Questões

Instruction: Answer questions 41 to 53 based on the following text.

Why Learning Is A New Procrastination

1. The tremendous world of online courses, blogs, social media, free eBooks, podcasts, and
2. webinars provides the best ever opportunity to broaden your knowledge in almost every sphere
3. you can imagine. Thanks to technological advancement and the instant access to the internet,
4. everyone can now study from home. It seems like it would be foolishly not to seize this
5. opportunity and improve your skills and knowledge. Moreover, you are kind of forced to do so
6. since the contemporary world has raised the bar higher than ever before. It literally invited you
7. to gather the pace and ___________ even more.
8. It is not surprising that, ultimately, you try to be everywhere and do everything. No doubt,
9. you do your best to constantly gather tiny bits of information from as many channels as
10. possible, because you are afraid that you will fall behind if you stop. After all, you enter a
11. learning crunch mode. You do not afford to miss anything and try to read every book you could
12. get your hands on. You listen to every single podcast your smartphone could download and take
13. every online course your paycheck would allow to take.
14. All in all, you learn. As much as possible. As intense as you manage to. You learn how to
15. write and publish a new book. You learn how to launch a successful blog. You learn how to hit
16. your goal on Kickstarter. You learn how to build the next “unicorn”. You learn how to land a job
17. of your dream. You learn how to successfully sell thousands of items on Amazon. You learn how
18. to make millions of dollars in passive income.
19. However, the problem is that you do everything except taking action. All those activities do
20. not take you closer to the things you want to accomplish. Better knowledge does not make you
21. more influential, powerful, and successful unless you apply it. The key secret to success is not
22. ________ expertise, but the ability to use it.
23. Knowledge is worthless unless it is applied. Needless to say that studying is crucial.
24. However, the thing is that it should take the entirely new form now. You should stop learning
25. from someone else’s experiences, knowledge, failures, and wins and start learning from your
26. own mistakes, adventures, ___________, and bold actions.
27. Learning has become a major trend of the 21st century. Sadly, it has also become a new
28. form of procrastination. You consciously postpone the first step justifying this by your eagerness
29. to broaden the knowledge and learn new things. You put the start date off justifying this by
30. your desire to pick up new skills that would help you succeed faster. You procrastinate over
31. chasing your own aspirations because doing the things on your own and creating your own story
32. of success is far more complicated than reading about someone else’s one. Meanwhile, no one
33. would really reproach you for wasting your time. Also, you feel comfortable about staying within
34. this zone of ease and convenience forever.
35. However, the point is that you already have and know everything you need to start off. In
36. fact, there is nothing more you need to learn in order to take the first step. Embrace the truth.
37. No matter how good your theoretical knowledge is, you will face a lot of obstacles while
38. applying it. You will have to deal with issues that have never been described or covered in any
39. book. You will have to look for the solutions and make the spontaneous decisions that no one
40. probably has ever thought of. You will have to design your own road to success.
41. Transform your learning process from the continuous the procrastination into an
42. unstoppable process of absorbing invaluable expertise based on your own experience. It might
43. seem counterintuitive, but the old-fashioned way of learning is what holds you back. This is
44. what makes your triumphs suck.
45. Constant learning, evaluating of ideas, thinking, and visualizing your journey towards your
46. major aspirations will not take you far from the place you are now. Actions will. You can sit and
47. research, and research, and research, while someone else is already reaping huge rewards for
48. his or her fruitful and hard work. Stop learning now. Become bold enough to take the first step
49. and start learning from your own experience.

Source: https://medium.com/the-coffeelicious/why-learning-is-a-new-procrastination-104b53107e8b

Read Text | and answer questions 05 to 13.

Netflix is trying to prove to the world that it's all grown up

Netflix is trying to persuade Wall Street that it is now all grown up. After squeezing out millions of additional subscribers via its password sharing crackdown and through the introduction of cheaper advertiser-supported plans, the streamer knows that its growth spurts are coming to an end — and now it wants investors to stop obsessing over those pesky membership numbers and instead focus on other metrics.

"In our early days, when we had little revenue or profit, membership growth was a strong indicator of our future potential. But now we're generating very substantial profit and free cash flow. We are also developing new revenue streams like advertising and our extra member feature, so memberships are just one component of our growth", Netflix told shareholders as it reported quarterly earnings.

To that end, Netflix said that it will no longer report quarterly subscriber numbers, starting in 2025. Alas, the metric that Wall Street has forever judged Netflix on — the metric that prompted legacy media companies to burn endless piles of cash in their bids to compete with the streamer — will be retired. The decision to shut off transparency on the metric represents a significant turning point in the streaming revolution. For years, Netflix has prided itself on being extraordinarily transparent. Now it is aiming to hold its cards closer to its chest. And given that streaming giant is the trendsetter in the space, one could expect that other media companies will be inspired by the company's move and also opt to cease reporting such data.

To be fair, what Netflix is saying isn't necessarily off base either. As the company shifts its business model away from subscriptions and toward advertising and other revenue streams, it makes sense to consider how much time users are spending on the service. The more content a user consumes on Netflix, the more likely they are to continue paying for the service, and the more money Netflix then makes from that single subscriber. "We're focused on revenue and operating margin as our primary financial metrics — and engagement (i.e. time spent) as our best proxy for customer satisfaction,” Netflix underscored in its letter to shareholders.

Regardless, less transparency in an already opaque industry is not ideal. The walled garden of streaming already lacks the same detailed viewership data that Nielsen collects on linear television broadcasters. Now, visibility into the streaming world will get even dimmer.

The announcement from Netflix managed to overshadow its otherwise stellar quarter. The company handily beat expectations and added a staggering 9.3 million subscribers, meaning it now boasts nearly 270 million in total. Netflix also beat analyst expectations on both earnings and revenue. However, it wasn't all good news. Netflix forecasted its subscriber growth to be lower in quarter two, chalking it up to “typical seasonality.” That led the stock to slide nearly 5% in after-hours trading.

Whether "typical seasonality” is solely to blame, or whether the streamer is simply starting to hit a ceiling, is hard to tell. Perhaps it is a mix of both. Whatever the cause, the stock sliding on the less-than-ideal outlook is a prime example of why Netflix wants Wall Street to stop focusing on its subscriber numbers. And, in one year's time, investors won't have a choice.

Adapted from: https://edition.cnn.com/2024/04/19/media/netflix-subscription-numbers/index.html

Instrução: Leia o texto para responder à questão.

      I started to run because I felt desperately unfit. But the biggest pay-off for me was – and still is – the deep relaxation that I achieve by taking exercise. It tires me out but I find that it does calm me down. When I started running seven years ago, I could manage only 400 meters before I had to stop. Breathless and aching, I walked the next quarter of a mile, alternating these two activities for a couple of kilometers.

      When I started to jog I never dreamt of running in a marathon, but a few years later I realized that if I trained for it, the London Marathon, one of the biggest British sporting events, would be within my reach. My story shows that an unfit 39-year-old, as I was when I started running, who had taken no serious exercise for twenty years, can do the marathon – and that this is a sport in which women can beat men. But is it crazy to do it? Does it make sense to run in the expectation of becoming healthier?

      My advice is: if you are under forty, healthy and feel well, you can begin as I did by jogging gently until you are out of breath, then walking, and alternating the two for about three kilometers. Build up the jogging in stages until you can do the whole distance comfortably.

                                          (Headway Intermediate – Student’s Book. Oxford University Press. Adaptado.)

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

    Building on the professional consensus that no method could claim supremacy, Prabhu (1990) asks why there is no best method. He suggests that there are three possible explanations: (1) different methods are best for different teaching / learning circumstances; (2) all methods have some truth or validity; and (3) the whole notion of what is a good or a bad method is irrelevant. Prabhu argues for the third possibility and concludes that we need to rethink what is “best” such that classroom teachers and applied linguists can develop shared pedagogical perceptions of what real-world classroom teaching is.

    H.D. Brown (2002), in his critique of methods, adds the following two observations: (1) so-called designer methods seem distinctive at the initial stage of learning but soon come to look like any other learner centered approach; and (2) it has proven impossible to empirically (i.e., quantitatively) demonstrate the superiority of one method over another. Brown (2002) concludes that classroom teachers do best when they ground their pedagogy in “well-established principles of language teaching and learning” (p.17).

    So what are these well-established principles that teachers should apply in the post methods era? One of the early concrete proposals comes from Kamaravadivelu (1994), who offers a framework consisting of 10 macro strategies, some of which are summarized below:

    – Maximize learning opportunities. The teacher’s job is not to transmit knowledge but to create and manage as many learning opportunities as possible.

    – Facilitate negotiated interaction. Learners should initiate classroom talk (not just respond to the teacher’s prompts) by asking for clarification, by confirming, by reacting, and so on, as part of teacher-student and student-student interaction.

    – Activate intuitive heuristics. Teachers should provide enough data for learners to infer underlying grammatical rules, since it is impossible to explicitly teach all rules of the L2.

    – Integrate language skills. The separation of listening, reading, speaking, and writing is artificial. As in the real-world, learners should integrate skills: conversation (listening and speaking), note-taking (listening and writing), self-study (reading and writing), and so on.

    – Raise cultural consciousness. Teachers should allow learners to become sources of cultural information so that knowledge about the culture of the L2 and of other cultures (especially those represented by the students) becomes part of classroom communication.

    – Ensure social relevance: acknowledge that language learning has social, political, economic, and educational dimensions that shape the motivation to learn the L2, determine the uses to which the L2 will be put, and define the skills and proficiency level needed in the L2.

(Celce-Murcia, M. 2001. Adaptado)

INSTRUCTION: Read the following text to answer question. 

When life feels chaotic, less is more

    When the feeling of pandemonium takes over, our instinct is often to try to regain control through sweeping personal change. We’ll jump in with grand plans to overhaul our routines, transform our homes, or tackle every to-do we’ve neglected. But inevitably, when the enthusiasm fades, anxiety spirals further, or real life gets in the way, our plans fall apart.

    This cycle of starting big and stalling out leaves people feeling more discouraged than before. When we’re overwhelmed, our mental bandwidth is limited, and ambitious plans become just one more thing to manage. That’s where the magic of micro wins comes in. They might not look impressive or overtly ambitious, but they provide a sense of accomplishment, momentum (even pride?), and gradually shift our environment and mindset, especially during times of mass madness.

Source: https://time.com/7172611/little-winsbenefits-essay/

Accessed on November 13, 2024. [Adapted fragment]