Questões de Concurso

Text 7A1-II

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back. 

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less traveled by,

And that has made all the difference. 

Robert Frost. The Road Not Taken. 1916 (adapted).  

Text 1 – How children learn languages

Questions 31 to 39

How long does it take to learn a language?

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Rain Is Coming to Burning Los Angeles and Will Bring Its Own Risks

    Rain is forecast to begin as soon as Saturday afternoon and to continue as late as Monday evening, says meteorologist Kristan Lund of the National Weather Service’s Los Angeles office. The area desperately needs the precipitation, but experts are warily monitoring the situation because rain poses its own risks in recently burned areas— most notably the potential occurrence of mudslides and similar hazards. “Rain is good because we’ve been so dry,” Lund says. “However, if we get heavier rain rates or we get the thunderstorms, it’s actually a lot more dangerous because you can get debris flows.”

    Fires do a couple of different things to the landscape that can increase the risk of burned material, soil and detritus hurtling out of control. When fires burn hot or long enough, they leave an invisible layer of waxy material just under the surface of the ground. This develops from decomposing leaves and other organic material, which contain naturally hydrophobic or water-repellent compounds. Fire can vaporize this litter, and the resulting gas seeps into the upper soil—where it quickly cools and condenses, forming the slippery layer.

    When rain falls on ground that has been affected by this phenomenon, it can’t sink beyond the hydrophobic layer— so the water flows away, often hauling debris with it. “All of the trees, branches, everything that’s been burned—unfortunately, if it rains, that stuff just floats,” Lund says. “It’s really concerning.” Even a fire that isn’t severe enough to create a hydrophobic layer can still cause debris flows, says Danielle Touma, a climate scientist at the University of Texas at Austin. Under normal conditions, trees and other plants usually trap some rain above the surface, slowing the water’s downward journey. But on freshly burned land there’s much less greenery to interfere; all the rain immediately hits the ground. [...]

    Fortunately, the rain should also help firefighters tame the blazes that remain active. The largest, the Palisades Fire, is currently 77 percent contained. The second largest, the Eaton Fire, is 95 percent contained. The Hughes Fire is third largest and only 56 percent contained. A fire can be fully contained but still burning. The containment percentage refers to the amount of the perimeter that has barriers that firefighters expect will prevent further spread.

Scientific American. January 27th, 2025. Adaptado.

From: https://schulzmuseum.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/11/1963-05-01_WEBscaled.jpg  

Read the text below and answer the questions that follow.

Text

Should schools just say no to pupils using phones?

14th July 2024

Natalie Grice – BBC News

“I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing for a child never to have a smartphone. I think it’s part of a balanced life. You’ve got to live in your own time.”

These are not the words you might expect to hear from a teacher at a school that has never in its history allowed pupils under sixth form age to use a mobile phone on the premises.

But Sarah Owen, deputy head at Stanwell School in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, was simply expressing a personal opinion, rather than the school’s view about a young person’s wider life.

It is clear that she and the school have very firm opinions on what is best for children while they are on school grounds.

For Stanwell pupils in years 7 to 11, that has always meant no phones. Not in lessons, not in the corridor, not at breaktimes.

It is such a long-established rule that it presumably comes as no surprise to pupils and parents when they join the school, which is starting to seem as if it may have been ahead of a growing curve.

In the past few years, a number of schools across Wales and further afield have introduced total bans on mobiles. While Stanwell only asks pupils to keep phones switched off in their bags, others require the devices to be handed in at the start of the day.

Llanidloes High School in Powys is one which has implemented this policy in the past few years and Ysgol Penrhyn Dewi in St Davids, Pembrokeshire, followed suit at the start of this year.

Sarah Owen has been at Stanwell School since 2000 and says that there has always been a no phone policy in the school. For Sarah, it is a question not of trying to impinge on their students’ freedom, but of giving them vital time away from mobile life, for welfare as well as educational reasons.

“We genuinely believe this is in their best interests,” she said. “Phone addiction and screen addiction and scrolling, the loss of concentration, the loss of soft skills around listening and interacting with others, that’s something we need to be concerned about as a society generally.”

“We want children to be interacting with each other, having conversations, playing football, having those connections and interactions with other people.”

Sarah also believes it gives pupils relief from the possibility of being “photographed, filmed, mocked in some way – that’s not a nice way for children to live”. She said she wanted her pupils to have “some sanctuary from the anxiety of feeling so scrutinised and looked at”. 

Adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles