; in Cambridge the number was 46. (In surrounding towns, the numbers are growing, too: During the 2013–2014 school year, Arlington had 55; Somerville, 36; Winthrop, 5; Brookline, 11; Natick, 36; Newton, 33; and Watertown, 24.)
There’s enough momentum that major cultural institutions—from the Franklin Park Zoo and the New England Aquarium to the Museum of Fine Arts and MIT’s Edgerton Center—now regularly offer classes for homeschoolers. Tellingly, even public school systems are becoming more accommodating. In Cambridge, for example, homeschoolers have the option to attend individual classes in the district’s schools. Some take math or science classes and participate in sports—last year, one homeschooler took music and piano lessons. Carolyn Turk, deputy superintendent for teaching and learning at Cambridge Public Schools, says she’s seeing more of this “hybrid” approach than in the past. “In Cambridge we look at homeschooling as a choice,” she says. “Cambridge is a city of choice.”
The Boston Public Schools, meanwhile, have begun to view homeschooling as one of the many laboratories in which it can explore new teaching methods. “These people are looking to do instructive, nontraditional education. It’s all different types of people from all incomes,” says Freddie Fuentes, the executive director of educational options for Boston Public Schools. Fuentes, who personally helps parents with academic plans, finds that many homeschooling parents want “very deep, expeditionary learning” for their children. “A lot of them are looking at innovative ways of learning,” he says. “We as a school system need to think about innovation and the cutting edge.”
In other words, homeschooling is arriving here in a very Boston-like way: It’s aspirational, intellectual, entrepreneurial, and innovative.
(http://www.bostonmagazine.com/news/article/2015/08/25/homeschooling-in-boston/)
The underlined modal verb in “they can educate their kids better than the system can.” (5ᵗʰ paragraph) expresses a
Após a leitura do texto, assinale a alternativa incorreta:
Read the text to answer
On Education, Republican Candidates Retreat From National Standards
BY EMILY CADEI 8/20/15 AT 4:40 AM

After 15 years of rising federal involvement in K through 12 schools, U.S. education policy is poised for a big shift in direction. If that wasn’t already apparent, it certainly became clear on Wednesday, when six of the Republican party’s leading 2016 contenders spoke about their views on educating America’s youth, and what their priorities would be should they make it to the White House. The consensus: national‐level reform efforts are out. Ceding control to state and local school districts is in.
That’s always been the preference for some segments of the Republican party. But under President George W. Bush, a crop of GOP leaders interested in business‐backed education reforms banded together with Democrats eager to expand public funding for schools, particularly for underachieving schools, to carve out a more assertive federal role. That coalition helped pass the 2001 law known as No Child Left Behind, which set national standards for schools and used federal funding to create incentives to meet them.
Though there is now broad agreement that parts of No Child Left Behind were ill‐conceived, the Obama administration has continued Bush’s muscular approach to education, prodding states to participate in national programs with offers of federal cash. But that coalition of Democratic and Republican reformers is now looking wobbly. The House and Senate have both passed updated versions of No Child Left Behind that would rein in the federal government’s role in setting K through 12 education policy, though not nearly as much as conservatives would like. The next step is reconciling differences between the bills in a way that keeps the more conservative House happy, without jeopardizing President Barack Obama’s signature. That’s going to be a tough task for Congress this fall. On the presidential trail, Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have made clear that they side with teachers’ unions who are critics of expanding charter schools and more teacher accountability, which both Bush and Obama tried to promote nationally.
On the Republican side, meanwhile, the six candidates who spoke at the American Federation for Children’s Education Summit 2015 in New Hampshire fell all over themselves trying distance their agendas from current education policies and declare their support for local autonomy.
(Available: http://www.newsweek.com/education)
Read the text to answer
On Education, Republican Candidates Retreat From National Standards
BY EMILY CADEI 8/20/15 AT 4:40 AM

After 15 years of rising federal involvement in K through 12 schools, U.S. education policy is poised for a big shift in direction. If that wasn’t already apparent, it certainly became clear on Wednesday, when six of the Republican party’s leading 2016 contenders spoke about their views on educating America’s youth, and what their priorities would be should they make it to the White House. The consensus: national‐level reform efforts are out. Ceding control to state and local school districts is in.
That’s always been the preference for some segments of the Republican party. But under President George W. Bush, a crop of GOP leaders interested in business‐backed education reforms banded together with Democrats eager to expand public funding for schools, particularly for underachieving schools, to carve out a more assertive federal role. That coalition helped pass the 2001 law known as No Child Left Behind, which set national standards for schools and used federal funding to create incentives to meet them.
Though there is now broad agreement that parts of No Child Left Behind were ill‐conceived, the Obama administration has continued Bush’s muscular approach to education, prodding states to participate in national programs with offers of federal cash. But that coalition of Democratic and Republican reformers is now looking wobbly. The House and Senate have both passed updated versions of No Child Left Behind that would rein in the federal government’s role in setting K through 12 education policy, though not nearly as much as conservatives would like. The next step is reconciling differences between the bills in a way that keeps the more conservative House happy, without jeopardizing President Barack Obama’s signature. That’s going to be a tough task for Congress this fall. On the presidential trail, Democrats like Hillary Clinton and Bernie Sanders have made clear that they side with teachers’ unions who are critics of expanding charter schools and more teacher accountability, which both Bush and Obama tried to promote nationally.
On the Republican side, meanwhile, the six candidates who spoke at the American Federation for Children’s Education Summit 2015 in New Hampshire fell all over themselves trying distance their agendas from current education policies and declare their support for local autonomy.
(Available: http://www.newsweek.com/education)