UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA PARAIBA LÍNGUA INGLESA

CENTRO DE CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS, LETRAS E ARTES

DEPARTAMENTO DE LETRAS ESTRANGEIRAS MODERNAS
PROVA DE PROFICIÊNCIA 2013

PROVA DE PROFICIÊNCIA EM LÍNGUA INGLESA Data:

13 de julho de 2013.

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 1 UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA PARAIBA
2 PROVA DE PROFICIÊNCIA 2013
3 CENTRO DE CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS, LETRAS E ARTES
LÍNGUA INGLESA
4 DEPARTAMENTO DE LETRAS ESTRANGEIRAS MODERNAS
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6
7 New Guidelines Call for Broad Changes in Science Education
8 By Justin Gillis
9
10 Educators unveiled new guidelines on Tuesday that call for sweeping changes in the way science is taught
11 in the United States — including, for the first time, a recommendation that climate change be taught as
12 early as middle school.
13 The guidelines also take a firm stand that children must learn about evolution, the central organizing idea
14 in the biological sciences for more than a century, but one that still provokes a backlash among some
15 religious conservatives.
16 The guidelines, known as the Next Generation Science Standards, are the first broad national
17 recommendations for science instruction since 1996. They were developed by a consortium of 26 state
18 governments and several groups representing scientists and teachers. States are not required to adopt
19 them, but 26 states have committed to seriously considering the guidelines. They include Arizona,
20 Arkansas, California, Iowa, Kansas and New York. Other states could also adopt the standards.
21 Educators involved in drawing them up said the guidelines were intended to combat widespread
22 scientific ignorance, to standardize teaching among states, and to raise the number of high school
23 graduates who choose scientific and technical majors in college, a critical issue for the country’s economic
24 future.
25 The focus would be helping students become more intelligent science consumers by learning how
26 scientific work is done: how ideas are developed and tested, what counts as strong or weak evidence, and
27 how insights from many disciplines fit together into a coherent picture of the world.
28 Leaders of the effort said that teachers may well wind up covering fewer subjects, but digging more deeply
29 into the ones they do cover. In some cases, traditional classes like biology and chemistry may disappear
30 entirely from high schools, replaced by courses that use a case-study method to teach science in a more
31 holistic way.
32 In many respects, the standards are meant to do for science what a separate set of guidelines known as
33 the Common Core is supposed to do for English and mathematics: impose and raise standards, with a
34 focus on critical thinking and primary investigation. To date, 45 states and Washington have adopted the
35 Common Core standards.
36 “This is a huge deal,” said David L. Evans, the executive director of the National Science Teachers
37 Association. “We depend on science in so many aspects of our lives. There’s a strong feeling that we need
38 to help people understand the nature of science itself, as an intellectual pursuit.”
39 The climate and evolution standards are just two aspects of a set of guidelines containing hundreds of
40 new ideas on how to teach science. But they have already drawn hostile commentary from conservative
41 groups critical of mainstream scientific thinking.
42 For instance, as the standards were being drafted, a group called Citizens for Objective Public Education,
43 which lists officers in Florida and Kansas, distributed a nine-page letter attacking them. It warned that
44 the standards ignored evidence against evolution, promoted “secular humanism,” and threatened to “take
45 away the right of parents to direct the religious education of their children.”
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48 UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA PARAIBA
49 PROVA DE PROFICIÊNCIA 2013
50 CENTRO DE CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS, LETRAS E ARTES
LÍNGUA INGLESA
51 DEPARTAMENTO DE LETRAS ESTRANGEIRAS MODERNAS
52
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54 In many states, extensive scientific instruction does not begin until high school. The guidelines call for
55 injecting far more science into the middle grades, with climate change being one among many topics. In
56 high school, students would learn in more detail about the human role in generating emissions that are
57 altering the planetary climate.
58 While thousands of schools in the United States already teach climate change to some degree, they are
59 usually doing it voluntarily, and often in environmental studies classes. In many more schools, the subject
60 does not come up because students are not offered those specialized courses, and state guidelines
61 typically do not require that the issue be raised in traditional biology or chemistry classes.
62 Advocates of climate literacy hailed the new standards, saying they could fill a critical gap in public
63 awareness. “Quite simply, students have a right to know about climate science and solutions,” said Sarah
64 Shanley Hope, the executive director of the Alliance for Climate Education, which offers one-day programs
65 in schools.
66 Many states are expected to adopt the guidelines over the next year or two, but it could be several years
67 before the guidelines are translated into detailed curriculum documents, teachers are trained in the
68 material and standardized tests are revised. And all of this has to happen at a time when state education
69 departments and many local schools are under severe financial strain. Inevitably, educators said, some
70 states will do it better than others. (…)
71 Outlining how the standards might change science classrooms, educators said they foresaw more use of
72 real-world examples, like taking students to a farm or fish hatchery — perhaps repeatedly, over the
73 course of years — to help them learn principles from biology, chemistry and physics.
74 Educators want to introduce students to topics that can be made comprehensible only by drawing on the
75 ideas and methods of many scientific disciplines, one of the reasons climate change and other largescale
76 environmental problems are seen as holding so much potential in the classroom.
77 Some teachers are already ahead of the curve. Judith Luber-Narod, a high-school science teacher at the
78 Abby Kelley Foster Charter Public School in Worcester, Mass., has incorporated climate change into her
79 environmental studies classes, even though she teaches in a somewhat conservative area. “I hesitated a
80 little bit talking about something controversial,” she said. “But then I thought, how can you teach the
81 environment without talking about it?”
82 Her students, on the other hand, love topics some deem controversial, she said. She devised an experiment
83 in which she set up two terrariums with thermometers and then increased the level of carbon dioxide,
84 the main greenhouse gas, in one of them. The students watched as that terrarium got several degrees
85 hotter than the other. “I say to them, ‘I’m here to show you the evidence,’ ” she said. “ ‘If you want to
86 believe the evidence when we’re done, that’s up to you.’”
87 http://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/10/science/panel-calls-for-broad-changes-in-science-education.html?src=un
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 UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA PARAIBA
CENTRO DE CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS, LETRAS E ARTES
DEPARTAMENTO DE LETRAS ESTRANGEIRAS
MODERNAS

PROVA DE PROFICIÊNCIA 2013

 LÍNGUA INGLESA

1. According to the text, the new guidelines require that the teaching of science in the U.S. should a)
be swept off the school curriculum.
b) focus on how to change the climate at schools.
c) undergo major changes.
d) be unveiled to educators.
e) be recommended for its superior quality.

2. The expression take a firm stand (line 4) is closest in meaning to: a)

adopt a strong position
b) imagine a powerful theory
c) suggest an incredible belief
d) organize a mighty opinion
e) provoke a solid backlash

3. The guidelines argue that teaching evolution to children is important because

a) it will help organize the ideas of some religious conservative groups.
b) it is an important theory in the field of organized ideas.
c) it is the most important organizing concept in the biological sciences.
d) it will provoke a backlash among some religious conservative groups.
e) it will help children evolve biologically.

4. Identify three correct objectives of the new guidelines for science instruction. I.
To fight against scientific ignorance.
II. To expose those who are against the Next Generation Science Standards.
III. To help students understand how scientific research is done.
IV. To challenge religious doctrines.
V. To motivate future college students to choose scientific and technical courses.
The correct statements are: a)
I, IV, V.
b) II, III, V.
c) I, III, IV.
d) II, IV, V.
e) I, III, V.

5. The pronoun This (line 27) refers to:

a) the Common Core standards.
b) the Next Generation Science Standards.
c) critical thinking and primary investigation.
d) English and mathematics.
e) impose and raise standards.

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 UNIVERSIDADE FEDERAL DA PARAIBA
CENTRO DE CIÊNCIAS HUMANAS, LETRAS E ARTES
DEPARTAMENTO DE LETRAS ESTRANGEIRAS
MODERNAS PROVA DE PROFICIÊNCIA 2013
LÍNGUA INGLESA
6. The Citizens for Objective Public Education claim that the new guidelines
a) should enlist officers in Florida and Kansas.
b) represent a threat to the teaching of evolution.
c) are against secular reasoning.
d) are likely to interfere with the students’ religious education.
e) should teach controversial topics only.

7. The term hailed (line 45) is closest in meaning to: a)

signed.
b) confirmed.
c) explained.
d) discussed.
e) celebrated.

8. According to the text, the adoption of the new guidelines

a) is expected to be translated into documents within the next year or two.
b) has already forced state education departments to standardize their tests.
c) is compelling schools to devise programs to train teachers in the material.
d) has to happen when education departments and many schools are under economic pressure.
e) will inevitably prove that some states should create their own guidelines.

9. Climate change and other large-scale environmental problems are seen as holding so much potential
in the classroom because
a) science classroom might change the standards.
b) such topics will prevent students from learning principles from biology, chemistry and physics.
c) teachers will be able to use the ideas and methods of many scientific disciplines in order to make
students understand such problems.
d) teachers will be forced to devise experiments to make those issues comprehensible.
e) all students like topics which are considered polemical.

10. Based on the text, identify the true (T) and false (F) statements regarding Judith Luber-Narod:
( ) She is an educator who works in a slightly conservative American region.
( ) She has already started teaching her students about climate change.
( ) She was initially unsure whether she should teach about climate change.
( ) She carried out two experiments in order to demonstrate the benefits of the greenhouse effect.
( ) She claims that her students believe the effects of climate change once she provided them with evidence. The
correct sequence is:
a) T-F-F-T-F
b) T-T-F-F-F
c) T-F-T-F-F
d) F-T-T-F-T
e) T-T-T-F-F