AULA 5 - LÍNGUA INGLESA

Attention:
The answers are in bold and the explanation will be in blue right below the question.

Let’s start with a brief explanation. Mostly plural are easy.

 A singular noun ending in a consonant and then y makes the plural by dropping the y
and adding-ies. Example: butterfly – butterflies
 A singular noun ending in s, x, z, ch, sh makes the plural by adding-es. Example: bus –
buses / brush – brushes
 If the -ch ending is pronounced with a 'k' then add -s (stomach - stomachs)
 Words ending in f or fe change to ves: knife - knives, life - lives, wife - wives, shelf –
shelves
 Nouns which end in two vowels plus -f usually form plurals in the normal way, with just
an -s: roof - roofs, proof - proofs, chief – chiefs
 most nouns ending in -o add -s to make the plural: solo-solos / zero – zeros
 Those which have a vowel before the final -o always just add -s: studio-studios / zoo-
zoos
 Here are some of the common nouns ending in -o that can be spelled with either -s or -
es in the plural: banjos or banjoes / cargos or cargoes
 Foreign nouns: with Latin, Greek, French, Italian words there are usually two types of
plural, but in articles, academic papers the foreign plural is more used. Examples:
antenna – antennae – antennas /appendix -appendices-appendixes / alumnus – alumni
/ crisis- crises / chateau -chateaux-chateaus / espresso -espressi-espressos

Past tense
To talk about past, hypothesis, conditions, wishes and for politeness
To talk about repetitions in the past, we can use would.
There are 4 different types of past: past simple, past continuous, past perfect and past perfect
continuous

PART 1. GRAMMAR
QUESTION 1. “A ______________ of attacks at railway stations ______________ a new threat
to security”. [The Economist, 10/10/2014]
A. serie/pose
B. serie/poses
C. series/poses
D. series/pose
Series can be used in plural or in singular.

QUESTION 2. “Several states have banned the use of race as ______________ admission to their
public institutions and there have been several lawsuits against affirmative action.” [The
Economist, 03/10/2015]
A. a criterion to
B. a criterion for
C. a criteria of
D. criteria in
Criteria is plural and criterion singular.

QUESTION 3. “On the Middle East's state-controlled channels, the news ____ turgid. Dour
anchormen mumble monotonously about the exhibit of watercolours on military themes
opened by the defence minister. Controversial topics, whether domestic or international, are
given one-sided treatment or else ignored.” [The Economist, 17/09/1998]
A. is
B. are
News is always singular because it is an uncountable noun.
Turgid = very complicated, unclear.

QUESTION 4. “Nobody can know how 2013 will change the world—if at all. In 1989 the Soviet
empire teetered and fell. But Marx’s belief that 1848 was the first wave of a proletarian
revolution was confounded by decades of flourishing capitalism and 1968, which felt so
pleasurably radical at the time, did more to change sex than politics. Even now, though, the
inchoate significance of 2013 is discernible. And for politicians who want to peddle the same old
stuff, the news ____ not good.” [The Economist, 29/06/2013]
A. is
B. are
Teetered = to vacillate
Inchoate = something that is not fully developed
Peddle = try to sell something

QUESTION 5. “In India there are about 280m cows. They produce valuable things—milk, dung
and calves. But cattle ___ expensive to keep. The biggest outlay is food—the average cow
consumes fodder worth about 10,000 rupees ($160) a year. Veterinary costs also add up.” [The
Economist, 03/10/2013]
A. is
B. are
Dung = excrement
Cattle is always plural, police is also always plural

QUESTION 6. “About a third of Oaxaca’s labour force works in farming, many using ____ instead
of tractors to plough the milpas, few within commuting distance of the few well-paying
factories.” [The Economist, 19/09/2015]
A. ox
B. oxen
C. oxes

QUESTION 7. “That long-run average offers a better guide to the future. It may be smaller than
the present gap, but it will still have a big impact on welfare spending. It has arisen for two main
reasons. First and foremost, the two _________ use different averaging __________ when
calculating price changes for each individual item. Overall, this “formula effect” contributes half
a percentage point to the gap between the two.” [The Economist, 14/10/2010]
A. indices/formulae
B. indexes/formulas
But in economics we tend to use the Latin plural

QUESTION 10. “If Ms [Rebecca] Friedrichs opposes seniority-based pay or supports school
vouchers—positions that are anathema to her union—she is free to develop these views in
myriad public _______ in her capacity as a citizen. She is not silenced.” [The Economist,
07/01/2016]
A. forums
B. fora
Anathema = opposition
Both options are possible but fora is more used in articles.

QUESTION 11. “When a team surveying forests near the Vietnam-Laos border stumbled on the
remains of what became known as the saola in 1992, it was the first large mammal to be newly
discovered by Western researchers in over 50 years. Unfortunately, the World Wide Fund for
Nature, a conservation outfit, has warned recently, the _________ is already on the brink of
extinction.” [The Economist, 24/05/2012]
A. specie
B. species
It is plural and singular

QUESTION 12. “America’s indifference towards the IMF and World Bank, institutions it created
to govern the system and over which it has _________, reflects power through neglect.” [The
Economist, 03/10/2015]
A. vetos
B. vetoes

QUESTION 13. “Brazil is no stranger to _________. Following the end of two decades of military
rule in 1985, the first directly elected president, Fernando Collor, was impeached in 1992. After
a “lost decade” of stagnation and hyperinflation ended in the mid-1990s the economy was
knocked sideways by the emerging-markets turmoil of 1997-98. In the mid-2000s politics was
beset by the scandal of a bribes-for-votes scheme known as the mensalão (“big monthly”, for
the size and schedule of the payments), which eventually saw Lula’s chief of staff jailed in 2013.”
[The Economist, 02/01/2016]
A. crisis
B. crises

QUESTION 14. “Newspapers have become the least popular _________ people use to keep up
to date with news and current affairs, according to new research from Ofcom.” [The Guardian,
16/12/2015]
A. media
B. medium
Media is plural and medium is singular

QUESTION 15. “No such efforts look likely to yield anything like the commodities boom and
hyperglobalisation of the turn of the century. In the absence of such ________, history suggests
that catch-up will be a long, difficult grind, built on slow improvement in institutions and worker
skill levels.” [The Economist, 13/09/2014]
A. stimulus
B. stimuli
Latin plural

QUESTION 16. “As part of the EU, Britain has trade agreements in place with more than 50
countries. New agreements cannot start being negotiated until two years after Article 50 is
triggered (the legal _______ by which a country leaves the union).” [The Economist, 12/10/2016]
A. mean
B. means

QUESTION 17. “London Business School's quarterly magazine carries an excerpt from a
forthcoming book by Kenichi Ohmae, a former McKinsey consultant who became famous for
such works as “The Mind of the Strategist”. Here, Mr Ohmae plunges without preamble into
descriptions of promising business regions, future ‘____________ of prosperity’.” [The
Economist, 28/02/2005]
A. focuses
B. foci
Both exists, but the Latin plural is more used in articles.

QUESTION 18. “Population data ___ different: in addition to the figures provided by local
officials, China conducts a census every ten years, revising population data all the way down to
the village level.” [The Economist, 26/03/2016]
A. is
B. are

QUESTION 19. “In the 20th century’s early decades, though, it became apparent that light waves
sometimes behave like particles, and particles sometimes behave like waves. This “wave-particle
duality” is one of the ________ of quantum mechanics, and is described, mathematically, by
what is known as a wave function.” [The Economist, 15/08/2015]
A. basis
B. bases
Basis is singular and bases is plural

PAST TENSES.
QUESTION 20. The Minister was to leave (BE + LEAVE) this week, but the President changed his
mind about the structural reform. [HINT: see the difference between “be + to-infinitive” and
“was/were + to + perfect infinitive”]
Be + to infinitive is used for official arrangements, official orders, things that should be done.
was/were + to-infinitive in the past: something was supposed to happen but it didn’t happen.
Example: The Minister was to leave but the President changed his mind.

QUESTION 21. “[Jeffrey] Sachs and [David] Lipton worked through the night, and by dawn have
completed (COMPLETE) a fifteen-page brief with a specific chronology of policy reforms. ‘It was
the first time, I believe, that anyone had written down a comprehensive plan for the
transformation of a socialist economy to a market economy, ‘ Sachs recounts. [The New Yorker,
11/04/2015]

QUESTION 22. “Paul Klee liked to work on several paintings at once. He would spend (it is a
repeated action) [SPEND] hours wandering between the easels (cavalete) in his studio, adding
paint here, dabbing watercolour there, coaxing new worlds from flat canvasses. He moved
easily, but mostly he smoked and waited, confident that his creations would ripen (future in the
past) (RIPE) with a bit of time. By the time he died (DIE) in 1940 aged 60, Klee had created
(CREATE) nearly 10,000 artworks, mostly paintings, drawings and some puppets.” [The
Economist, 05/10/2013]

QUESTION 23. [HINT: Pop-art was developing then, while ARPANET developed some years
ahead.]
“In 1968 the Institute of Contemporary Arts in London held (HOLD) an exhibition called
‘Cybernetic Serendipity’, Britain’s first show exploring connections between art and new
technology. It was (BE) hugely popular and in hindsight (em retrospecto), well timed. It coincided
(COINCIDE) with two crucial developments in the relationship between art and technology: the
pop-art movement, which was demolishing (DEMOLISH) boundaries between high art and
everyday life, and ARPANET, the computer-to-computer network which would become or
became (BECOME) the internet.” [The Economist, 06/02/2016]
QUESTION 24. “If the indictment of Haiti was (BE) unsurprising, less predictable was Mr
[Gustavo] Gallon’s position on the country’s cholera epidemic, which first broke out (BREAK
OUT) in 2010. More than 8,000 Haitians have since died (DIE + SINCE) from cholera, and nearly
700,000 more, or one out of every 16 people, infected. Medical evidence indicates the cholera
strain was brought (BRING) to Haiti by Nepalese UN peacekeepers, although the UN neither
admits responsibility for the outbreak nor agrees to make reparations. In October 2013 human-
rights lawyers filed (FILE) a class-action claim on behalf of the victims; the UN, which claims
diplomatic immunity against such claims, is reportedly refusing to acknowledge even being
served the lawsuit.” [The Economist, 04/03/2014]

QUESTION 25. “For most of human history, people had (HAVE) lots of children, of whom many
died in infancy. If things were going well, and there were no serious wars, epidemics or famines,
more would be (BE) born, more would survive longer, and populations would rise. From about
1000 to 1300, Europe enjoyed (ENJOY) a spurt of economic growth. A lot of new land was taken
(TAKE) into cultivation, and the number of cities multiplied (MULTIPLY). The population doubled
or trebled.
Enter, in 1347, via the Mediterranean, the Black Death. Within a few years this plague had
traversed (TRAVERSE) the continent. By 1400 Europe's population had shrunk (SHRINK) by
maybe 25m, about one-third. Plague reappeared periodically over the next three centuries, the
last big wave rolling over north-western Europe in the later 17th century, soon after the Thirty
Years War, which had already slashed (SLASH + ALREADY) Germany's population. In the New
World, smallpox (variola) brought by Spanish conquistadors and European settlers in the 16th
century killed (KILL) maybe 10m-20m of the native populations. [The Economist, 23/12/1999]

QUESTION 26. “The British and other Europeans who went out (GO OUT) to the West Indies to
get rich usually died first. The climate and the mosquito-infested swamps, combined with
consuming copious quantities of rum, took (TAKE) an appalling toll. In Kingston, the biggest town
in Jamaica, about 20% of the white population succumbed (SUCCUMB) to fatal diseases each
year, mainly yellow fever. During the so-called War of Jenkins's Ear (after Spanish coastguards
cut off the ear of Robert Jenkins, a captain of a British merchant ship), the British sent (SEND) a
huge amphibious force to attack the Spanish in Santiago de Cuba. Of 28,000 men, 22,000 were
dead within a year, only 1,000 of them perishing in combat. Even if you were one of the very
few with the constitution to survive, there was a good chance that a raid by the French or
marauding buccaneers would get (GET) you instead.” [The Economist, 13/08/2011]

QUESTION 27. “[A]s Sydney Brenner, who won last year's Nobel prize for medicine, once wryly
observed (ONCE WRYLY (sarcastic) + OBSERVE), in biotechnology the one -omics that really
counts is economics.” [The Economist, 27/05/2013]

QUESTION 28. “Companies that had placed or placed (PLACE) their faith in genomics are now
caught (NOW + CATCH) in a dilemma. Investors have decided (DECIDE), probably correctly, that
merely collecting -omics information (gen- or otherwise) and selling it to drug companies is not
a big enough business to be worth doing in its own right. They would rather put their money
behind firms that are trying to develop drugs. The information companies are therefore trying
to reinvent themselves.” [The Economist, 27/05/2013]

PART 2. USE OF ENGLISH.

QUESTION 29. “The third pillar of the new proposals may well be crucial: market discipline
through disclosure. This is supposed to include details of how a bank's internal ratings system is
working. If they live up to the Basle committee's claims, disclosure rules should allow investors
to throw their weight behind regulatory efforts to keep banks safe and sound.” [The Economist,
18/01/2001]

QUESTION 30. “Last month George Osborne, the chancellor, asserted that the British economy
was “on the mend”. In July Mark Carney took office at the Bank of England. Perhaps because of
these changes the main worries of Britons are more unpredictable than in previous polls. This
month’s issues index by Ipsos-MORI on behalf of The Economist shows that while the economy
is still the biggest issue at 43% it has dropped by eight percentage points, the lowest in five
years.” [The Economist, 22/08/2013]

QUESTION 31. “Brilliance runs in the family. In Kim Jong Il's younger, wilder days, his biographers
reveal, he wrote six operas, each of them better than any in the history of music. The first time
he turned his hand to golf, he scored five holes-in-one and beat the world record for a single
round by 25 strokes. But the Dear Leader's lasting achievement is to have established the first
dynasty in communist history—indeed, father and son reign jointly, because the presidency is
still occupied by his dead father.” [The Economist, 08/07/1999]

QUESTION 32. “The trouble, the plaintiffs say, is that Obamacare was initiated in the Senate, not
the House. So as a “bill for raising revenue”, the ACA was thus improperly enacted. The
complaint comes from Matt Sissel, a gale and hearty artist from Cedar Rapids, Iowa. Mr Sissel
says he has no use for health insurance and prefers to pay for occasional doctor visits out of
pocket rather than be conscripted to buy a policy. [The Economist, 12/06/2015]

QUESTION 33. “The effort by MPs in Britain’s Labour Party to topple Jeremy Corbyn as leader
intensified. To avoid splitting the anti-Corbyn vote one challenger, Angela Eagle, withdrew in
favour of another, Owen Smith. However, Mr Smith soon came under pressure over his previous
job working for drug companies. For a party on a mission to gain credibility, the choice between
a candidate who shilled for “Big Pharma”, or a leader with rock-bottom parliamentary support,
may be a bitter pill to swallow.” [The Economist, 23/07/2016]

QUESTION 34. “At first blush, it is just what the doctor ordered. Brazil’s new Law to Combat
Corruption, which went into effect on January 29th, honours the country’s commitment to curb
palm-greasing under the OECD’s anti-bribery convention.” [The Economist, 29/01/2014]

QUESTION 35. “The chances of all this happening have been strengthened by an unexpected
agreement this week on an EU-wide takeover code, which will make it harder for companies to
use “poison pill” defences to ward off takeovers. Such poison-pills—eg, the pre-emptive sale of
part of a company, or issuing new shares to friendly parties—will now be legal only if a
company's management gets the prior agreement of existing shareholders.” [The Economist,
07/06/2001]

QUESTION 36. “The prospect of investing in sub-Saharan Africa can cause businessmen to break
out in a cold sweat. The region is often seen as a corporate graveyard of small, impossibly
difficult markets, where war, famine, AIDS and disaster are always lurking.” [The Economist,
07/09/2006]

QUESTION 38. “To be a prime minister in central Europe remains a precarious job. The Czech
Republic and Poland have both shed theirs this year (only this week did the new Czech prime
minister, Stanislav Gross, win a parliamentary vote of confidence). Now Hungary's Peter
Medgyessy has stepped down, after being stabbed in the back by his one-time protégé, Ferenc
Gyurcsany, a multi-millionaire turned champion of the poor. As if to rub salt in the wound, on
August 25th the ruling Socialists selected Mr Gyurcsany to take Mr Medgyessy's place.” [The
Economist, 26/08/2004]

PART 3. READING COMPREHENSION & STRATEGIES

TEXT 1: Microbes maketh man - Vocabulary
the nooks and crannies (l.4) = very detailed search, everywhere
Guts (l.5) = part of intestine
Dwell (l.5) = to reside, to live
Bear (l.5) = to carry
Paid up (l.9) = fully paid, full members
Shelter (l.13) = protection
Interlopers (l.22) = intruders
At bay (l.22) = keep control
Zap (l.23) = destroy
Rhetorical flourish (l.25) = floreio
Lengthening (l.26) = becoming longer
Avenue for (l.31) = formal way to say approach
Bang this drum (l.33) = bater na mesma tecla
implicated (l.47) = very responsible
Run in family (l.47) = many members of a family will have it
Upheavals (l.53) = violent and sudden chance

QUESTION 39. Considering the grammatical and semantic aspects of the text, decide whether
the following items are right (R) or wrong (W).
A. (R) The idiomatic expression “nooks and crannies” [l. 4] carries the notion of “small and
remote corners”.
B. (W) “Bearing” [l. 5] could be perfectly replaced by “yielding” without significant meaning loss.
C. (R) The author states that bugs are “fully paid-up members of a community” [l. 9] in order to
emphasize his previous claim that humans are superorganisms.
D. (W) A “rhetorical flourish” [l. 25] is another way of saying “cacozelia”. Cacozelia is a kind of
rhetorical flourish used to make something seems more than it really is.

QUESTION 40. In text I, without altering the meaning of the sentence, the term “stool”, in the
expression “stool transplant” [l. 41] could be replaced by (mark right – R – or wrong – W):
1. (W) small bowel
2. (R) poop
3. (W) intestine
4. (R) excrement This is the best option

QUESTION 41. Decide whether the following statements are right (R) or wrong (W) according to
text I.
A. (R) On line 6, the reference to “biological Robespierres”, in allusion to the French radical
Jacobin, reiterates the controversial character of the scientific claim that humans are
superorganisms.
B. X Yogurt companies and health-food fanatics have repeated for years that bugs bear
molecules that prevent the body from falling off balance. Line 33 and 29. The problem is that
bang the drums is also to promote and this idea was not contemplate
C. (W) An imbalance in gut bacteria is one of the main causes of diseases such as diabetes and
bowel cancer. line 26 the problem is that we are attributing more than what had been said
D. (R) Thanks to our growing knowledge about the microbiome, new indications of use will be
explored for antibiotics. Line 44 and 45

TEXT 2: Hot tropic - Vocabulary

Pledging (l.2) = formal promise
Rot (l.4) = apodrecer
Cripple (l.4) = prejudicar
Stunt (l.4) = prevent
Sap (l.4) =
Curb the tool (l.7) = reduce or cut the cost
Splurge (l.7) = ostentation
Tightened fists (l.9) = restringir a quantidade de dinheiro
Step down (l.14) = demitir se
Champion (l.15) = someone who defends
Hatch a plan (l.21) = devise a plan together
Dispense (l.26) = to give out
Dubbed (l.35) = be invested
Gauge (l.35) = to measure, to adjust
Wreak its havoc (l.36) = cause great damage

QUESTION 42. Considering the grammatical and semantic aspects of the text, decide whether
the following items are right (R) or wrong (W).
A. (R) “(…) and the others decompose tissue and debilitate the organs” [l. 4]
B. (W) The noun “whiff” [l. 12] carries the notion of unequivocal evidence against something.
C. (W) Bill Gates concocted a new low-cost strategy to treat intestinal worms [l. 19-21].
Concocted = to fabricate in order to deceive
D. (R) The noun “ailment” [l. 36] is a synonym for illness.

QUESTION 43. In text II, considering the meaning of the sentence, “curb” [l. 7] could not be
replaced by:
A. foster to promote
B. hamper
C. hinder
D. bridle to control

QUESTION 44. Decide whether the following statements are right (R) or wrong (W) according to
text II.
A. (W) According to the text, diseases such as Guinea worm and sleeping sickness zap adults’
energies and lead to the development of speech disorders in children. The text didn't say zap,
but sap. It is wrong by vocabulary reasons.
B. (W) The Global Fund to Fight Aids, Tuberculosis and Malaria retracted its financial forecasts
for the 2011-13 period.
C. (R) Some have argued that only providing access to drugs is not sufficient to ensure success
in tackling diseases.
D. (W) In Sierra Leone, volunteers used children’s height as an indicator to decide whether to
give them drugs to fight elephantiasis or not. Final paragraph

Leituras Obrigatórias:
HEWINGS, Martin. Advanced Grammar in Use. Cambridge University Press, 2013.
MURPHY, Raymond. English Grammar in Use – Intermediate. Cambridge University Press, 2014.
Leituras Complementares:
GREENBAUM, Sidney. The Oxford English Grammar. Oxford University Press, 1996.
HUDDLESTON, Rodney & Geoffrey K. PULLUM. The Cambridge Grammar of English. Cambridge
University Press, 2002.