Questões de Inglês - Grammar

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Black authors shake up Brazil's literary scene

    Itamar Vieira Junior, whose day job working for the
Brazilian government on land reform took him deep into the
impoverished countryside, knew next to nothing about the
mainstream publishing industry when he put the final touches
on a novel he had been writing on and off for decades. On a
whim, in April 2018, he sent the manuscript for Torto Arado,
which means crooked plow, to a literary contest in Portugal,
wondering what the jury would make of the hardscrabble tale
of two sisters in a rural district in northeastern Brazil where the
legacy of slavery remains palpable.

    To his astonishment, Torto Arado won the 2018 LeYa
award, a major Portuguese-language literary prize focused
on discovering new voices. The recognition jump-started
Mr. Vieira's career, making him a leading voice among the
Black authors who have jolted Brazil's literary establishment
in recent years with imaginative and searing works that have
found commercial success and critical acclaim.

    Torto Arado was the best-selling book in Brazil in 2021,
with more than 300,000 copies sold to date. The previous
year, that distinction went to Djamila Ribeiro's A Little
Anti-Racist Handbook (Pequeno Manual Antirracista), a
succinct and plainly written dissection of systemic racism
in Brazil.

    Mr. Vieira, a geographer, and Ms. Ribeiro, who studied
philosophy, are part of a generation of Black Brazilians who
became the first in their families to get a college degree,
taking advantage of Federal Government programs. Mr. Vieira
managed to use his day job at Brazil's land reform agency,
where he has worked since 2006, to do field research. He
studied the politics and power dynamics that shape the
lives of rural workers, including some who toil in conditions
analogous to modern-day slavery. That experience, he said,
made the characters in his novel more layered and their
fictional hometown, Água Negra, which means black water,
feel authentic.

    The two authors are among the highest profile figures
of a literary boom that includes Black contemporary writers
and authors who are experiencing a revival. The clearest
example is Carolina Maria de Jesus, who died in 1977 and
whose memoir, Child of the Dark (Quarto de Despejo), is now
a literary sensation, as it was when it was published in 1960.
The book, a compilation of diary entries by Ms. Jesus, a single
mother of three, offers a raw account of daily life in a São
Paulo slum where dwellers picked through garbage for food
and slept in shacks patched together with slabs of cardboard.

(Ernesto Londofio. www.nytimes.com, 12.02.2022. Adaptado.)

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Can Germans’ right to switch off survive contemporary times?

    The lights were all out, the corridors were deserted. Only one computer was still working at the German Freiburg’s Institute for Advanced Studies. Newly-arrived American academic Kristen Ghodsee was working late in her office. Then there was a knock at the door, and in came the institute’s director. “He wanted to know if there was something wrong,” remembers Ghodsee. She replied she was fine, but the director looked at his watch and shook his head. It was 17:30. What seemed perfectly normal to the American, working after hours, was inconceivable to the German. After all, it was Feierabend, a German term which refers both to the end of the working day and the act of turning off from work entirely.
    But then along came the smartphone, destabilizing the delicate German work-life balance. Suddenly, phones were in every pocket, laptops in every bag. All at once, everyone had access to work communication outside the office, on the go and at home. It wasn’t long before the digital revolution was invading Germans’ sacred rest time. By 2015, more than a quarter of employees said bosses wanted them to be contactable at all hours, a national survey revealed. This despite a 2003 law stating workers’ 11-hour break couldn’t be interrupted.
    It seems many employees agree the idea of an uninterrupted break is too rigid. Last year, 96% of workers interviewed by Germany’s digital association Bitkom said they would like to organise their own work schedule to fit around their lives. But those responsible for employee protection are worried. “A lot of the shortening of rest periods is happening because people are working such long hours, not because they are working flexibly,” says research associate Nils Backhaus.
    The 11-hour rest period is also there to protect workers from themselves. Originally intended to make sure factory workers could recover physically between shifts, Backhaus says the break is just as necessary for mental regeneration. “Worker protection is just as needed in our new world of digitalisation, home office and smartphones”, says David Markworth.

(Josie Le Blond. www.bbc.com, 24.02.2020. Adaptado.)

TEXT

The end of life on Earth?

    It weighted about 10,000 tons, entered the
atmosphere at a speed of 64,000 km/h and exploded
over a city with a blast of 500 kilotons. But on 15
February 2013, we were lucky. The metereorite that
[05] showered pieces of rock over Chelyabinsk, Russia, was
relatively small, at only about 17 metres wide. Although
many people were injured by falling glass, the damage
was nothing compared to what had happened in Siberia
nearly one hundred years ago, when a relatively small
[10] object (approximately 50 metres in diameter) exploded in
mid-air over a forest region, flattening about 80 million
trees. If it had exploded over a city such as Moscow or
London, millions of people would have been killed. 

    By a strange coincidence, the same day that the
[15] meteorite terrified the people of Chelyabinsk, another
50m-wide asteroid passed relatively close to Earth.
Scientists were expecting that visit and know that the
asteroid will return to fly close by us in 2046, but the
Russian meteorite earlier in the day had been too small
[20] for anyone to spot.

    Most scientists agree that comets and asteroids
pose the biggest natural threat to human existence. It
was probably a large asteroid or comet colliding with
Earth which wiped out the dinosaurs about 65 million
[25] years ago. An enormous object, 10 to 16 km in diameter,
struck the Yucatan region in Mexico with the force of 100
megatons. That is the equivalent of one Hiroshima bomb
for every person alive on Earth today

    Many scientists, including the late Stephen
[30] Hawking, say that any comet or asteroid greater than
20km in diameter that hits Earth will result in the
complete destruction of complex life, including all
animals and most plants. As we have seen even a much
smaller asteroid can cause great damage.

 [35]   The Earth has been kept fairly safe for the last 65
million years by good fortune and the massive
gravitational field of the planet Jupiter. Our cosmic
guardian, with its stable circular orbit far from the sun,
sweeps up and scatters away most of the dangerous
[40]comets and asteroids which might cross Earth’s orbit. 

    After the Chelyabinsk meteorite, scientists are now
monitoring potential hazards even more carefully but, as
far as they know, there is no danger in the foreseeable
future.

 [45]   Types of space rocks

    • Comet – a ball of rock and ice that sends out a
tail of gas and dust behind it. Bright comets only appear
in our visible night sky about once every ten years. 

    • Asteroid – a rock a few feet to several kms in
[50] diameter. Unlike comets, asteroids have no tail. Most
are to small to cause any damage and burn up in the
atmosphere.

    • Meteoroid – part of an asteroid or comet.
    • Meteorite – what a meteoroid is called when it
[55] hits Earth.

Taken from: http://learningenglishteens.britishcouncil.org - Access on 29/06/2020

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    RUBIÃO found a rival in the heart of Quincas Borba, - a dog, a beautiful dog, half size, lead-colored fur, spotted black. Quincas Borba took it everywhere they slept in the same room. In the morning, it was the dog that woke him up, in bed, where they exchanged their first greetings. One of the owner's extravagances was giving it his own name; but, he explained it for two reasons, one doctrinal, another particular (...).

    - You should laugh, my dear. Because immortality is my lot or my dowry, or as best name there is. I will live perpetually in my book. Those who, however, do not can read, charlatan Quincas Borba to the dog, and ...

    The dog, hearing the name, ran to the bed. Quincas Borba, touched, looked at Quincas Borba.

    - My poor friend! my good friend! my only friend!

    - Unique!

    - Excuse me, you are too, I know, and I thank you very much; but to a sick person everything is forgiven. Perhaps my delusion is beginning. Let me see the mirror.

Trecho traduzido a partir de: http://www.dominiopublico.gov.br/download/texto/b v000243.pdf. Acesso em: 15 dez. 2020.

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Cindy is a very clever girl. She is twelve years old and she has got an older brother and a baby sister. She goes to school in the morning and she helps her father in his office in the afternoon. In the evening, she studies the flute with a private teacher. She loves classical music; she listens to music all day long and, on Friday night, she plays the flute in a gospel band. Her brother doesn’t like to listen to music, but he loves playing video games. He plays video games all night long. He doesn’t help his family at home neither in his father’s office. But, he studies Computer Science at a very good university and he wants to be a video game designer. His father always tells him that it is necessary to study a lot achieve his goals.