(EsPCEx - 2019)
Leia o texto a seguir e responda às questões 54, 55 e 56.
Teaching English in the Brazilian countryside
“In Brazil, countryside youth want to learn about new places, new cultures and people. However, they think their everyday lives are an obstacle to that, because they imagine that country life has nothing to do with other parts of the world”, says Rafael Fonseca. Rafael teaches English in a language school in a cooperative coffee cultivation in Paraguaçu. His learners are the children of rural workers.
Rafael tells us that the objective of the project being developed in the cooperative is to give the young people more opportunities of growth in the countryside, and that includes the ability to communicate with international buyers. “In the future, our project may help overcome the lack of succession in countryside activities, because nowadays, field workers’ children become lawyers, engineers, teachers, and sometimes even doctors, but very rarely those children want to have a profession related to rural work”, says Rafael.
“That happens”, he adds, “because their parents understand that life in the countryside can be hard work and they do not want to see their children running the same type of life that they have. Their children also believe that life in the country does not allow them to have contact with other parts of the world, meet other people and improve cultural bounds. The program intends to show them that by means of a second language they can travel, communicate with new people and meet new cultures as a means of promoting and selling what they produce in the country, and that includes receiving visitors in their workplace from abroad.”
Rafael’s strategy is to contextualize the English language and keep learners up-to-date with what happens in the global market. “Integrating relevant topics about countryside living can be transformative in the classroom. The local regional and cultural aspects are a great source of inspiration and learning not only for learners, but also for us all.”
Adapted from: https://www.cambridge.org/elt/blog/2019/01/21/teaching-english-in-the-brazilian-classroom
Choose the alternative with the correct reference for the underlined words from the text.
they (paragraph 1) = countryside youth.
his (paragraph 1) = Paraguaçu.
us (paragraph 2) = workers.
their (paragraph 3) = rural workers' children.
them (paragraph 3) = other parts of the world.
Gabarito:
they (paragraph 1) = countryside youth.
A) CORRECT: sabemos que “they” se refere corretamente a “countryside youth” pela função que cada um desses termos exerce nas suas respectivas sentenças. Na primeira, “countryside youth” está agindo como um sujeito (por estar praticando a ação de “querer”), enquanto na segundo o “they” faz o mesmo. Além disso, outro fator que faz essa conexão ser possível é o fato de countryside youth ter a ideia de pluralidade dentro de si (quando se fala em juventude, pensa-se em mais de uma pessoa), o que permite que seja utilizado o “they” para referenciá-lo.
B) INCORRECT: pois o uso de “his” não faz referência a “Paraguaçu”, que seria “it”, por se tratar de um local, mas sim faz referência aos alunos de Rafael, os quais foram citados anteriormente.
C) INCORRECT: pois o “us” não é usado para se referenciar aos trabalhadores, mas, na sua primeira ocorrência em “Rafael tells us”, o pronome foi utilizado para fazer referência às pessoas que estão entrevistando o Rafael.
D) INCORRECT: seria uma alternativa quase correta, no entanto não há evidências de que o termo fala, especificamente, se os pais que se queixam são apenas os trabalhadores rurais ou se somente estão no interior.
E) INCORRECT: pois o “them” não é usado para se referir a outras partes do mundo, mas como a própria sentença inicia, é usado para se referenciar os filhos daqueles pais. Tanto que é dito “Their children” e logo em seguida é colocado o “them”, fazendo uma referência imediata a eles.