Read the text below for question

Would you trust a smartphone app as a contraceptive?

The Natural Cycles fertility app combines the use of a thermometer to measure body temperature with calendar calculating methods – often referred to as the rhythm method – to work out the days when a woman would be at high or low risk of pregnancy.

More than 4,000 women were included in this Swedish study looking at how effective the app is at preventing pregnancy. A total of 143 unplanned pregnancies occurred during the study period, 10 of which were the result of the app falsely indicating a safe day. Data collected by the app was used to work out that, if used exactly as advised, 5 women out of every 1,000 will accidentally become pregnant, and 7 out of every 100 women will become pregnant for "typical use" (not using the app correctly), each year.

This app may be attractive for women who are unwilling to use other forms of contraception, possibly for religious or cultural reasons, or because they have concerns about the side effects of hormonal contraception.

This app may also help indicate the best days to try to conceive. But an obvious disadvantage of this contraceptive method is that the app does not protect against sexually transmitted infections in the same way as a condom.

Further research weighing an app like this against established contraceptive methods would be required to confirm whether its effectiveness is comparable.

Read the following text in order to answer QUESTION

Pluto should be reclassified as a planet, experts say

The reason Pluto lost its planet status is not valid, according to new research from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. In 2006, the International Astronomical Union (IAU), a global group of astronomy experts, established a definition of a planet that required it to "clear" its orbit, or in other words, be the largest gravitational force in its orbit. […]

Metzger, who is lead author on the study, reviewed scientific literature from the past 200 years and found only one publication -- from 1802 -- that used the clearing-orbit requirement to classify planets, and it was based on since-disproven reasoning.

"It's a sloppy definition," Metzger said of the IAU's definition. "They didn't say what they meant by clearing their orbit. If you take that literally, then there are no planets, because no planet clears its orbit." […]

Metzger said that the definition of a planet should be based on its intrinsic properties, rather than ones that can change, such as the dynamics of a planet's orbit. "Dynamics are not constant, they are constantly changing," Metzger said. "So, they are not the fundamental description of a body, they are just the occupation of a body at a current era."

Instead, Metzger recommends classifying a planet based on if it is large enough that its gravity allows it to become spherical in shape. "And that's not just an arbitrary definition, Metzger said. "It turns out this is an important milestone in the evolution of a planetary body, because apparently when it happens, it initiates active geology in the body."

TEXTO:

A person’s success or failure at weight loss is not a reflection of their willpower reserve. There are many factors—genetic, environmental and otherwise—that play into a person’s size, and a growing body of research shows that when people lose weight, biological factors come into play, making it harder for them to keep weight off after it’s gone.

[5] Kevin Hall, a scientist at the National Institutes of Health, has found that when a person loses a substantial amount of weight, their metabolism gets out of whack and their appetite increases proportionally, causing them to eat about 100 calories more for every two pounds lost. While that doesn’t mean it’s impossible to keep weight off in the long term, it does mean that struggling to do so is by no means a reflection of willpower, motivation or work ethic.

Read the dialogue to answer.

A: I haven’t seen Marsha for a while.

B: After her baby boy was born, she grew used to ___________________.

5 Ways Pets Can Improve Your Health

A pet is certainly a great friend. After a difficult day, pet owners quite literally feel the love.

In fact, for nearly 25 years, research has shown that living with pets provides certain health benefits. Pets help lower blood pressure and lessen anxiety. They boost our immunity. They can even help you get dates.

Allergy Fighters: A growing number of studies have suggested that kids growing up in a home with "furred animals" will have less risk of allergies and asthma.

Date Magnets: Dogs are great for making love connections. Forget Internet matchmaking — a dog is a natural conversation starter.

Dogs for the Aged: Walking a dog or just caring for a pet — for elderly people who are able — can provide exercise and companionship.

Good for Mind and Soul: Like any enjoyable activity, playing with a dog can elevate levels of serotonin and dopamine — nerve transmitters that are known to have pleasurable and calming properties.

Good for the Heart: Heart attack patients who have pets survive longer than those without, according to several studies.

In different languages, a letter may not represent the same sound. Read the following text in Portuguese:

“Mas como o ladrão insistisse, dona Arginusa apareceu, tomou a joia, e após minucioso exame reconheceu que era mesmo seu aquele broche de ouro e brilhantes, fora sua mãe que o herdou da avó, que herdou de outra avó.”

Text

Text 2a. Second Language Learning

One of the principles of all learning is that we make sense of new information and ideas by relating them to our previous knowledge. There are two main kinds of previous language knowledge which second language learners can use in order to make sense of the new language they encounter: the first is their knowledge of their mother tongue and the second is the knowledge they already possess about the second language itself.

LITTLEWOOD, W. Second Language Learning. In DAVIES, A. e ELDER, C. The Handbook of Applied Linguistics, pp.504/5, Blackwell Publishing, 2010.

Text 2b. National Curriculum Parameters

Every text is organized within a specific genre according to its communicative purposes, as part of the conditions of discourse production, which generate social uses that determine any and every text. Genres are, therefore, historically determined, and constitute relatively stable forms of utterances available in a culture. (National Curriculum Parameters, Brasil, 1988, p.21) (adaptado)

Answer the two questions below considering also texts "Second Language Learning" and "National Curriculum Parameters", above.

Leia o texto para responder à questão.

Does a lipstick threaten the future of one of our closest living relatives?

Pizza, biscuits, and beauty treatments are some of the thousands of products that contain palm oil, which threaten iconic species through deforestation. And a new study says that planting alternative oils could pose an even bigger danger to living things.
Palm oil is the most widely used vegetable oil on the planet and is believed to be in about 50% of products found in supermarkets and shops. It is important for lipstick for example because it holds colour well, has no taste and doesn’t melt at high temperatures. It’s found in shampoos, soaps, ice cream and instant noodles amongst thousands of others.
Over the past 20 years, growing demand has seen thousands of hectares of old, tropical forests chopped down to make way for the oily palm tree plantations. But these forests are home to some of the most threatened species in the world, including the orangutan. “Orangutans are a lowland species on Bornean Sumatra and that’s where palm oil is grown. The two often clash, palm oil displaces orangutans, they are pushed into gardens where they generate conflicts with locals and that’s where you get the killings. They are incredibly versatile, but what an orangutan can’t deal with is killing. Because they are such slow breeding species, the killing has a really big impact”, the report’s lead author Erik Meijaard, told BBC News.
Palm makes up 35% of the world’s vegetable oil supply but only takes up 10% of the world’s land allocated to producing the greasy stuff. To replace it with rapeseed, soy or sunflower seed oil would take far larger amounts of land, in fact up to nine times the amount needed for palm. It’s likely that such a move would see a displacement of diversity loss, with many more species in different places under threat. “If palm oil didn’t exist you would still have the same global demand for vegetable oil,” said Erik Meijaard.

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1- Write to the level of the intended audience.
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5- Provide supporting evidence.
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7- Avoid literary clichés.
8- Show a little style.
9- Edit, edit, edit.
10- Proofreading leads to perfect papers.