(EsPCEx - 2020)
Native English speakers are the world's worst communicators
It was just one word in one email, but it caused huge financial losses for a multinational company. The message, written in English, was sent by a native speaker to a colleague for whom English was a second language. Unsure of the word, the recipient found two contradictory meanings in his dictionary. He acted on the wrong one.
Months later, senior management investigated why the project had failed, costing hundreds of thousands of dollars. "It all traced back to this one word", says Chia Suan Chong, a UK-based communications skills and intercultural trainer, who didn't reveal the tricky word because it is highly industry-specific and possibly identifiable. "Things spiralled out of control because both parties were thinking the opposite."
When such misunderstandings happen, it's usually the native speakers who are to blame. Ironically, they are worse at delivering their message than people who speak English as a second or third language, according to Chong. "A lot of native speakers are happy that English has become the world's global language. They feel they don't have to spend time learning another language."
The non-native speakers, it turns out, speak more purposefully and carefully, trying to communicate efficiently with limited, simple language, typical of someone speaking a second or third language. Anglophones, on the other hand, often talk too fast for other to follow, and use jokes, slang, abbreviations and references to their own culture, says Chong. "The native English speaker is the only one who might not feel the need to adapt to the others", she adds.
Adapted from http://www.bbc.com/capital/story/20161028-native-english-speakers-are-the-worlds-worst-communicators
About the words purposefully, carefully and efficiently (paragraph 4), it is correct to say that
they are adjectives
they are nouns
they are verbs
they are prepositions
they are adverbs
Gabarito:
they are adverbs
A) INCORRECT: não podemos dizer que essas palavras são adjetivos, porque elas não estão modificando o sentido de algum substantivo, nem caracterizando, nem especificando, mas elas dizem a respeito dos verbos, coisas que os adjetivos não fazem.
B) INCORRECT: porque essas palavras não estão nomeando seres no mundo, mas indicam o modo como determinadas ações acontecem, situação essa que não cabe aos substantivos fazerem.
C) INCORRECT: pois essas palavras não expressam ações ou estados, mas sim elas falam o modo como ações e estados ocorreram/estão. Por não indicarem tal atividade, não podem ser caracterizadas como verbos.
D) INCORRECT: pois as preposições são elementos que ligam um termo ao outro, mas, ao analisar cuidadosamente essas palavras, vemos que elas não estão ligando termos, mas sim estão indicando o modo como determinadas ações estão ocorrendo.
E) CORRECT: As palavras “purposefully”, “carefully” e “efficiently” são classificadas como advérbios. Morfologicamente, isso aparece tanto na terminação (“ly”), como na função que exercem com relação a outras palavras: modalizam os verbos “speak” e “communicate”, respectivamente.