Questões de Inglês - Reading/Writing

THE FLAT EARTH CRUISE: SERIOUSLY, PEOPLE?

Organizers of an annual conference that brings together people who believe that our planet is not
round are planning a cruise to the supposed edge of the Earth. They’re looking for the ice wall that
holds back the oceans.
The journey will take place in 2020, the Flat Earth International Conference (FEIC) recently
[5] announced on its website. The goal? To test so-called flat-Earthers’ assertion that the Earth is a
flattened disk surrounded at its edge by a towering wall of ice.
Details about the event, including the dates, are forthcoming, according to the FEIC, which calls
the cruise “the biggest, boldest adventure yet”. However, it’s worth noting that nautical maps and
navigation technologies such as global positioning systems (GPS) work as they do because the
[10] Earth is … a globe.
Believers in a flat Earth argue that images showing a curved horizon are fake and that photos of a
round Earth from space are part of a vast conspiracy perpetrated by NASA and other space agencies
to hide Earth’s flatness. “This likely began during the cold war”, the Flat Earth Society (FES) says.
“The U.S.S.R. and U.S.A. were obsessed with beating each other into space to the point that each
[15] faked their accomplishments in an attempt to keep pace with the other’s supposed achievements.”
These and other flat-Earth assertions appear on the website of the FES, allegedly the world’s oldest
official flat Earth organization, dating to the early 1800s.
However, the ancient Greeks demonstrated that Earth was a sphere more than 2.000 years ago,
and the gravity that keeps everything on the planet from flying off into space could exist only on a
[20] spherical world.
But in diagrams shared on the FES website, the planet appears as a pancake-like disk with the
North Pole smacked in the center and an edge “surrounded on all sides by an ice wall that holds
the oceans back”. This ice wall – thought by some flat-Earthers to be Antarctica – is the destination
of the promised FEIC cruise.
[25] There’s just one catch: navigational charts and systems that guide cruise ships and other vessels
around the Earth’s oceans are all based on the principle of a round Earth, says Henk Keijer, a
former cruise ship captain with 23 years of experience.
GPS relies on a network of dozens of satellites orbiting thousands of miles above Earth; signals
from the satellites beam down to the receiver inside of a GPS device, and at least three satellites are
[30] required to pinpoint a precise position because of Earth’s curvature, Keijer explained. “Had the
Earth been flat, a total of three satellites would have been enough to provide this information to
everyone on Earth”. He adds: “But it is not enough, because the Earth is round”.
Whether or not, the FEIC cruise will rely on GPS or deploy an entirely new flat-Earth-based
navigation system for finding the end of the world remains to be seen.

Adaptado de livescience.com, 30/05/2017.

Text

What do nationalists believe in? (Part III)

    Nationalists' primary belief is that people in similar societies benefit when they are united by shared values and a common belief system.

    "Uniting people -- whether under flags, banners, anthems, or constitutions -- is conducive to a more robust civic society and stronger communities," Kassam said.

    But Miller dismisses that as an "incoherent" ideology. "No one has ever been able to agree on what defines the nation. It is impractical because there is no feasible way to make governments overlap exactly with all the supposed nations in the world today," Miller said.

    Nationalists are also populists and consider themselves sticking up for the common, working man against the elites and so-called globalists. There are voters in both US political parties receptive to that kind of messaging, and that's why the fiery populist rhetoric of Bernie Sanders and Trump during the 2016 campaign ended up appealing to overlapping groups of voters.

    Nationalists are also extremely protectionist, preferring to look inward when it comes to matters of foreign affairs and trade. Trump's political positions have shifted all of his life, but the one constant has been his distrust of international trade agreements and his belief that they're ultimately bad for the United States.

    "We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs," Trump said during his inaugural speech in January 2017. "Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength."

    This type of thinking is typical of nationalists.

From: shorturl.at/kmOR1 Accessed on 08/28/2019

Text

What do nationalists believe in? (Part III)

    Nationalists' primary belief is that people in similar societies benefit when they are united by shared values and a common belief system.

    "Uniting people -- whether under flags, banners, anthems, or constitutions -- is conducive to a more robust civic society and stronger communities," Kassam said.

    But Miller dismisses that as an "incoherent" ideology. "No one has ever been able to agree on what defines the nation. It is impractical because there is no feasible way to make governments overlap exactly with all the supposed nations in the world today," Miller said.

    Nationalists are also populists and consider themselves sticking up for the common, working man against the elites and so-called globalists. There are voters in both US political parties receptive to that kind of messaging, and that's why the fiery populist rhetoric of Bernie Sanders and Trump during the 2016 campaign ended up appealing to overlapping groups of voters.

    Nationalists are also extremely protectionist, preferring to look inward when it comes to matters of foreign affairs and trade. Trump's political positions have shifted all of his life, but the one constant has been his distrust of international trade agreements and his belief that they're ultimately bad for the United States.

    "We must protect our borders from the ravages of other countries making our products, stealing our companies and destroying our jobs," Trump said during his inaugural speech in January 2017. "Protection will lead to great prosperity and strength."

    This type of thinking is typical of nationalists.

From: shorturl.at/kmOR1 Accessed on 08/28/2019

O texto a seguir é referência para a questão.

More Than Just Children’s Books

Krumulus, a small bookstore in Germany, has everything a kid could want: parties, readings, concerts, plays, puppet shows, workshops and book clubs.

“I knew it was going to be very difficult to open a bookstore, everyone tells you you’re crazy, there will be no future,” says Anna Morlinghaus, Krumulus’s founder. Still, she wanted to try. A month before her third son was born, she opened the store in Berlin’s Kreuzberg district.

BERLIN — On a recent Saturday afternoon, a hush fell in the bright, airy “reading-aloud” room at Krumulus, a small children’s bookstore in Berlin, as Sven Wallrodt, one of the store’s employees, stood up to speak. Brandishing a newly published illustrated children’s book about the life of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press, he looked at the crowd of eager, mostly school-aged children and their parents. “Welcome to this book presentation”, he said. “If you fall asleep, snore quietly”. Everyone laughed, but no one fell asleep. An hour later, the children followed Wallrodt down to the bookstore’s basement workshop, where he showed them how Gutenberg fit leaden block letters into a metal plate. Then the children printed their own bookmark using a technique similar to Gutenberg’s, everyone was thrilled.

(Disponível em: https://www.nytimes.com/2019/05/20/books/berlin-germany-krumulus.html)

Directions: Answer question according to the text.

TEXT
 

WHAT IS MODERN SLAVERY?

    Slavery did not end with abolition in the 19th
century. Slavery continues today and harms people in
every country in the world.
    Women forced into prostitution. People forced to
[5] work in agriculture, domestic work and factories.
Children in sweatshops¹ producing goods sold globally.
Entire families forced to work for nothing to pay off
generational debts. Girls forced to marry older men.
    There are estimated 40.3 million people in modern
[10] slavery around the world, including:
    • 10 million children
    • 24.9 million people in forced labour
    • 15.4 million people in forced marriage
    • 4.8 million people in forced sexual exploitation
[15] Someone is in slavery if they are:
    • forced to work – through coercion, or mental or
physical threat;
    • owned or controlled by an ’employer’, through
mental or physical abuse or the threat of abuse;
[20]     • dehumanised, treated as a commodity or bought
and sold as ‘property’;
    • physically constrained or have restrictions placed
on their freedom of movement.
Slavery has been a disgraceful aspect of human
[25] society for most of human history. However, Anti-
Slavery International has refused to accept that this
bloody status quo should be allowed to persist (Aidan
McQuade, former director).
    Forms of modern slavery
[30]     Purposes of exploitation² can range from forced
prostitution and forced labour to forced marriage and
forced organ removal. Here are the most common
forms of modern slavery.
    • Forced labour – any work or services which people
[35] are forced to do against their will³ under the threat
of some form of punishment.
    • Debt bondage or bonded labour – the world’s most
widespread form of slavery, when people borrow
money they cannot repay and are required to work
[40] to pay off the debt, then losing control over the
conditions of both their employment and the debt.
    • Human trafficking– involves transporting, recruiting
or harbouring people for the purpose of exploitation,
using violence, threats or coercion.
[45]    • Descent-based slavery – where people are born
into slavery because their ancestors were captured
and enslaved; they remain in slavery by descent.
    • Child slavery – many people often confuse child
slavery with child labour, but it is much worse.
[50] Whilst⁴ child labour is harmful for children and
hinders⁵ their education and development, child
slavery occurs when a child is exploited for
someone else’s gain. It can include child trafficking,
child soldiers, child marriage and child domestic
[55] slavery.
    • Forced and early marriage – when someone is
married against their will and cannot leave the
marriage. Most child marriages can be considered
slavery.
[60]     Many forms of slavery have more than one element
listed above. For example, human trafficking often
involves advance payment for travel and a job abroad,
using money often borrowed from the traffickers. Then,
the debt contributes to control of the victims. Once they
[65] arrive, victims cannot leave until they pay off their debt.
    Many people think that slavery happens only
overseas, in developing countries. In fact, no country is
free from modern slavery, even Britain. The

Government estimates that there are tens of thousands
[70] people in modern slavery in the UK.
    Modern slavery can affect people of any age,
gender or race. However, contrary to a common
misconception⁶ that everyone can be a victim of
slavery, some groups of people are much more
[75] vulnerable to slavery than others.
    People who live in poverty⁷ and have limited
opportunities for decent work are more vulnerable to
accepting deceptive job offers that can turn exploitative.
People who are discriminated against on the basis of
[80] race, caste, or gender are also more likely to be
enslaved. Slavery is also more likely to occur where the
rule of law is weaker and corruption is rife.
Anti-Slavery International believes that we have to
tackle⁸ the root causes of slavery in order to end
[85] slavery for good. That’s why we published our Anti-
Slavery Charter, listing comprehensive measures that
need to be taken to end slavery across the world.

(Adapted from https://www.antislavery.org/slavery-today/modern-slavery/)

Glossary:
1. sweatshop – a factory where workers are paid very little and work many hours in very bad conditions
2. exploitation – abuse, manipulation
3. will – wish, desire
4. whilst – while
5. to hinder – obstruct, stop
6. misconception – wrong idea/ impression
7. poverty – the condition of being extremely poor
8. to tackle – attack