Present Continuous x Simple Present: resumo de Inglês Enem

(IFGO/2016)

What Success at the Paris Climate Conference Looks Like
Rebecca Leber

Right now, we’re in a car, hanging on for dear life as we hurtle around a mountain bend. If we don’t hit the brakes soon, we’re going to lose control, crash through the guardrail, and careen into the abyss. We’ve been fully warned about the danger ahead, but now here we are, testing our fate.
Already, the effects of climate change are clear and significant. Last year was the hottest in recorded history, and it’s all but certain that 2015 will set a new record, according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. Wildfires in the West this year have consumed a massive eight million acres of land and counting, while superstorms like Katrina and Sandy are becoming stronger and more frequent. But that’s just the beginning. By the end of the century, the planet will become unrecognizable. The western United States will face Dust Bowl-like conditions that will persist for more than 30 years. As the oceans rise, island nations like the Maldives could disappear completely, while millions of people in Miami, New York, and Bangladesh will be forced from their homes. Looking further out, over the next several hundred years, the melting ice caps could cause sea levels to surge up to 200 feet, high enough to sink a ten-story building.
These are not fantasies dreamed up by some Hollywood studio. They’re ripped from the pages of sober scientific journals and official reports. The Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, which operates under the auspices of the United Nations, foresees environmental impacts that are “severe, pervasive, and irreversible”. The World Bank has warned that humanity may not be able to adapt to this warmer world.
By certain measures, it’s already too late. Politicians, climatologists, and environmental activists have long rallied around 2 degrees Celsius of warming as a decisive point, after which we can no longer stave off disaster. Today, however, we’re already at 0.9 degrees of warming above preindustrial averages, and we’re on track to blow past 2 degrees by the middle of the century and well over 4 degrees by the end of it. At the rate we’re going, just limiting global warming to 2 degrees is a pipe dream. That doesn’t mean the planet is doomed, however. We can still prevent the most devastating effects of climate change if we take action now. The 2-degree target isn’t a hard and fast cut-off, says NASA climate scientist Gavin Schmidt. Instead, it’s more like a speed limit. “The faster you’re going around that curve, the more dangerous it is going to be,” he told me. We may end up scraping the guardrail on our way around the mountain bend, but it’s still possible to keep the car on the road.

Newsweek, nov.2, 2015. Available at: <http://www.newsweek.com/
parisclimate-conference-success-389792>.
Access on: nov.03, 2015 [Adapted].

Read the extract from the text and then answer the question.

“We’ve been fully warned about the danger ahead, but now here we are, testing our fate.”

About the extract, it is correct to affirm that

(UEG GO/2016) 

Migrant or Refugee? There Is a Difference, With Legal Implications

In the first half of this year alone, at least 137,000 men, women and children crossed the Mediterranean Sea to reach the shores of Europe, according to the United Nations. Thousands are traveling across the Balkans now. However, are they refugee or migrants? Does it make any difference? In search for these answers, let’s read the interview.

Q. Does it matter what you call them?
A. Yes. The terms “migrant” and “refugee” are sometimes used interchangeably, but there is a crucial legal difference between the two.

Q. Who is a refugee?
A. Briefly, a refugee is a person who has fled his or her country to escape war or persecution, and can prove it.

Q. What does the distinction mean for European countries?
A. Refugees are entitled to basic protections under the 1951 convention and other international agreements. Once in Europe, refugees can apply for political asylum or another protected status, sometimes temporary. By law, refugees cannot be sent back to countries where their lives would be in danger. “One of the most fundamental principles laid down in international law is that refugees should not be expelled or returned to situations where their life and freedom would be under threat,” the refugee agency said in a statement on Thursday.

Q. Who is a migrant?
A. Anyone moving from one country to another is considered a migrant unless he or she is specifically fleeing war or persecution. Migrants may be fleeing dire poverty, or may be well-off and merely seeking better opportunities, or may be migrating to join relatives who have gone before them. There is an emerging debate about whether migrants fleeing their homes because of the effects of climate change – the desertification of the Sahel region, for example, or the sinking of coastal islands in Bangladesh – ought to be reclassified as refugees.

Q. Are migrants treated differently from refugees?
A. Countries are free to deport migrants who arrive without legal papers, which they cannot do with refugees under the 1951 convention. So it is not surprising that many politicians in Europe prefer to refer to everyone fleeing to the continent as migrants.

Disponível em: <http://www.nytimes.com/2015/08/28/world/migrants- refugees-europe-syria.html?_r=0>. Acesso em: 15 set. 2015.

Considerando os aspectos estruturais do texto, tem-se o seguinte:

(UDESC SC/2016) 

WORLD´S BEST 10 CITIES

1 For globetrotting travelers, it’s easy to recognize a spectacular city. They are energetic, 2 diverse destinations intent on preserving local heritage, revitalizing undervalued 3 neighborhoods, and they possess distinct personalities that set them apart from other 4 metropolises.

5 Whether it’s the city you’ve called home for years or one you only just stumbled upon 6 during your travels, you know that the best cities are intriguing cultural centers that can’t 7 be replicated anywhere else.

8 Kyoto, in Japan, returned for the second year in a row to the No. 1 spot on our World’s 9 Best list. Readers called it the quintessential Japanese experience, offering visitors 10 everything from history (in the form of spiritual shrines) to notable cuisine (shojin ryori) 11 and encounters with the famed Geisha dancers.

12 Some of the world’s best cities evoke the romanticism of travel, such as Italy’s classic 13 crowd-pleasers, Florence and Rome. Both have appeared on the Top 10 Overall list for 14 ten consecutive years.

15 Perhaps most evident, however, are the cities that appeared on the list despite political 16 and social turmoil. Charleston, South Carolina—the only domestic city on the overall list—17 has suffered greatly since the polls closed. And Jerusalem, the controversial capital of 18 Israel, is at the crux of an ancient and ongoing conflict. Bangkok was likely bumped from 19 the list in 2012 due to governmental unrest.

20 Because cities are, in many ways, a great convergence of people and ideas, it is 21 inevitable that conflicts will arise. So we keep these cities, and their people, in our 22 thoughts, while we celebrate their resilience and their virtues.

23 Where did your favorite city rank, and which ones should you put on your travel bucket 24 list? These are the most dynamic, beloved cities across the globe.
Available at: http://www.travelandleisure.com by Melanie Lieberman (accessed on July 23rd, 2015)

The underlined word in number 2 is a/an:

(IFGO/2015) 

Ebola crisis

West Africa is experiencing the biggest outbreak of the Ebola virus ever known, causing thousands of deaths, devastating fragile healthcare systems and damaging the economies of countries, some of which are still recovering from civil war. Infections are thought to be doubling every few weeks. The World Health Organization (WHO) says there were 13,700 officially registered cases by the end of October, almost all in Sierra Leone, Liberia and Guinea, with about 5,000 deaths, but many go unrecorded and the true figure is thought to be two to three times higher. The US Centre for Disease Control (CDC) says that if nothing changes there could be 1.4 million cases by late January.
The WHO has been criticized for not reacting fast enough to the outbreak: it took three months to diagnose the first cases, and five months more before a public health emergency was declared. The exceptional spread of the disease was probably down to a number of factors including dysfunctional health systems, high population mobility across state borders, densely populated capitals and lack of trust in authorities after years of armed conflict meaning health advice is not heeded. Fear is also a factor. People are afraid to go to hospital because they think it may be the source of infection.
Healthcare in the region was fragile before Ebola. Now there is disintegration as staff become ill or stay away for fear of the disease. Infection control and hygiene are major issues. Soap and water are unavailable in some areas. Alcohol hand rubs are needed on a large scale. Isolation facilities are vital to contain Ebola, as are labs for testing because rapid diagnosis is very important. Both are in very short supply. In some places, isolation is nothing more than an area behind a curtain. People with other diseases and women in childbirth are at risk because hospitals are no longer functioning properly.

The Guardian, Oct. 31, 2014. Available on: <http://www.
theguardian.com/world/2014/sep/25/-sp-ebola-crisisbriefing>.
Access on: Nov. 25, 2014. [Adapted]

About the first sentence of the text, it is correct to affirm that

(UNCISAL AL/2015) 

The organisers of the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro have dismissed concerns about water pollution in the bay where sailing events will be held.
Brazilian officials said recent tests show that the waters in Guanabara Bay meet international standards.

Disponível em: <http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-28632884&gt;.
Acesso em: 4 ago. 2014.

Qual o tempo verbal sublinhado no texto acima?

(ACAFE SC/2015)

Surfing event opens in Rio amid water pollution

Published by the Washington Post (the text below has been slightly modified to better suit the exam)
Many ____ the world’s top surfers were ____ Rio de Janeiro ____ a major surfing competition that kicked ____ Tuesday amid persistent worries ____ the city’s polluted waters.
Kelly Slater of the United States and Brazilian star Gabriel Medina were among those competing at the Oi Rio Pro event, which is taking place on Rio’s Barra da Tijuca beach. The Barra neighborhood is one of the main sites for competitions at next year’s Olympics.
The surfing event’s main venue is near the spot where a raw sewage-filled lagoon empties into the Atlantic. The latest water quality report, issued Tuesday by the state environmental authority, said the area was inappropriate for swimming due to the concentration of fecal coliforms.
Rio has poor sewage treatment infrastructure and much of the sewage from the city of 12 million people empties untreated into its lakes, rivers and beach areas. Of the 32 water quality reports issued this year for Rio, only 8 found water in the area appropriate for swimmers.
Biologist and environmental activist Mario Moscatelli has warned that pollution could become particularly problematic during low tides at Barra da Tijuca, when the lagoon’s fetid waters spill out into the ocean.
Winds could potentially push the sewage along the beach, contaminating the competition site, said Moscatelli, who has been flying over the area for years as part of an environmental monitoring project. Recent photos taken by Moscatelli showed a brown stain spreading over much of Barra beach.
The event’s organizer, the World Surf League, recently canceled a backup venue on the neighboring beach of São Conrado due to what the organization deemed “pollution issues”.
In a statement emailed to The Associated Press last week, World Surf League spokesman Dave Prodan said the organization was “confident that our primary site at Postinho, Barra da Tijuca, will deliver excellent conditions”.
Water quality has become a hot-button issue ahead of the 2016 Olympics, with state and local authorities repeatedly acknowledging they will not be able to fulfill a longstanding promise to clean up the city’s polluted waterways ahead of the games.
Olympic sailing, canoeing, rowing and other aquatic competitions are slated to take place in the polluted waters, prompting worries about athletes’ health and safety.
The start of the competition at the surfing event coincides with Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff’s meetings in Rio with local Olympic organizers as well as members of the Swiss-based International Olympic Committee.

Which one of the following options refers to the tense used in the statement: Water quality has become a hot-button issue?

(UDESC SC/2015)

‘Twerking’ bounces into Oxford dictionary

1 LONDON – Twerking, the rump-busting up-and-down dance move long beloved on 2 America’s hip-hop scene, has officially gone mainstream. It’s got the English dictionary 3 entry to prove it.

4 Britain’s Oxford Dictionaries said the rapid-fire gyrations employed by U.S. pop starlet 5 Miley Cyrus to bounce her way to the top of the charts had become increasingly visible 6 in the past 12 months and would be added to its publications under the entry: “Twerk, 7 verb.”

8 Although Cyrus’s eye-popping moves at Monday’s MTV Video Music Awards may have 9 been many viewers’ first introduction to the practice, Oxford Dictionaries’ Katherine 10 Connor Martin said “twerking” was some two decades old.

11 “There are many theories about the origin of this word, and since it arose in oral use, we 12 may never know the answer for sure,” Martin said. “We think the most likely theory is 13 that it is an alteration of work, because that word has a history of being used in similar 14 ways, with dancers being encouraged to ‘work it.’ The ‘t’ could be a result of blending 15 with another word such as twist or twitch.”

16 “Twerk” will be added to the dictionary as part of its quarterly update, which includes 17 words such as “selfie,” the word typically used to describe pouty smartphone self-18 portraits, “digital detox” for time spent way from Facebook and Twitter, and “Bitcoin,” for 19 the nationless electronic currency, whose gyrations have also caught the world’s eye.

20 Oxford Dictionaries is responsible for a range of reference works, including Oxford 21 Dictionaries Online, which focuses on modern usage, and the historically-focused Oxford 22 English Dictionary, which probably won’t be adding “twerk” to its venerable pages any 23 time soon.

24 The definition: “Twerk, v.: dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner 25 involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.”

By RAPHAEL SATTER Associated Press.
Accessed on: august 10th, 2014.

“increasingly” (Ref. 5), “being” (Ref. 13), “It’s got” (Ref. 2), “provocative” (Ref. 24) are consecutively:

(UESPI/2014) 

THE LOCH NESS MONSTER – BEHIND THE MYTH

A VERY OLD STORY

The first written story of the monster is in a text written in the year 565 AD by a Celtic biographer: this writer describes how a man was attacked by a monster while he was swimming in the river Ness. Perhaps the legend already existed in those days: it has certainly existed for many centuries in Scottish folklore.
However, the story of the monster was not very well-known in England for one simple reason: Loch Ness is a very long way from the rest of Britain. Until the age of the railway, very few people ever went to the Highlands of Scotland….except soldiers or officials from the cities of the Scottish Lowlands. No-one else had any reason to go there: the North of Scotland was wild and desolate, wet and generally cold, and inhabited more by sheep than by people.
The myth became big news in 1930; three men, out in a boat on the lake, said that they had seen a monster. Immediately, several other people said that they had seen one too. In 1933, a man took the first “photo” of the monster, from a distance of about 100 metres. The photo was not clear, but Kodak said that the photo was real. The most famous photo of all was taken in 1934 by a London surgeon; it seems to show a long neck and a small head sticking up out of the water. “Nessie” – if the photo is real – looks something like a dinosaur.
A lot of other photos have been taken since then, but none of them have been clear. Obviously, if there is a monster, it is a timid one! It doesn’t often come to the surface, and it never does so near the shore on a sunny afternoon in summer!
If it had done so, lots of people would have taken photos of it, and there would be no more mystery. Until now it has tried to avoid publicity…. if it exists!
In 1987, some people used sonar equipment to try to discover Nessie…. but they found…. nothing. So no-one has proved that the Loch Ness monster exists; but no-one has proved that it does not exist. It’s a great story.

Fonte: http://linguapress.com/intermediate/loch-ness-monster.htm acessado em 04/09/2014

Na frase “this writer describes how a man was attacked by a monster while he was swimming in the river Ness” o tempo verbal da construção sublinhada foi usado para

(UECE CE/2015) 

Clifford the Big Red Dog looks fabulous on an iPad. He sounds good, too — tap the screen and hear him pant as a blue truck roars into the frame. “Go, truck, go!” cheers the narrator. But does this count as story time? Or is it just screen time for babies? It is a question that parents, pediatricians and researchers are struggling to answer as children’s books, just like all the other ones, migrate to digital media.
For years, child development experts have advised parents to read to their children early and often, citing studies showing its linguistic, verbal and social benefits. In June, the American Academy of Pediatrics advised doctors to remind parents at every visit that they should read to their children from birth, prescribing books as enthusiastically as vaccines and vegetables.
On the other hand, the academy strongly recommends no screen time for children under 2, and less than two hours a day for older children.
At a time when reading increasingly means swiping pages on a device, and app stores are bursting with reading programs and learning games aimed at infants and preschoolers, which bit of guidance should parents heed?
The answer, researchers say, is not yet entirely clear. “We know how children learn to read,” said Kyle Snow, the applied research director at the National Association for the Education of Young Children. “But we don’t know how that process will be affected by digital technology.”
Part of the problem is the newness of the devices. Tablets and e-readers have not been in widespread use long enough for the sorts of extended studies that will reveal their effects on learning.
Dr. Pamela High, the pediatrician who wrote the June policy for the pediatrics group, said electronic books were intentionally not addressed. “We tried to do a strongly evidence-based policy statement on the issue of reading starting at a very young age,” she said. “And there isn’t any data, really, on e-books.”
But a handful of new studies suggest that reading to a child from an electronic device undercuts the dynamic that drives language development. “There’s a lot of interaction when you’re reading a book with your child,” Dr. High said. “You’re turning pages, pointing at pictures, talking about the story. Those things are lost somewhat when you’re using an e-book.”
In a 2013 study, researchers found that children ages 3 to 5 whose parents read to them from an electronic book had lower reading comprehension than children whose parents used traditional books. Part of the reason, they said, was that parents and children using an electronic device spent more time focusing on the device itself than on the story (a conclusion shared by at least two other studies).
“Parents were literally putting their hands over the kids’ hands and saying, ‘Wait, don’t press the button yet. Finish this up first,’ ” said Dr. Julia Parish-Morris, a developmental psychologist at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia and the lead author of the 2013 study that was conducted at Temple University. Parents who used conventional books were more likely to engage in what education researchers call “dialogic reading,” the sort of back-and-forth discussion of the story and its relation to the child’s life that research has shown are key to a child’s linguistic development.
Complicating matters is that fewer and fewer children’s e-books can strictly be described as books, say researchers. As technology evolves, publishers are adding bells and whistles that encourage detours. “What we’re really after in reading to our children is behavior that sparks a conversation,” said Kathy Hirsh-Pasek, a professor of psychology at Temple and co-author of the 2013 study. “But if that book has things that disrupt the conversation, like a game plopped right in the middle of the story, then it’s not offering you the same advantages as an old-fashioned book.”
Of course, e-book publishers and app developers point to interactivity as an educational advantage, not a distraction. Many of those bells and whistles — Clifford’s bark, the sleepy narration of “Goodnight Moon,” the appearance of the word “ham” when a child taps the ham in the Green Eggs and Ham app — help the child pick up language, they say.
There is some evidence to bear out those claims, at least in relation to other technologies. A study by the University of Wisconsin in 2013 found that 2-year-olds learned words faster with an interactive app as opposed to one that required no action.
But when it comes to learning language, researchers say, no piece of technology can substitute for a live instructor — even if the child appears to be paying close attention.
Patricia K. Kuhl, a director of the Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences at the University of Washington, led a study in 2003 that compared a group of 9-month-old babies who were addressed in Mandarin by a live instructor with a group addressed in Mandarin by an instructor on a DVD. Children in a third group were exposed only to English.
“The way the kids were staring at the screen, it seemed obvious they would learn better from the DVDs,” she said. But brain scans and language testing revealed that the DVD group “learned absolutely nothing,” Dr. Kuhl said. “Their brain measures looked just like the control group that had just been exposed to English.
The only group that learned was the live social interaction group.” In other words, “it’s being talked with, not being talked at,” that teaches children language, Dr. Hirsh-Pasek said.
Similarly, perhaps the biggest threat posed by e-books that read themselves to children, or engage them with games, is that they could lull parents into abdicating their educational responsibilities, said Mr. Snow of the National Association for the Education of Young Children.
“There’s the possibility for e-books to become the TV babysitters of this generation,” he said. “We don’t want parents to say, ‘There’s no reason for me to sit here and turn pages and tell my child how to read the word, because my iPad can do it.’ ”
But parents may find it difficult to avoid resorting to tablets. Even literacy advocates say the guidelines can be hard to follow, and that allowing limited screen time is not high on the list of parental missteps. “You might have an infant and think you’re down with the A.A.P. guidelines, and you don’t want your baby in front of a screen, but then you have a grandparent on Skype,” Mr. Snow said. “Should you really be tearing yourself apart? Maybe it’s not the world’s worst thing.”
“The issue is when you’re in the other room and Skyping with the baby cause he likes it,” he said. Even if screen time is here to stay as a part of American childhood, good old-fashioned books seem unlikely to disappear anytime soon. Parents note that there is an emotional component to paper-and-ink storybooks that, so far, does not seem to extend to their electronic counterparts, however engaging.

From: http://www.nytimes.com, OCT. 11, 2014

The tenses of the underlined verbs in “Tablets and e-readers have not been in widespread use long enough for the sorts of extended studies that will reveal their effects on learning” are

(FPS PE/2014) 

Depression in pregnancy may affect children’s mental health, study finds
Research suggests that levels of stress hormone cortisol, which are raised in depression, can influence development of foetus

By Sarah Boseley, health editor
Experts called for more help for women who are depressed in pregnancy, saying the study confirmed that the development of people’s mental health begins before birth. Photograph: Katie Collins/PA

The children of women who are depressed during their pregnancy may be more likely to succumb to depression themselves by the age of 18, according to new research.
A large study from Bristol University, published in a leading medical journal, suggests that levels of the stress hormone cortisol, which are raised in depression, may affect the development of the foetus in the womb.

Experts called for more help for women who are depressed in pregnancy, saying the study confirmed that the development of people’s mental health begins before birth. “The message is clear: helping women who are depressed in pregnancy will not only alleviate their suffering but also the suffering of the next generation,” said Carmine Pariante, professor of biological psychiatry at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry. The study also showed that postnatal depression in the mother was a risk factor for children’s depression in late adolescence, but only in mothers with low educational attainment.

The study is published in JAMA (Journal of the American Medical Association) Psychiatry. It was carried out by Rebecca Pearson, research epidemiologist at Bristol University’s school of social community medicine, and colleagues, who studied data on the mental health of more than 4,500 parents and their adolescent children involved in Alspac (Avon longitudinal study of parents and children). “The findings have important implications for the nature and timing of interventions aimed at preventing depression in the offspring of depressed mothers. In particular, the findings suggest that treating depression in pregnancy, irrespective of background, may be most effective,” the authors wrote.

Celso Arango, professor of psychiatry at the Gregorio Marañón general university hospital, Madrid, and president-elect of the European College of Neuropsychopharmacology (ECNP), said it was a significant study. He pointed out that the mental state of the father during the pregnancy had no effect on the long-term health of the child, which may implicate cortisol in the womb. “Researchers are only just beginning to realise that it is not psychiatrists, psychologists or neuroscientists that are having the biggest impact on preventing mental health issues – it is gynaecologists,” he said. “This is something that needs much more research as we have seen similar impacts in schizophrenia with increased risk in mothers that developed schizophrenia during the war and passed on an increased risk to their children.”

Source: http://www.the guardian.co.uk

In the sentence “The findings have important implications for the nature and timing of interventions aimed at preventing depression in the offspring of depressed mothers.” there are some words which end in –ing. Mark the answer that explains the proper use of –ing ending.