Questões

Read the text and answer the questions.

What if there was a way to take the things you need without paying for them, and doing it in a way that supports your moral beliefs?

Welcome to the freegan movement.

Basically, the modus operandi is to buck the conventional economy and engage in minimal consumption of resources. This is done by living off of consumer waste – cast-off clothes, restaurant and supermarket trash, street finds – as the New York Times describes them, freegans are “scavengers of the developed world.”

The movement, which has been gaining strength since the mid-1990s, grew out of the antiglobalization and environmental movements. It is a way to boycott, an “economic system where the profit motive has eclipsed ethical considerations and where massively complex systems of productions ensure that all the products we buy will have detrimental impacts most of which we may never even consider,” according to freegan.info, the online hub for all things freegan.

The word freegan is a mashup of the words “free” and “vegan.” Taking the ethos of veganism a step further, freegans go beyond advocating for animals and stand against the industrial economy in general, seeing at its core the abuse of humans, animals and the environment.

Of all the strategies practiced by freegans, the movement probably garners the most attention for the act of dumpster diving; rummaging through garbage in pursuit of usable items. Few places are off-limits – retailers, offices, restaurants, schools, supermarkets, and any other facility that throws out useful items is game.

Freegans, however, aren’t solely dependent on urban scavenging. There is a growing network of places where people can give away, take, share and trade items, like Freecycle and the free section of Craigslist. In addition, there are events like, "Really, Really, Free Markets" and “Freemeets.” In these meet-ups, rather than tossing perfectly good stuff into the waste stream, people can bring the thing they no longer want and share it instead.

Perhaps the best things in life are free, after all.

(Adapted text from: https://www.mnn.com/lifestyle/responsibleliving/stories/what-is-the-freegan-movement)

Instruction: Answer questions 31 to 40 based on the following text.

Memory hacks to make you smarter

1. No matter how smart you think you are, the chances are that you sometimes fail to make
2. the most of your memory. A series of surveys have shown most students fail to use proven
3. methods of learning _________, instead wasting their time on ineffective methods. One of the
4. problems is that we often receive a lot of conflicting information from parents, teachers, and
5. scientists, so that we are unsure what works and what doesn’t. Fortunately, a new paper,
6. published in one of the top psychology journals, has examined the biggest misconceptions, with
7. a list of the most popular study strategies, the potential pitfalls, and the ways that they can use
8. them more effectively.
9. Strategy 1: Rereading: Learning new vocabulary? The most common strategy is to read
10. the words and their meanings until they stick. Unfortunately, psychologists believe that it is too
11. passive, meaning that most of the information fails to leave an impression.
12. Memory hack: Space your reading: Passive rereading is probably the least effective
13. study method, but it may sometimes feel inevitable if you feel like you lack a basic understanding
14. of the concepts. You can make better use of those sessions, however, by ensuring that you return
15. to the material at regular intervals. You might read a chapter, move on to something else, and
16. then re-read it after an hour, a day, or a week to help stimulate the memory. You can also benefit
17. from questioning your understanding before you return to the material, which helps tune your
18. attention on the bits you do and don’t know and increases your mental engagement.
19. Strategy 2: Underlining and highlighting: Like rereading, this study technique is nearly
20. ubiquitous. The idea makes sense: the process of underlining key words and phrases should help
21. you to engage more with the information, and it makes it easier to identify the most important
22. passages later on. Although it can be more effective than passive rereading, underlining and
23. highlighting often fail to work, with most students __________ marking up almost every
24. paragraph without much discernment.
25. Memory hack: Pause to think: Instead, the scientists suggest that you read the text
26. once through cold, and then mark up the relevant passages on the second pass. By forcing you
27. to think more carefully about each point and its relative importance in the overall argument, this
28. encourages the more active processing that is essential for the formation of stronger memories.
29. Strategy 3: Note-taking. Visit any lecture theatre or library and you will find students
30. ________ copying the most important facts into their notebooks. Like underlining and
31. highlighting, the problems come when you fail to be judicious about the material you are
32. including. Your overenthusiasm – and propensity to include everything that is mentioned – can
33. easily become a vice.
34. Memory hack: Be concise. Experiments have shown that the fewer words students use
35. to express an idea in their notes, the more likely they are to remember it afterwards. This is
36. probably because creating summaries and paraphrasing force you to think deeply about the nub
37. of the idea you are trying to express – and that additional effort cements it in your memory.
38. These findings may also explain why it is better to take notes with a pen and paper, rather than
39. using a laptop: writing by hand is slower than typing and forces you to be more concise in what
40. you note down.

(Source: http://www.bbc.com/future/story/20180904-five-memory-hacks-to-make-you-smarter - Adapted)

Text for the questions from 28 to 37.

A Musical Genius

1 Beethoven is one of the most influential figures in

the history of classical music. His exceptional talent was

already evident when he was still a young man, trying to

4 survive a rather unorthodox upbringing. Indeed, his

eccentric father would often make him study music in the

middle of the night.

7 Soon, the young Beethoven's ability won him the

admiration of the leading contemporary musical figures.

However, just at the point when he was beginning to reap

10 the rewards of his early endeavors, he realized that he was

becoming deaf. Beethoven felt devastated as it was clear to

him that his increasing deafness was incurable. And yet, he

13 kept composing and his music displayed a striking change in

style, becoming both heavier in tone and larger in scale.

Internet: <www.flo‐joe.co.uk> (adapted).

Read the text below and answer the questions that follow.

Text

Should schools just say no to pupils using phones?

14th July 2024

Natalie Grice – BBC News

“I wouldn’t say it’s a good thing for a child never to have a smartphone. I think it’s part of a balanced life. You’ve got to live in your own time.”

These are not the words you might expect to hear from a teacher at a school that has never in its history allowed pupils under sixth form age to use a mobile phone on the premises.

But Sarah Owen, deputy head at Stanwell School in Penarth, Vale of Glamorgan, was simply expressing a personal opinion, rather than the school’s view about a young person’s wider life.

It is clear that she and the school have very firm opinions on what is best for children while they are on school grounds.

For Stanwell pupils in years 7 to 11, that has always meant no phones. Not in lessons, not in the corridor, not at breaktimes.

It is such a long-established rule that it presumably comes as no surprise to pupils and parents when they join the school, which is starting to seem as if it may have been ahead of a growing curve.

In the past few years, a number of schools across Wales and further afield have introduced total bans on mobiles. While Stanwell only asks pupils to keep phones switched off in their bags, others require the devices to be handed in at the start of the day.

Llanidloes High School in Powys is one which has implemented this policy in the past few years and Ysgol Penrhyn Dewi in St Davids, Pembrokeshire, followed suit at the start of this year.

Sarah Owen has been at Stanwell School since 2000 and says that there has always been a no phone policy in the school. For Sarah, it is a question not of trying to impinge on their students’ freedom, but of giving them vital time away from mobile life, for welfare as well as educational reasons.

“We genuinely believe this is in their best interests,” she said. “Phone addiction and screen addiction and scrolling, the loss of concentration, the loss of soft skills around listening and interacting with others, that’s something we need to be concerned about as a society generally.”

“We want children to be interacting with each other, having conversations, playing football, having those connections and interactions with other people.”

Sarah also believes it gives pupils relief from the possibility of being “photographed, filmed, mocked in some way – that’s not a nice way for children to live”. She said she wanted her pupils to have “some sanctuary from the anxiety of feeling so scrutinised and looked at”. 

Adapted from: https://www.bbc.com/news/articles

Read text III and answer questions 60 to 70:

Text III

The use of music and songs in the EFL classroom

There are quite a lot of positive sides of learning English via

the medium music. First of all it is a very positive way of

learning English. Music is a part of our everyday life and

especially young people are very familiar with music. If the

5 teacher provides the possibility of a positive access to a new

topic, the kids will learn the new things easier and with more

fun and readiness. I am sure that the one or the other pupil

turns out to be a little “music-expert”. This can strengthen the

self-consciousness of students who are not so good at other

10 areas because now they have the opportunity to show what

they know about a special artist or band. Another pro of

teaching language by using songs and music is that it is

something different for the students – it is an alternation to

the common methods of language learning, because it is not

15 only interested in input. Learning with music speaks more than

other language-learning-methods to the audio-channel of the

learner, which has the positive effect of training listening and

comprehending language which is modified in terms of

intonation, pronunciation and articulation. Music in the

20 classroom can also be arranged in corporation with teachers of

other subjects, so that kids have the opportunity to use and

practise the new knowledge in more than one subject.

Teachers of English could not only work together with teachers

of music, but also with teachers of German, religion, ethics and

25 history. There is a variety of different thematic blocks which

can be taught with the help of songs, for example cultural or

social studies, to name only two areas.

However, using music and songs as a method of language

teaching can also have negative effects. Not every student likes

30 singing, acting or working with music and songs. Some find it

embarrassing and childish, especially older students. If the

majority of a class consists of students who feel like that about

working with music and songs in the classroom, the teacher

should be aware of the problem that it will be hard to motivate

35 the pupils. It can also be that some pupils protest and even

refuse to do several activities given by the teacher. […] Another

problem for teachers is the question of the right choice of

songs. Nowadays the kids are crazy about music which is called

“Death Metal”, “Hip Hop” or “Acid House”. So, many teachers

40 think that it is hard to fill the pupils of today with enthusiasm

by using Oldies.

Despite the fact that there are more positive effects of

learning a second language with songs and music than negative

ones, most teachers look at this method with mixed emotions.

45 Some are of the opinion that this is no real teaching and a

waste of time with some senseless activities. This is not true, of

course. Out of my own pupil-experience I can say that I have

learned quite a lot with the help of songs. I have acquired not

only a plenty of new words and vocabulary, but also several

50 idioms and many ways to express feelings.

(From http://www.grin.com/en/e-book/122444/the-use-of-music-and-songs-in-theefl-classroom)