Read the text to answer questions 48 to 50.

As a linguist, I understand that language shifts and changes. The voiced z sound of houses is being replaced by an unvoiced s sound. The abbreviation A.I. has become a verb, as in “He A.I.ed it.” Neologisms abound, and new words often make us think of things in new ways.

But I don’t adopt all of the changes. I still say houses with a z. I avoid some new words that seem too flash-in-the-pan (like cheugy and delulu). By the time I might begin using them, they are probably already on their way out. Some bits of neology, I used ironically at first, but soon found myself adopting as part of my everyday vocabulary, and dropped them. Still, there are some usages that I can’t quite bring myself to embrace.

One is iconic. Everywhere I turn, I hear something described as the most iconic: movies, songs, sports figures, fictional characters, vehicles, photographs. Iconic has shifted to mean “famous.” My experience with the word comes from the semiotic triad of icon, index, and symbol, three of the 66 categories of signs proposed by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. For me, icons are visual representations: they resemble something. Dictionaries have now added definitions like “widely recognized and well-established” or “widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence.” Iconic has widened its meaning, but I haven’t come along.

(Edwin L. Battistella. https://blog.oup.com/2025/01/some-barely-iconic-epic-usages/. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer questions 48 to 50.

As a linguist, I understand that language shifts and changes. The voiced z sound of houses is being replaced by an unvoiced s sound. The abbreviation A.I. has become a verb, as in “He A.I.ed it.” Neologisms abound, and new words often make us think of things in new ways.

But I don’t adopt all of the changes. I still say houses with a z. I avoid some new words that seem too flash-in-the-pan (like cheugy and delulu). By the time I might begin using them, they are probably already on their way out. Some bits of neology, I used ironically at first, but soon found myself adopting as part of my everyday vocabulary, and dropped them. Still, there are some usages that I can’t quite bring myself to embrace.

One is iconic. Everywhere I turn, I hear something described as the most iconic: movies, songs, sports figures, fictional characters, vehicles, photographs. Iconic has shifted to mean “famous.” My experience with the word comes from the semiotic triad of icon, index, and symbol, three of the 66 categories of signs proposed by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. For me, icons are visual representations: they resemble something. Dictionaries have now added definitions like “widely recognized and well-established” or “widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence.” Iconic has widened its meaning, but I haven’t come along.

(Edwin L. Battistella. https://blog.oup.com/2025/01/some-barely-iconic-epic-usages/. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer questions 48 to 50.

As a linguist, I understand that language shifts and changes. The voiced z sound of houses is being replaced by an unvoiced s sound. The abbreviation A.I. has become a verb, as in “He A.I.ed it.” Neologisms abound, and new words often make us think of things in new ways.

But I don’t adopt all of the changes. I still say houses with a z. I avoid some new words that seem too flash-in-the-pan (like cheugy and delulu). By the time I might begin using them, they are probably already on their way out. Some bits of neology, I used ironically at first, but soon found myself adopting as part of my everyday vocabulary, and dropped them. Still, there are some usages that I can’t quite bring myself to embrace.

One is iconic. Everywhere I turn, I hear something described as the most iconic: movies, songs, sports figures, fictional characters, vehicles, photographs. Iconic has shifted to mean “famous.” My experience with the word comes from the semiotic triad of icon, index, and symbol, three of the 66 categories of signs proposed by the philosopher Charles Sanders Peirce. For me, icons are visual representations: they resemble something. Dictionaries have now added definitions like “widely recognized and well-established” or “widely known and acknowledged especially for distinctive excellence.” Iconic has widened its meaning, but I haven’t come along.

(Edwin L. Battistella. https://blog.oup.com/2025/01/some-barely-iconic-epic-usages/. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer questions 43 to 47.

Making the Case: The Importance of Listening in Language Learning

It has taken many years to bring the language teaching profession around to realizing the importance of listening in second and foreign language learning. As observed by Rivers, long an advocate for listening comprehension, “Speaking does not of itself constitute communication unless what is said is comprehended by another person”. Teaching the comprehension of spoken speech is therefore of primary importance if the communication aim is to be reached” (1966, pp. 196, 204). The reasons for the nearly total neglect of listening are difficult to assess, but as Morley notes, “Perhaps an assumption that listening is a reflex, a little like breathing - listening seldom receives overt teaching attention in one’s native language - has masked the importance and complexity of listening with understanding in a non-native language” (1972, p. vii).

In reality, listening is used far more than any other single language skill in normal daily life. On average, we can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write.

(Joan Morley,. In: Marianne Celce-Murcia, (Ed.). Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston: Heinle&Heinle-Thomson, 2001. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer questions 43 to 47.

Making the Case: The Importance of Listening in Language Learning

It has taken many years to bring the language teaching profession around to realizing the importance of listening in second and foreign language learning. As observed by Rivers, long an advocate for listening comprehension, “Speaking does not of itself constitute communication unless what is said is comprehended by another person”. Teaching the comprehension of spoken speech is therefore of primary importance if the communication aim is to be reached” (1966, pp. 196, 204). The reasons for the nearly total neglect of listening are difficult to assess, but as Morley notes, “Perhaps an assumption that listening is a reflex, a little like breathing - listening seldom receives overt teaching attention in one’s native language - has masked the importance and complexity of listening with understanding in a non-native language” (1972, p. vii).

In reality, listening is used far more than any other single language skill in normal daily life. On average, we can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write.

(Joan Morley,. In: Marianne Celce-Murcia, (Ed.). Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston: Heinle&Heinle-Thomson, 2001. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer questions 43 to 47.

Making the Case: The Importance of Listening in Language Learning

It has taken many years to bring the language teaching profession around to realizing the importance of listening in second and foreign language learning. As observed by Rivers, long an advocate for listening comprehension, “Speaking does not of itself constitute communication unless what is said is comprehended by another person”. Teaching the comprehension of spoken speech is therefore of primary importance if the communication aim is to be reached” (1966, pp. 196, 204). The reasons for the nearly total neglect of listening are difficult to assess, but as Morley notes, “Perhaps an assumption that listening is a reflex, a little like breathing - listening seldom receives overt teaching attention in one’s native language - has masked the importance and complexity of listening with understanding in a non-native language” (1972, p. vii).

In reality, listening is used far more than any other single language skill in normal daily life. On average, we can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write.

(Joan Morley,. In: Marianne Celce-Murcia, (Ed.). Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston: Heinle&Heinle-Thomson, 2001. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer questions 43 to 47.

Making the Case: The Importance of Listening in Language Learning

It has taken many years to bring the language teaching profession around to realizing the importance of listening in second and foreign language learning. As observed by Rivers, long an advocate for listening comprehension, “Speaking does not of itself constitute communication unless what is said is comprehended by another person”. Teaching the comprehension of spoken speech is therefore of primary importance if the communication aim is to be reached” (1966, pp. 196, 204). The reasons for the nearly total neglect of listening are difficult to assess, but as Morley notes, “Perhaps an assumption that listening is a reflex, a little like breathing - listening seldom receives overt teaching attention in one’s native language - has masked the importance and complexity of listening with understanding in a non-native language” (1972, p. vii).

In reality, listening is used far more than any other single language skill in normal daily life. On average, we can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write.

(Joan Morley,. In: Marianne Celce-Murcia, (Ed.). Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston: Heinle&Heinle-Thomson, 2001. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer questions 43 to 47.

Making the Case: The Importance of Listening in Language Learning

It has taken many years to bring the language teaching profession around to realizing the importance of listening in second and foreign language learning. As observed by Rivers, long an advocate for listening comprehension, “Speaking does not of itself constitute communication unless what is said is comprehended by another person”. Teaching the comprehension of spoken speech is therefore of primary importance if the communication aim is to be reached” (1966, pp. 196, 204). The reasons for the nearly total neglect of listening are difficult to assess, but as Morley notes, “Perhaps an assumption that listening is a reflex, a little like breathing - listening seldom receives overt teaching attention in one’s native language - has masked the importance and complexity of listening with understanding in a non-native language” (1972, p. vii).

In reality, listening is used far more than any other single language skill in normal daily life. On average, we can expect to listen twice as much as we speak, four times more than we read, and five times more than we write.

(Joan Morley,. In: Marianne Celce-Murcia, (Ed.). Teaching English as a second or foreign language. Boston: Heinle&Heinle-Thomson, 2001. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer questions 31 to 42.

Based on theoretical, experimental, and experiential knowledge, teachers and teacher educators have expressed their dissatisfaction with method in different ways. Studies clearly demonstrate that, even as the methodological band played on, practicing teachers have been marching to a different drum.

In this sense, the post method condition is established as a timely response. It signifies interrelated attributes. First and foremost, it signifies a search for an alternative to method rather than an alternative method. While alternative methods are primarily products of top-down processes, alternatives to method are mainly products of bottom-up processes. In practical terms, this means that we need to refigure the relationship between the theorizer and the practitioner of language teaching. If the concept of method authorizes theorizers to centralize pedagogic decision-making, the postmethod condition enables practitioners to generate location-specific, classroom-oriented innovative strategies.

Secondly, the postmethod condition signifies teacher autonomy. The conventional concept of method “overlooks the fund of experience and tacit knowledge about teaching which the teachers already have by virtue of their lives as students” (Freeman, 1991). The postmethod condition, however, recognizes the teachers’ potential to know not only how to teach but also how to act autonomously within the academic and administrative constraints imposed by institutions, curricula, and textbooks. It also promotes the ability of teachers to know how to develop a critical approach in order to self-observe, self-analyze, and self-evaluate their own teaching practice with a view to effecting desired changes.

(B. Kumaravadivelu, Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching. Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2003. Adaptado)

Read the text to answer questions 31 to 42.

Based on theoretical, experimental, and experiential knowledge, teachers and teacher educators have expressed their dissatisfaction with method in different ways. Studies clearly demonstrate that, even as the methodological band played on, practicing teachers have been marching to a different drum.

In this sense, the post method condition is established as a timely response. It signifies interrelated attributes. First and foremost, it signifies a search for an alternative to method rather than an alternative method. While alternative methods are primarily products of top-down processes, alternatives to method are mainly products of bottom-up processes. In practical terms, this means that we need to refigure the relationship between the theorizer and the practitioner of language teaching. If the concept of method authorizes theorizers to centralize pedagogic decision-making, the postmethod condition enables practitioners to generate location-specific, classroom-oriented innovative strategies.

Secondly, the postmethod condition signifies teacher autonomy. The conventional concept of method “overlooks the fund of experience and tacit knowledge about teaching which the teachers already have by virtue of their lives as students” (Freeman, 1991). The postmethod condition, however, recognizes the teachers’ potential to know not only how to teach but also how to act autonomously within the academic and administrative constraints imposed by institutions, curricula, and textbooks. It also promotes the ability of teachers to know how to develop a critical approach in order to self-observe, self-analyze, and self-evaluate their own teaching practice with a view to effecting desired changes.

(B. Kumaravadivelu, Beyond Methods: Macrostrategies for language teaching. Haven and London: Yale University Press. 2003. Adaptado)