Trabalho Individual – 3º Trimestre 2º Ensino Médio – Inglês

The Soil-Eaters

It’s lunchtime somewhere in rural tropical Africa. You’re hungry, but the nearest restaurant is too far to walk. There’s no Italian, Chinese, Indian or fast food and the telephone pizza delivery company is a little reluctant to send is dispatch rider beyond the city walls.

Moreover, you’re on a tight budget. What are you to do? The answer, quite literally, may lie in the soil directly beneath feet.

According to two researchers from the University of Wales at Aberystwyth, UK, the tradition of soil consumption is still very much alive in the African tropics, India, Jamaica and it has also been reported in Saudi Arabia. Despite the advent of modern religions and the end of the slave trade, soil eating is not uncommon, though mostly confined to the poorer sections of society.

The reasons for soil consumption are many and often misunderstood, say the researchers Peter Abrahams and Julia Parsons. But geophagists – as soil-eaters are known – on the whole are regarded as quite ‘normal’ to most but outsiders.

“Despite the widespread distribution of geophagy, both today and in the past, it is largely unknown, under-reported, misunderstood or ignored by most people in the developed world”, say Abrahams and Parsons. [This is why] “the adjectives ‘eccentric’, ‘perverted’, ‘odd’, and ‘bizarre’ have applied to geophagy”.[...]

(Nature News Service, 1996)

1. O primeiro parágrafo se dirige a um público leitor específico. Que público é esse? Justifique sua resposta.

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(Cesgranrio) Leia o texto que segue, para responder às questões 4 e 5.

Atenção: as questões são somatórias.

1 Compared with misery, happiness was given little attention by social scientists until 1984. However, this trend has undergone timely changes since then. During the past two decades, dozens of investigators throughout the world have asked thousands of people to reflect on their

5 happiness and satisfaction with life and some surprising findings have been uncovered. People are happier than we generally believe them to be, and happiness does not depend significantly on external circumstances. Although viewing life as a tragedy has a long and honorable history, the responses of random samples paint a much rosier picture. How can social

10 scientists measure something as hard to pin down as happiness? Most researchers simply ask people to report their feelings of happiness or unhappiness and to assess how satisfying their lives are. The daily mood ratings of those who say they are happy and satisfied seem to reveal more positive emotions, and they smile more than those who call themselves

15 unhappy. Unlike the depressed, happy people are less self-focused, less hostile and abusive, and less susceptible to disease. Interviews with people of all ages reveal that no time of life is notably happier or unhappier. Similarly, men and women are equally likely to declare themselves “very happy” and “satisfied” with life. Even knowing someone’s ethnicity gives

20 little clue to subjective well-being. Scientists assert that people in disadvantaged groups maintain their self-esteem by valuing things at which they excel, by making comparisons within their own groups and by blaming problems on external sources such as prejudice. Wealth is also a poor predictor of happiness. People have not become happier over time as their

25 cultures have become more affluent. Even very rich people are only slightly happier than the average American. Indeed, in most nations the correlation between income and happiness is negligible – except in the poorest countries, for instance, Bangladesh and India, where income is a good measure of emotional well-being. Furthermore, factors as diverse as civil

30 rights, literacy and duration of democratic government, all of which also promote reported life satisfaction, tend to go hand in hand with national wealth. As a result, it is impossible to tell whether the happiness of people in wealthier nations is based on money or is a by-product of other felicities. Although happiness is not easy to predict from material circumstances, it

35 seems consistent for those who have it. In study after study, four traits characterize happy people. First, especially in individualistic Western cultures, they like themselves. They have high self-esteem and usually believe themselves to be more ethical, more intelligent, less prejudiced, better able to get along with others, and healthier than the average person. Second, happy people typically feel personal control. Those with little or no

40 control over their lives — for instance, prisoners, nursing home patients, severely impoverished groups or individuals, and citizens of totalitarian regimes — suffer lower morale and worse health. Third, happy people are usually optimistic. Fourth, most happy people are extroverted. Although one might expect that introverts would live more happily in the serenity of their

45 lives, extroverts are happier— whether alone or with others. Students of happiness are now beginning to examine happy people’s exercise patterns, worldviews and goals. It is possible that some of the patterns discovered in the research may offer clues for transforming circumstances and behaviors that work against well-being into ones that promote it. Ultimately, then, the

50 scientific study of happiness could help us understand how to build a world that enhances human well-being and to aid people in getting the most satisfaction from their circumstances.

02. Segundo estudos já realizados, as pessoas, no mundo moderno, aparentam ser mais infelizes do que realmente são.

04. O grau de felicidade das pessoas está diretamente relacionado às circunstâncias externas que determinam o seu status e o seu modo de vida.

08. Idade, sexo e poder aquisitivo são fatores que determinam o grau de felicidade da maioria das pessoas.

16. A privação da liberdade e a falta de controle sobre sua própria vida são fatores que influenciam o moral, a saúde e a felicidade das pessoas.

32. Pessoas de grupos étnicos discriminados revelam maior grau de infelicidade, por serem socialmente compelidas a baixar a sua auto-estima.

64. As características mais comuns e consistentes das pessoas felizes são: auto-estima, independência, otimismo e extroversão.

5. A respeito das pesquisas realizadas sobre a felicidade, pode-se afirmar:
01. Apesar de todo o esforço dos cientistas sociais, tem sido difícil depreender das pesquisas uma definição para algo tão complexo como o estado de felicidade.

02. Na cultura ocidental, as pesquisas sobre felicidade chegam a resultados insatisfatórios, porque as pessoas estão condicionadas a simular bem-estar e felicidade.

04. Pesquisas realizadas em nações desenvolvidas são conclusivas quanto a ser o grau de felicidade, nessas nações, resultante da riqueza e de outros fatores a ela associados.

08. Descobertas sobre o que faz as pessoas felizes ou infelizes podem ajudar na transformação das circunstâncias e comportamentos responsáveis por sua infelicidade.

16. Nos últimos tempos, os cientistas sociais vêm tentando descobrir se a prática de atividade física, as visões de mundo e os objetivos individuais têm influência na felicidade das pessoas.

32. A despeito dos avanços alcançados pela ciência, é pouco provável que se consiga transformar as circunstâncias adversas do mundo atual, responsáveis pela infelicidade das pessoas.

The history of chocolate

Delicious, delectable, soothing and, yes, American. Chocolate was a New World discovery, one of the most sought-after treasures brought back to Europe from the brave new land across the Atlantic.

Cacao, from which chocolate is created, is said to have originated in the Amazon at least 4,000 years ago. The cacao tree was worshipped by the Mayan civilization, who believed it to be of divine origin. Cacao is actually a Mayan word meaning “God Food”, hence the tree’s modern generic Latin name ‘Theobrama Cacao’, meaning ‘Food of the Gods’. The word Cacao was corrupted into the more familiar ‘Cocoa’ by the early European explorers. The ancient Maya brewed a spicy, bitter sweet drink by roasting and grinding the seeds of cocoa beans with maize and chili and letting the mixture ferment. This drink was reserved for use in ceremonies as well as for drinking by the wealthy and religious elite.

The Aztecs of central Mexico attributed the creation of the cacao beans to their god Quetzalcoatl who, as the legend goes, descended from heaven on a beam of a morning star carrying a cacao tree stolen from paradise. In fact, the Aztecs valued the beans so much that they used them as currency: a hundred beans bought a turkey or a slave, and taxes were paid in cocoa beans to Aztec emperors. They prized ‘Xocolatl’ well above gold and silver so much so that, when Montezuma was defeated by Cortez in 1519 and the victorious ‘conquistadors’ searched his palace for the Aztec treasury expecting to find gold and silver, all they found were huge quantities of cocoa beans.

The Aztecs, like the Mayans, also enjoyed cacao as a beverage fermented from the raw beans, which again featured prominently in rituals and as a luxury available only to the very wealthy. They regarded chocolate as an aphrodisiac and their Emperor, Montezuma reputedly drank it fifty times a day from a golden goblet and is quoted as saying of ‘Xocolatl’: “The divine drink, which builds up resistance and fights fatigue. A cup of this precious drink permits a man to walk for a whole day without food”.

Xocolatl or Chocolat or Chocolate, as it became known, was brought to Europe by Cortez. By this time, the conquistadors had learned to make the drink more palatable to European tastes by mixing the ground roasted beans with sugar and vanilla (a practice still continued today), thus balancing the spicy bitterness of the brew the Aztecs drank.

. Acesso em: 30 jun. 2009. Adaptado.

Responda as questões 6 e 7 em PORTUGUÊS:

6) Explain the Aztec legend about the origin of the cacao tree.

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7) Mention the main use of the cacao beverage by the Mayans and Aztecs and the people who could afford to drink it.

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