Questões de Inglês do ENEM

The Brazilian Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is, to English-language readers, perhaps the most obscure of world literature’s great short-story writers. Producing work between 1869 and 1908, Machado wrote nine novels and more than 200 hundred stories, more than 60 of the latter appearing after 1880. This date marks the point at which Machado metamorphosed from a writer of romantic trifles into a master of psychological realism, seemingly overnight. The Brazilian poet and critic Augusto Meyer compared the shift to the one between Herman Melville’s earlier works and Moby-Dick.

The evolutionary leap is unquestionable, although the precise reasons for it are unclear. Indeed, many uncertainties surround the biography of Machado, who was an intensely private person. Perhaps it’s no surprise that such a man should create a body of work that prizes the puzzle above the certainty. Meyer called ambiguity Machado’s most prominent theme and the translators Jake Schmitt and Lorie Ishimatsu agree, seeing it as being “in part the result of his subjective, relativistic world view, in which truth and reality, which are never absolutes, can only be approximated; no character relationships are stable, no issues are clear-cut, and the nature of everything is tenuous.” Machado writes with pleasurable clarity – he worked as a journalist for a time – but the straightforwardness of his stories is a camouflage for less obvious, more troubling cargo.

(...)

Machado’s most recent English translator, John Gledson, says the difficulty of translating him is capturing the right balance of distance, understanding and sympathy. Trapdoors to the unexpected open constantly in his work, from the sadism of “The Hidden Cause”, or the bleak violence of “Father versus Mother”, to the subtle play of what Michael Wood terms his “quiet, complicated humour”. Reading him prompts thoughts of so many different writers that he can only be unique. Poe’s chilling shadow falls across “The Hidden Cause” and “The Fortune-Teller”. “The Alienist” glitters with Swiftian satire. Machado’s shrewd, even devious work with the point of view of his narrators positions him alongside Henry James. Numerous stories anticipate the moral ambiguity of Chekhov’s mature work, in particular “A Singular Occurrence”. Machado’s literary mapping of Rio reaches back to the St Petersburg of Gogol and Dostoevsky, and anticipates the Dublin of Joyce. Finally, some of his more obviously strange works (nearly all of it is strange to some degree, which is part of its brilliance) evoke Borges and Kafka. Given all this, it’s little wonder that writer and critic Kevin Jackson would feel confident enough to claim that Machado “invented literary modernity, sui generis”.

(...)

At its most pessimistic, as at the conclusion of “Dona Paula”, all pleasure lies in a past that proves impossible to meaningfully access.

This conception of a hollow, unreal present tied to a genuine but obliterated past finds a binary in Machado’s interest in the duality of the self, and the exploration of characters whose outer and inner personae differ radically. In “The Diplomat” this idea is expressed through the description of a man’s unexpressed passion for a friend’s daughter. In “A Famous Man” a hugely successful composer of polkas is wracked by his inability to compose ‘serious’ music. But it is in an earlier treatment of this theme, 1882’s “The Mirror”, that Machado captures the phenomenon most memorably. Alone in a desolate plantation house, Jacobina, a sub-lieutenant in the National Guard, finds his reflection growing dimmer and less distinct. The only way to bring it back into focus, and thus cling to reality, is to spend a period several hours each day standing before the mirror in his uniform. Jacobina steps out of this strange, haunting story to take his place alongside Chekhov’s Dmitri Gurov and Joyce’s Gabriel Conroy, men whose fatally divided selves leave them trapped in a limbo between their public and private personae. Just as the characters belong together, so do their creators; writing about Machado in 2002 Michael Wood complained, “Everyone who reads him thinks he is a master, but who reads him, and who has heard of him?” Not nearly so many as he deserves.

Source:POWER, Chris,The Guardian, Books Blog, Posted by Chris Power on Friday 1 March 2013 15.28 GMT http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/mar/01/survey-short-story-machado (Adapted) Access November, 2014

The Brazilian Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis is, to English-language readers, perhaps the most obscure of world literature’s great short-story writers. Producing work between 1869 and 1908, Machado wrote nine novels and more than 200 hundred stories, more than 60 of the latter appearing after 1880. This date marks the point at which Machado metamorphosed from a writer of romantic trifles into a master of psychological realism, seemingly overnight. The Brazilian poet and critic Augusto Meyer compared the shift to the one between Herman Melville’s earlier works and Moby-Dick.

The evolutionary leap is unquestionable, although the precise reasons for it are unclear. Indeed, many uncertainties surround the biography of Machado, who was an intensely private person. Perhaps it’s no surprise that such a man should create a body of work that prizes the puzzle above the certainty. Meyer called ambiguity Machado’s most prominent theme and the translators Jake Schmitt and Lorie Ishimatsu agree, seeing it as being “in part the result of his subjective, relativistic world view, in which truth and reality, which are never absolutes, can only be approximated; no character relationships are stable, no issues are clear-cut, and the nature of everything is tenuous.” Machado writes with pleasurable clarity – he worked as a journalist for a time – but the straightforwardness of his stories is a camouflage for less obvious, more troubling cargo.

(...)

Machado’s most recent English translator, John Gledson, says the difficulty of translating him is capturing the right balance of distance, understanding and sympathy. Trapdoors to the unexpected open constantly in his work, from the sadism of “The Hidden Cause”, or the bleak violence of “Father versus Mother”, to the subtle play of what Michael Wood terms his “quiet, complicated humour”. Reading him prompts thoughts of so many different writers that he can only be unique. Poe’s chilling shadow falls across “The Hidden Cause” and “The Fortune-Teller”. “The Alienist” glitters with Swiftian satire. Machado’s shrewd, even devious work with the point of view of his narrators positions him alongside Henry James. Numerous stories anticipate the moral ambiguity of Chekhov’s mature work, in particular “A Singular Occurrence”. Machado’s literary mapping of Rio reaches back to the St Petersburg of Gogol and Dostoevsky, and anticipates the Dublin of Joyce. Finally, some of his more obviously strange works (nearly all of it is strange to some degree, which is part of its brilliance) evoke Borges and Kafka. Given all this, it’s little wonder that writer and critic Kevin Jackson would feel confident enough to claim that Machado “invented literary modernity, sui generis”.

(...)

At its most pessimistic, as at the conclusion of “Dona Paula”, all pleasure lies in a past that proves impossible to meaningfully access.

This conception of a hollow, unreal present tied to a genuine but obliterated past finds a binary in Machado’s interest in the duality of the self, and the exploration of characters whose outer and inner personae differ radically. In “The Diplomat” this idea is expressed through the description of a man’s unexpressed passion for a friend’s daughter. In “A Famous Man” a hugely successful composer of polkas is wracked by his inability to compose ‘serious’ music. But it is in an earlier treatment of this theme, 1882’s “The Mirror”, that Machado captures the phenomenon most memorably. Alone in a desolate plantation house, Jacobina, a sub-lieutenant in the National Guard, finds his reflection growing dimmer and less distinct. The only way to bring it back into focus, and thus cling to reality, is to spend a period several hours each day standing before the mirror in his uniform. Jacobina steps out of this strange, haunting story to take his place alongside Chekhov’s Dmitri Gurov and Joyce’s Gabriel Conroy, men whose fatally divided selves leave them trapped in a limbo between their public and private personae. Just as the characters belong together, so do their creators; writing about Machado in 2002 Michael Wood complained, “Everyone who reads him thinks he is a master, but who reads him, and who has heard of him?” Not nearly so many as he deserves.

Source:POWER, Chris,The Guardian, Books Blog, Posted by Chris Power on Friday 1 March 2013 15.28 GMT http://www.theguardian.com/books/booksblog/2013/mar/01/survey-short-story-machado (Adapted) Access November, 2014

Consider the statements given and mark the correct option, according to their grammar features:

I. In the sentence “President Lula took part in a ceremony that focused firmly on the future” the relative pronoun that can be replaced by which without changing the meaning of the sentence.

II. In the sentence “We have a chip, we have a level that can be used on frontier control, we can guarantee citizenship, and it can guarantee transactions in the virtual world” the modal verb can indicates an ability.

III. The word currently in the sentence “Currently, Brazilians have to deal with a confusing array of identity numbers” can be substituted by the word nowadays without changing the meaning of the sentence.

All these sentences represent an action that is still in progress, EXCEPT:

Consider the sentences given and mark the correct option, according to the text:

I. Children educators firstly noticed how text-tospeech softwares could benefit English Learners;

II. The introduction of personal computers in our society is considered a landmark for the use of technology in education;

III. Virtual teacher-student communication is not effective since it relies on the use of the Internet.

In the text, the verb mirrored (line 02) can be substituted by the verb:

According to the text, it's correct to say that:

Observe the excerpt from Text 01 that follows. Mark the correct alternative about the use of “where”.

Excerpt 02: “One death was reported in São Paulo state, where a young man was run over by a SUV at an intersection during a demonstration, state police said.”

An answer by the government to the people on the streets mentioned in Text 01 could be

The main idea of the text is:

Texto 2

Most people would agree that learning a second language in a natural acquisition contexto or “on the street” is not the same as learning it in the classroom. Many believe that learning “on the street” is more effective.The traditional instruction environment is one where the language is being taught to a group of second or foreign language learners. In this case, the focus is on the language itself, rather than on information which is carried by the language. The teacher´s goal is to see to it that the students learn the vocabulary and grammatical rules of the target language. The goal of learners in such courses is often to pass an examination rather than to use the language for daily communicative interaction. Communicative instruction environments also involve learners whose goal is learning the language itself, but the style of instruction places an emphasis on interaction, conversation, and language use, rather than on learning about the language. The topics which are discussed in the communicative instruction environment are often topics of general interest to the learner. In these classes, the focus is not selected on the basis of teaching a specific feature of the language, but on teaching learners to use the language in a variety of contexts. Students´ success in these courses is measured in terms of their ability to ‘get things done’ in the second language, rather than on their accuracy in using certain grammatical features.

Considere o texto abaixo para responder à questão.

    THE euro-zone's feeble recovery since the spring of 2013 came to a halt in the second quarter of 2014, when GDP stagnated. There were some bright spots. Spanish growth quickened from 0.4% in the first three months of the year to 0.6%. And both Dutch and Portuguese GDP, which had contracted in the first quarter, rebounded, with growth of 0.5% and 0.6% respectively. But the euro area was held back by poor performances in its three biggest economies. GDP fell in Germany, the biggest, and Italy, the third largest, by 0.2%; France, the second largest economy, stagnated.

(http://www.economist.com - acesso em 19/08/2014)

Considere o texto abaixo para responder à questão.

    Can Audio or Digital Books Improve Learning Outcomes?

    Children with learning disabilities (LD), like dyslexia, have trouble understanding words they read. Causes are unclear, but we now know that LD is not due to a lack of intelligence or a desire to learn.

     While dyslexia is a life-long condition, early identification, support from a parent or teacher, and access to digital or audio books and other learning materials may help your child to improve their learning outcomes and be better prepared to successfully work around their LD.

    Research now demonstrates that when children with LD are given accessible instructional materials (often referred to as AIM) — textbooks or learning materials that are delivered in audio and/or digital formats — they can excel in school and also learn to enjoy reading.

    Reading with digital (or e-books) and audio books can enrich a user's learning experience by engaging them in the content in multi-sensory ways.

Considere o primeiro parágrafo do texto. As palavras learning, like, read e desire aparecem no trecho, respectivamente, como