FUVEST 2013

Questão 3253

(UEMG - 2013)

The Birth of a Storyteller

Jackie Torrence spent her childhood in North Carolina, in the southern part of the United States. She was a shy child because she had problems with her teeth, which made it hard for her to talk. Other children teased her because of her speech problem, so she spent much of her childhood playing alone. One of Jackie’s favorite games was to pretend she was on television. She told stories out loud using gestures and dramatic voices. At school, Jackie soon learned that she was good at writing stories, and with the help of her favorite teacher, she started to work on improving her speech.

Jackie’s first storytelling performance was in a library. She was working as a librarian and was asked to entertain a group of children. Jackie told them a story and they loved it! Before long, she began telling stories within her community. Many of her stories came from old American and African-American folktales. Eventually, she started telling stories across North America.

As Jackie’s fame increased, her health decreased. She now has to use a wheelchair, but this has not stopped her storytelling career. Jackie’s stories have been published in books, magazines, and newspapers and she has appeared on radio and television. She has won awards for nine of her sound recordings and three of her television specials.

Adapted from NorthStar 3: Listening and Speaking, 2nd Edition (Longman, p. 57), Helen S. Solórzano and Jennifer P. L. Schmidt.

In the sentence, “She has won awards for nine of her sound recordings and three of her television specials”, the underlined expression shows that  

Questão 3274

(UEG - 2013)

De acordo com o anúncio,

Questão 3276

(UDESC - 2013)

English as an international language

About one hundred years ago many educated people ⁴learned and spoke French when they ⁵met people from other countries. Today most people speak English when they meet foreigners. It has become the new international language. There are more people who speak English as a second language than people who speak English as a first language. Why is this?
There are many reasons why English has become so popular. One of them is that English has become the language of business. Another important reason is that popular American culture (like movies, music, and McDonald's) has quickly spread throughout the world. It has ⁶brought its language with it.
Is it good that English has spread to all parts of the world so quickly? I don't know. It's important to have a language that the people of the earth have in common. Our world has become very global and we need to communicate with one another. ²On the other hand, English is a fairly complicated language to learn and it brings ³its culture with it. Do we really need that? 
Scientists have already ⁷tried to create an artificial language that isn't too difficult and doesn't include any one group's culture. It is called Esperanto. But it hasn't become popular. But maybe the popularity of English won't last that long either. Who knows? There are more people in the world ¹who speak Chinese than any other language. Maybe someday Chinese will be the new international language.

www.5minuteenglish.com
Accessed on June 19th
 

The infinitive of the verbs: “learned” (ref. 4), “met” (ref. 5), “brought” (ref. 6), “tried” (ref. 7), is consecutively:

Questão 3296

(UFG - 2013)

The following poem presents a different version of the popular song “California Dreamin'” by The Mammas and The Papas (1965).

California Steamin'

By Clinton VanInman – Contributing Poet
 

All the tress are brown
And the sky is gray
I've been for a walk
On a greenhouse day.

I should be safe and sound now
If I was miles from L.A.
California steamin'
On such a sweltering day.

Stopped into a church
I stumbled along the way
Got down on my knees
And prayed for a rainy day.

You know the preacher likes it cold
Now that all his candles have melted away,
California steamin'
Please don't take my fan away.

Disponível em: <http://cafe.cynicmag.com/>. Acesso em: 20 set. 2012.

Glossário:

steamin': fumegante

sweltering: abafado

stumbled: cambaleei 

“I should be safe and sound now/ If I was miles from L.A.” means that the poet

Questão 3391

(PUC-Rio - 2013 Verão)

Why are we so curious?

Cooking is something we all take for granted but a new theory suggests that if we had not learned to cook food, not only would we still look like chimps but, like them, we would also be compelled to spend most [5] of the day chewing.

I hate to disappoint you, but whatever your ambitions, whatever your long-term goals, I’m pretty sure that reading this column isn’t going to further them. It won’t stop you feeling hungry. It won’t provide [10] any information that might save your life. It’s unlikely to make you attractive to the opposite sex.

And yet if I were to say that I will teach you a valuable lesson about your inner child, I hope you will want to carry on reading, driven by nothing more than [15] your curiosity to find out a little more. What could be going on in your brain to make you so inquisitive?

We humans have a deeply curious nature, and more often than not it is about the minor tittletattle in our lives. Our curiosity has us doing utterly [20] unproductive things like reading news about people we will never meet, learning topics we will never have use for, or exploring places we will never come back to. We just love to know the answers to things, even if there’s no obvious benefit.

[25] From the perspective of evolution this appears to be something of a mystery. We associate evolution with ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ traits that support the essentials of day-to-day survival and reproduction. So why did we evolve to waste so much time? Shouldn’t [30] evolution have selected for a species which was – you know – a bit more focussed?

Child’s play

The roots of our peculiar curiosity can be linked to a trait of the human species called neoteny. [35] This is a term from evolutionary theory that means the “retention of juvenile characteristics”. It means that as a species we are more child-like than other mammals. Being relatively hairless is one physical example. A large brain relative to body size is another. [40] Our lifelong curiosity and playfulness is a behavioural characteristic of neoteny.

Neoteny is a short-cut taken by evolution – a route that brings about a whole bundle of changes in one go, rather than selecting for them one by one. [45] Evolution, by making us a more juvenile species, has made us weaker than our primate cousins, but it has also given us our child’s curiosity, our capacity to learn and our deep sense of attachment to each other.

And of course the lifelong capacity to learn is [50] the reason why neoteny has worked so well for our species. Our extended childhood means we can absorb so much more from our environment, including our shared culture. Even in adulthood we can pick up new ways of doing things and new ways of thinking, [55] allowing us to adapt to new circumstances.

Exploration bonus

In the world of artificial intelligence, computer scientists have explored how behaviour evolves when guided by different learning algorithms. An important [60] result is that even the best learning algorithms fall down if they are not encouraged to explore a little. Without a little something to distract them from what they should be doing, these algorithms get stuck in a rut, relying on the same responses time and time [65] again.

Computer scientists have learnt to adjust how these algorithms rate different possible actions with an ‘exploration bonus’ – that is, a reward just for trying something new. Weighted like this, the algorithms then [70] occasionally leave the beaten track to explore. These exploratory actions cost them some opportunities, but leave them better off in the long run because they’ve gained knowledge about what they might do, even if it didn’t benefit them immediately.

[75] The implication for the evolution of our own brain is clear. Curiosity is nature’s built-in exploration bonus. We’re evolved to leave the beaten track, to try things out, to get distracted and generally look like we’re wasting time. Maybe we are wasting time [80] today, but the learning algorithms in our brain know that something we learnt by chance today will come in useful tomorrow.

Obviously it would be best if we knew what we needed to know, and just concentrated on that. [85] Fortunately, in a complex world it is impossible to know what might be useful in the future. And thank goodness – otherwise we would have evolved to be a deadly-boring species which never wanted to get lost, never tried things to just see what happened or did [90] things for the hell of it.

Evolution made us the ultimate learning machines, and the ultimate learning machines need a healthy dash of curiosity to help us take full advantage of this learning capacity.

[95] Or, as Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

NEUROHACKS 19 June 2012
Why are we so curious?
Tom Stafford .
Retrieved on July 28, 2012.

*os números entre colchetes indicam o número das linhas do texto original.

In lines 91-94, the author states that “Evolution made us the ultimate learning machines, and the ultimate learning machines need a healthy dash of curiosity to help us take full advantage of this learning capacity”, which means that 

Questão 3392

(PUC-Rio - 2013 Verão)

Why are we so curious?

Cooking is something we all take for granted but a new theory suggests that if we had not learned to cook food, not only would we still look like chimps but, like them, we would also be compelled to spend most [5] of the day chewing.

I hate to disappoint you, but whatever your ambitions, whatever your long-term goals, I’m pretty sure that reading this column isn’t going to further them. It won’t stop you feeling hungry. It won’t provide [10] any information that might save your life. It’s unlikely to make you attractive to the opposite sex.

And yet if I were to say that I will teach you a valuable lesson about your inner child, I hope you will want to carry on reading, driven by nothing more than [15] your curiosity to find out a little more. What could be going on in your brain to make you so inquisitive?

We humans have a deeply curious nature, and more often than not it is about the minor tittletattle in our lives. Our curiosity has us doing utterly [20] unproductive things like reading news about people we will never meet, learning topics we will never have use for, or exploring places we will never come back to. We just love to know the answers to things, even if there’s no obvious benefit.

[25] From the perspective of evolution this appears to be something of a mystery. We associate evolution with ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ traits that support the essentials of day-to-day survival and reproduction. So why did we evolve to waste so much time? Shouldn’t [30] evolution have selected for a species which was – you know – a bit more focussed?

Child’s play

The roots of our peculiar curiosity can be linked to a trait of the human species called neoteny. [35] This is a term from evolutionary theory that means the “retention of juvenile characteristics”. It means that as a species we are more child-like than other mammals. Being relatively hairless is one physical example. A large brain relative to body size is another. [40] Our lifelong curiosity and playfulness is a behavioural characteristic of neoteny.

Neoteny is a short-cut taken by evolution – a route that brings about a whole bundle of changes in one go, rather than selecting for them one by one. [45] Evolution, by making us a more juvenile species, has made us weaker than our primate cousins, but it has also given us our child’s curiosity, our capacity to learn and our deep sense of attachment to each other.

And of course the lifelong capacity to learn is [50] the reason why neoteny has worked so well for our species. Our extended childhood means we can absorb so much more from our environment, including our shared culture. Even in adulthood we can pick up new ways of doing things and new ways of thinking, [55] allowing us to adapt to new circumstances.

Exploration bonus

In the world of artificial intelligence, computer scientists have explored how behaviour evolves when guided by different learning algorithms. An important [60] result is that even the best learning algorithms fall down if they are not encouraged to explore a little. Without a little something to distract them from what they should be doing, these algorithms get stuck in a rut, relying on the same responses time and time [65] again.

Computer scientists have learnt to adjust how these algorithms rate different possible actions with an ‘exploration bonus’ – that is, a reward just for trying something new. Weighted like this, the algorithms then [70] occasionally leave the beaten track to explore. These exploratory actions cost them some opportunities, but leave them better off in the long run because they’ve gained knowledge about what they might do, even if it didn’t benefit them immediately.

[75] The implication for the evolution of our own brain is clear. Curiosity is nature’s built-in exploration bonus. We’re evolved to leave the beaten track, to try things out, to get distracted and generally look like we’re wasting time. Maybe we are wasting time [80] today, but the learning algorithms in our brain know that something we learnt by chance today will come in useful tomorrow.

Obviously it would be best if we knew what we needed to know, and just concentrated on that. [85] Fortunately, in a complex world it is impossible to know what might be useful in the future. And thank goodness – otherwise we would have evolved to be a deadly-boring species which never wanted to get lost, never tried things to just see what happened or did [90] things for the hell of it.

Evolution made us the ultimate learning machines, and the ultimate learning machines need a healthy dash of curiosity to help us take full advantage of this learning capacity.

[95] Or, as Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

NEUROHACKS 19 June 2012
Why are we so curious?
Tom Stafford .
Retrieved on July 28, 2012.

*os números entre colchetes indicam o número das linhas do texto original.

The main purpose of the text is

Questão 3393

(PUC-Rio - 2013 Verão)

Why are we so curious?

Cooking is something we all take for granted but a new theory suggests that if we had not learned to cook food, not only would we still look like chimps but, like them, we would also be compelled to spend most [5] of the day chewing.

I hate to disappoint you, but whatever your ambitions, whatever your long-term goals, I’m pretty sure that reading this column isn’t going to further them. It won’t stop you feeling hungry. It won’t provide [10] any information that might save your life. It’s unlikely to make you attractive to the opposite sex.

And yet if I were to say that I will teach you a valuable lesson about your inner child, I hope you will want to carry on reading, driven by nothing more than [15] your curiosity to find out a little more. What could be going on in your brain to make you so inquisitive?

We humans have a deeply curious nature, and more often than not it is about the minor tittletattle in our lives. Our curiosity has us doing utterly [20] unproductive things like reading news about people we will never meet, learning topics we will never have use for, or exploring places we will never come back to. We just love to know the answers to things, even if there’s no obvious benefit.

[25] From the perspective of evolution this appears to be something of a mystery. We associate evolution with ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ traits that support the essentials of day-to-day survival and reproduction. So why did we evolve to waste so much time? Shouldn’t [30] evolution have selected for a species which was – you know – a bit more focussed?

Child’s play

The roots of our peculiar curiosity can be linked to a trait of the human species called neoteny. [35] This is a term from evolutionary theory that means the “retention of juvenile characteristics”. It means that as a species we are more child-like than other mammals. Being relatively hairless is one physical example. A large brain relative to body size is another. [40] Our lifelong curiosity and playfulness is a behavioural characteristic of neoteny.

Neoteny is a short-cut taken by evolution – a route that brings about a whole bundle of changes in one go, rather than selecting for them one by one. [45] Evolution, by making us a more juvenile species, has made us weaker than our primate cousins, but it has also given us our child’s curiosity, our capacity to learn and our deep sense of attachment to each other.

And of course the lifelong capacity to learn is [50] the reason why neoteny has worked so well for our species. Our extended childhood means we can absorb so much more from our environment, including our shared culture. Even in adulthood we can pick up new ways of doing things and new ways of thinking, [55] allowing us to adapt to new circumstances.

Exploration bonus

In the world of artificial intelligence, computer scientists have explored how behaviour evolves when guided by different learning algorithms. An important [60] result is that even the best learning algorithms fall down if they are not encouraged to explore a little. Without a little something to distract them from what they should be doing, these algorithms get stuck in a rut, relying on the same responses time and time [65] again.

Computer scientists have learnt to adjust how these algorithms rate different possible actions with an ‘exploration bonus’ – that is, a reward just for trying something new. Weighted like this, the algorithms then [70] occasionally leave the beaten track to explore. These exploratory actions cost them some opportunities, but leave them better off in the long run because they’ve gained knowledge about what they might do, even if it didn’t benefit them immediately.

[75] The implication for the evolution of our own brain is clear. Curiosity is nature’s built-in exploration bonus. We’re evolved to leave the beaten track, to try things out, to get distracted and generally look like we’re wasting time. Maybe we are wasting time [80] today, but the learning algorithms in our brain know that something we learnt by chance today will come in useful tomorrow.

Obviously it would be best if we knew what we needed to know, and just concentrated on that. [85] Fortunately, in a complex world it is impossible to know what might be useful in the future. And thank goodness – otherwise we would have evolved to be a deadly-boring species which never wanted to get lost, never tried things to just see what happened or did [90] things for the hell of it.

Evolution made us the ultimate learning machines, and the ultimate learning machines need a healthy dash of curiosity to help us take full advantage of this learning capacity.

[95] Or, as Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

NEUROHACKS 19 June 2012
Why are we so curious?
Tom Stafford .
Retrieved on July 28, 2012.

*os números entre colchetes indicam o número das linhas do texto original.

The author defines “neoteny” as (l. 42)

Questão 3394

(PUC-Rio - 2013 Verão)

Why are we so curious?

Cooking is something we all take for granted but a new theory suggests that if we had not learned to cook food, not only would we still look like chimps but, like them, we would also be compelled to spend most [5] of the day chewing.

I hate to disappoint you, but whatever your ambitions, whatever your long-term goals, I’m pretty sure that reading this column isn’t going to further them. It won’t stop you feeling hungry. It won’t provide [10] any information that might save your life. It’s unlikely to make you attractive to the opposite sex.

And yet if I were to say that I will teach you a valuable lesson about your inner child, I hope you will want to carry on reading, driven by nothing more than [15] your curiosity to find out a little more. What could be going on in your brain to make you so inquisitive?

We humans have a deeply curious nature, and more often than not it is about the minor tittletattle in our lives. Our curiosity has us doing utterly [20] unproductive things like reading news about people we will never meet, learning topics we will never have use for, or exploring places we will never come back to. We just love to know the answers to things, even if there’s no obvious benefit.

[25] From the perspective of evolution this appears to be something of a mystery. We associate evolution with ‘survival-of-the-fittest’ traits that support the essentials of day-to-day survival and reproduction. So why did we evolve to waste so much time? Shouldn’t [30] evolution have selected for a species which was – you know – a bit more focussed?

Child’s play

The roots of our peculiar curiosity can be linked to a trait of the human species called neoteny. [35] This is a term from evolutionary theory that means the “retention of juvenile characteristics”. It means that as a species we are more child-like than other mammals. Being relatively hairless is one physical example. A large brain relative to body size is another. [40] Our lifelong curiosity and playfulness is a behavioural characteristic of neoteny.

Neoteny is a short-cut taken by evolution – a route that brings about a whole bundle of changes in one go, rather than selecting for them one by one. [45] Evolution, by making us a more juvenile species, has made us weaker than our primate cousins, but it has also given us our child’s curiosity, our capacity to learn and our deep sense of attachment to each other.

And of course the lifelong capacity to learn is [50] the reason why neoteny has worked so well for our species. Our extended childhood means we can absorb so much more from our environment, including our shared culture. Even in adulthood we can pick up new ways of doing things and new ways of thinking, [55] allowing us to adapt to new circumstances.

Exploration bonus

In the world of artificial intelligence, computer scientists have explored how behaviour evolves when guided by different learning algorithms. An important [60] result is that even the best learning algorithms fall down if they are not encouraged to explore a little. Without a little something to distract them from what they should be doing, these algorithms get stuck in a rut, relying on the same responses time and time [65] again.

Computer scientists have learnt to adjust how these algorithms rate different possible actions with an ‘exploration bonus’ – that is, a reward just for trying something new. Weighted like this, the algorithms then [70] occasionally leave the beaten track to explore. These exploratory actions cost them some opportunities, but leave them better off in the long run because they’ve gained knowledge about what they might do, even if it didn’t benefit them immediately.

[75] The implication for the evolution of our own brain is clear. Curiosity is nature’s built-in exploration bonus. We’re evolved to leave the beaten track, to try things out, to get distracted and generally look like we’re wasting time. Maybe we are wasting time [80] today, but the learning algorithms in our brain know that something we learnt by chance today will come in useful tomorrow.

Obviously it would be best if we knew what we needed to know, and just concentrated on that. [85] Fortunately, in a complex world it is impossible to know what might be useful in the future. And thank goodness – otherwise we would have evolved to be a deadly-boring species which never wanted to get lost, never tried things to just see what happened or did [90] things for the hell of it.

Evolution made us the ultimate learning machines, and the ultimate learning machines need a healthy dash of curiosity to help us take full advantage of this learning capacity.

[95] Or, as Kurt Vonnegut said, “We are here on Earth to fart around. Don’t let anybody tell you any different.”

NEUROHACKS 19 June 2012
Why are we so curious?
Tom Stafford .
Retrieved on July 28, 2012.

*os números entre colchetes indicam o número das linhas do texto original.

For the author, the kind of exploratory learning that humans do (l. 62-79)

Questão 3417

(UPE - 2013)

Texto 1

Texto 2

No texto 1, 2º quadrinho, qual expressão interrogativa completa CORRETAMENTE a pergunta?           

Questão 3446

(UNESP - 2013/2 - 1a fase)

Brazil wants to count trees in the Amazon rainforest
  By Channtal Fleischfresser
     February 11, 2013

Brazil is home to roughly 60 percent of the Amazon, about half of what remains of the world’s tropical rainforests. And now, the country has plans to count its trees. A vast undertaking, the new National Forest Inventory hopes to gain “a broad panorama of the quality and the conditions in the forest cover”, according to Brazil’s Forestry Minister Antonio Carlos Hummel.
The census, set to take place over the next four years, will scour 3,288,000 square miles, sampling 20,000 points at 20 kilometer intervals and registering the number, height, diameter, and species of the trees, among other data.
The initiative, aimed to better allocate resources to the country’s forests, is part of a large-scale turnaround in Brazil’s relationship to its forests. While it once had one of the worst rates of deforestation in the world, last year only 1,797 square miles of the Amazon were destroyed – a reduction of nearly 80% compared to 2004.

(www.smartplanet.com. Adaptado.)

No trecho do primeiro parágrafo – Brazil is home to roughly 60 percent of the Amazon –, a palavra roughly equivale, em português, a: