Fluency News #01

Fluency News

Hello, everyone!

Sejam bem-vindos e bem-vindas ao primeiro episódio da nossa nova série de podcasts, o Fluency News! Aqui você vai treinar a sua escuta e ficar por dentro do que está acontecendo no mundo, sempre com as três principais notícias da semana em inglês. Ao longo do episódio, nós também adicionamos explicações em português das coisas que achamos que precisam de mais atenção, assim você não perde nenhum detalhe!

Esta semana, vamos falar sobre a explosão em Beirute, no Líbano, o número de casos e mortes causadas pelo coronavírus ao redor do mundo e, por fim, discutir as repercussões do movimento Black Lives Matter nos Estados Unidos após a morte de George Floyd.

Continue lendo para ter acesso a uma seção de expansão de vocabulário para maximizar o seu aprendizado!

Expand your knowledge!

Adjectives and their order:
‍A ordem dos adjetivos em inglês serve para que você não escreva mais de um adjetivo de forma aleatória em uma frase, e essa ordem precisa ser seguida de acordo com o tipo de cada adjetivo. Veja o exemplo abaixo:

Ex: It’s a beautiful round wooden table.
‍(É uma mesa bonita, redonda e feita de madeira.)

Aqui, podemos ver a maneira correta, ou seja, a ordem em que esses adjetivos são escritos antes do substantivo. Para isso, devemos saber quais são os tipos de adjetivos e onde eles devem ficar na frase:

Tipos de Adjetivos:

1- Opinion: indica opinião, o que você acha a respeito daquilo.
Exemplos: horrible, difficult, fun, beautiful, etc.

Os adjetivos abaixo são classificados como “fatos”, e seguem esta ordem:

2 – Size: indica tamanho.
Exemplos: large, little, short, tall, etc.

3 – Age: indica idade.
Exemplos: new, old, adolescent, a year, etc.

4 – Shape: indica forma.
Exemplos: round, flat, square, irregular, etc.

5 – Color: indica cor.
Exemplos: red, blue, etc.

6 – Origin: indica a origem.
Exemplos: Brazilian, American, etc.

7 – Religion: indica religião.
Exemplos: Buddhist, Taoist, Pagan, etc.

8 – Material: indica o tipo de material que é feito.
Exemplos: wooden, paper, metal, etc.

9 – Purpose: indica o propósito de seu uso.
Exemplos: sleeping bag, computer table, football field, etc.
A big round pink plastic ball. (Uma grande, redonda e rosa bola de plástico.)
An interesting young woman. (Uma mulher interessante e jovem.)
Small blue eyes. (Pequenos olhos azuis.)
An old American song. (Uma velha música americana.)
A nice big new red plastic sleeping bag. (Uma boa, nova e vermelha bolsa plástica de dormir.)‍

The passive voice:

‍Quando uma frase está na passive voice (voz passiva), significa que o objeto que recebe a ação é que está em evidência, e não o sujeito. Em inglês, a voz passiva não é tão comum de ser utilizada na linguagem cotidiana, já que é considerada mais formal e ocorre com mais frequência na escrita. Apesar disso, podemos utilizá-la no dia a dia quando não sabemos quem é o sujeito da frase.

A voz passiva pode ser utilizada em frases afirmativas, negativas e interrogativas, e sua formação é expressa por:
Objeto + verbo to be + Past Participle (Particípio passado) do verbo principal + complemento
Essa estrutura pode ser utilizada em diversos tempos verbais do presente, do passado e do futuro. Para isso, basta flexionar o verbo to be.

Veja exemplos:
The clothes are being washed by Pedro. (As roupas estão sendo lavadas por Pedro.)
My smartphone was stolen. (Meu celular foi roubado.)
The Bible was written in Hebrew. (A Bíblia foi escrita em hebraico.)
Don’t worry, the flat tire was changed. (Não se preocupe, o pneu furado foi trocado.)
The cease-fire is being signed by the leaders. (O cessar-fogo está sendo assinado pelos líderes.)

Now put it in practice!

1) Marque a alternativa em que os adjetivos estão na ordem correta.
a) New and cheap phone.
b) Red and valuable notebook.
c) Intelligent and young man.
d) Ancient and intriguing building.
e) Old and ugly car.

2) Complete as frases abaixo com os adjetivos na ordem correta.
a) She bought a _. (bolsa vermelha italiana feita de couro)
b) This book is _. (velho e entediante)
c) It’s the only _. (solução possível)
d) They moved to a _. (linda e pequena cabana rústica)
e) I ordered four _. (rosas vermelhas de caule longo de seda maravilhosas)

3) Qual das opções abaixo está na voz passiva?
a) They bought the cake in a bakery.
b) The house was built in 1991.
c) Erica called me last night.
d) I wasn’t talking to you.
e) I have plans for tomorrow.

RESPOSTAS:

1) A alternativa correta é C. Os adjetivos de opinião, que são aqueles que nos informam o que alguém acha ou pensa sobre o substantivo, sempre precedem os adjetivos de fato, que são aqueles que nos dão informações objetivas (idade, tamanho, cor, origem, etc.) sobre o substantivo.

2) Respostas:
a) She bought a red Italian leather purse.
b) This book is old and boring
c) It’s the only possible solution.
d) They moved to a beautiful small rustic cabin.
e) I ordered four gorgeous long stemmed red silk roses.

3) A alternativa correta é B. O verbo to be está no passado (was), seguido do verbo “build” em sua terceira forma, no particípio do passado.

Transcrição do episódio

Hello and welcome to Fluency Academy’s Fluency News, your latest podcast series! Presented by me, Scott, prof da fluency academy, americano de corpo brasileiro de alma. Here we present you 3 of the week’s biggest news stories, 99% in English, for you to train your listening, with quick explanations in Portuguese here and there in parts that we think deserve special attention! We hope you’re having a great day and let’s just jump into it.

Our first story of the day is around the explosion in Beirut that has left at least 135 dead and over 5000 injured. Beirut awoke to scenes of devastation on Tuesday, following two huge explosions in its port which sent a blast wave across the city. There was reportedly an initial explosion in the port area followed by a fire and small blasts that some witnesses said sounded like fireworks going off. Videos posted on social media showed white smoke billowing from a warehouse next to the port’s grain silos shortly before a colossal explosion sent a fireball into the air and generated a supersonic, mushroom cloud-shaped shockwave that radiated across the city.

That second blast leveled buildings near the port and caused extensive damage over much of the rest of the capital, which is home to two million people. Hospitals were quickly overwhelmed. “What we are witnessing is a huge catastrophe,” said the head of the Lebanese Red Cross, George Kettani. “There are victims and casualties everywhere.” Beirut Governor Marwan Abboud said as many as 300,000 people had been made temporarily homeless and that the collective losses might reach $10-15bn (£8-11bn). Experts have not yet determined the size of the blast, but the shockwave blew out windows at Beirut International Airport’s passenger terminal, about 9km (5 miles) away from the port.

The explosion was also heard as far away as Cyprus, about 200km (125 miles) across the Mediterranean Sea, and seismologists at the United States Geological Survey said it was the equivalent of a 3.3-magnitude earthquake. Lebanon’s President, Michel Aoun, blamed the detonation of 2,750 tonnes of ammonium nitrate that he said had been stored unsafely at a warehouse in the port. A similar amount of the chemical arrived on a Moldovan-flagged cargo ship, the MV Rhosus, which docked in Beirut in 2013 after suffering technical problems while sailing from Georgia to Mozambique.The Rhosus was inspected, banned from leaving, and was shortly afterward abandoned by its owners, according to industry newsletter Shiparrested.com. Its cargo was reportedly moved to a port warehouse for safety reasons and should have been disposed of or resold.

Ammonium nitrate is a crystal-like white solid commonly used as a source of nitrogen for agricultural fertilizer. But it can also be combined with fuel oils to create an explosive used in the mining and construction industries. Militants have made bombs with it in the past. There is now a huge crater where the warehouse storing the ammonium nitrate once stood. Experts say that ammonium nitrate is relatively safe when stored properly. However, if you have a large amount of material lying around for a long time it begins to decay. The real problem is that over time it will absorb little bits of moisture and it eventually turns into an enormous rock,” Andrea Sella, professor of chemistry at University College London, told the BBC. This makes it more dangerous because if fire reaches it, the chemical reaction will be much more intense.

President Aoun promised a transparent investigation into the blast. “We are determined to go ahead with an investigation and unveil the circumstances surrounding what happened as soon as possible and hold those responsible and those who were negligent accountable and serve them the most severe punishment,” he said on Wednesday after visiting the ruined port. Prime Minister Hassan Diab described the circumstances that led to the explosion as “unacceptable”. The port’s general manager, Hassan Koraytem, and the director-general of Lebanese Customs, Badri Daher, said their warnings about the danger posed by the stored ammonium nitrate and calls for it to be removed were repeatedly ignored.

Documents circulated online appeared to show that customs officials sent letters to the judiciary seeking guidance at least six times from 2014 to 2017. The government has ordered officials at the port who oversaw the storage of the ammonium nitrate to be put under house arrest pending the completion of the investigation.

Antes de seguirmos para a nossa próxima história, eu quero chamar a sua atenção para uma frase que eu usei lá no começo. Eu disse que a explosão gerou “a supersonic, mushroom cloud-shaped shockwave”. Em inglês, os adjetivos, as descrições, têm uma ordem certa para serem usados. É uma coisa que os nativos sabem sem perceber, mas que nós, como estudantes do idioma, precisamos notar. Quando inseridos em uma frase, os adjetivos têm que seguir a seguinte ordem: opinião, que é o que você acha a respeito disso, seguido de fato, tamanho, idade, forma, cor, origem, religião, tipo de material, e por fim, propósito. Você pode ver como isso funciona em frases na descrição do post em fluencytv.com. Quanto maior for o seu contato com o inglês, mais fácil vai ficar de usar essa regrinha, sem ter que memorizar essa ordem.

And with that, we move on to our next story, as global coronavirus deaths pass 700,000. Over the last seven days, a grim new COVID-19 calculus has emerged: one person died every 80 seconds from the coronavirus in the United States alone. And the pace at which those 7,486 people died appears to be accelerating, a new NBC News tally revealed Wednesday. In July, a total of 26,198 deaths were reported, meaning one every 102 seconds. As of Wednesday morning, more than 158,000 people in the U.S. had died of the virus since the start of the pandemic. The numbing new national snapshot of how COVID-19 is claiming more and more lives came as Johns Hopkins University reported another milestone: The world death toll from this plague had eclipsed 700,000.

The U.S. has logged nearly 4.8 million confirmed cases. And around 1.8 million of those have come since July 7, when the 3 millionth case was reported, NBC News figures show. While most of the new cases and deaths have been in the South and Sun Belt, states in the northeast like New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts that were hit hardest at the start of the pandemic — and were able to flatten the curve — have also reported worrying upticks. Under fire for being slow to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and presiding over the biggest economic disaster since the Great Depression, President Donald Trump once again downplayed the extent of the pandemic in a call-in interview Wednesday with “Fox & Friends.”

“It is what it is”, Trump said. “This thing is going away,” he said. “It will go away like things go away.” In Brazil, numbers continue to rise. The country recorded 25,800 additional confirmed cases of the novel coronavirus and 541 deaths from the disease caused by the virus in the past 24 hours, the health ministry said on Sunday. Brazil has registered more than 2.73 million cases of the virus since the pandemic began, while the official death toll has risen to 94,104, according to ministry data.

Quando estamos falando de notícias, é comum usarmos a voz passiva, tanto no presente quanto no passado. Em inglês, a voz passiva funciona mais ou menos da mesma maneira que o português. Pra formar essa estrutura, nós vamos usar o verbo to be, acompanhado de um verbo na terceira forma, que é o particípio do passado. Por exemplo, the deaths WERE REPORTED. Estamos usando o verbo to be no passado, e report, que é um verbo regular, tem ED adicionado ao final.

And finally, on our last story of the day, in the more than two months since the killing of George Floyd, 31 of America’s 100 largest cities have enacted policies restricting officers’ use of chokeholds, according to an analysis by Campaign Zero, a group that advocates against police violence. In all, 62 of the 100 largest cities now have such policies in place, including New York and Minneapolis, where Floyd died after an officer knelt on his neck for nearly nine minutes.

Atlanta, San Diego and 67 other cities now require officers to intervene when a fellow officer uses excessive force, up from 51 before Floyd’s death. And five cities — including Denver and St. Louis — have adopted the suite of eight reforms that Campaign Zero advocates, up from two cities earlier this year.

The Minneapolis City Council pledged to drastically scale back the size and scope of the city’s police force after the killing of George Floyd. But residents of Minneapolis’s majority-Black North Side have mixed feelings about that effort — and about the wider push to defund the police by redirecting their resources to struggling communities.

Many North Side residents dislike the police but rely on them to respond to crime, and most say they prefer reforms like improved police training to defunding. Some have also accused elected officials of ignoring their views. As one resident told The Times’s John Eligon: “It’s good to have good police. It’s bad to have bad police.”

Se você acompanha o movimento Black Lives Matter, já deve ter escutado a frase “defund the police”. Você sabe o que defund significa? Essa palavra significa “cortar o financiamento”. O que o movimento quer é que haja uma reestruturação na força policial, que inclua o corte de fundos do departamento ou a transferência desses fundos para outras agências do governo. Agora você já está por dentro do que “defund the police” significa!

And with that, we’re done! You can find the sources to all our stories in the description of this episode. Be sure to check out fluencytv.com for more free content, and tune back in to hear the main stories around the world, and get some snippets of explanations to expand your knowledge and practice your listening skills. [Scott’s sign off]

Sources:

‍https://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-53668493?intlink_from_url=https://www.bbc.com/news/topics/c88p951myv0t/beirut-port-explosion&link_location=live-reporting-story
https://www.theguardian.com/world/live/2020/aug/04/beirut-explosion-huge-blast-port-lebanon-capital
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/world/beirut-explosion-brings-city-its-knees-citizen-grapple-loss-destruction-n1235860
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/one-death-every-80-seconds-grim-new-toll-covid-19-n1235890
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/health-news/coronavirus-map-confirmed-cases-2020-n1120686
https://www.nbcnews.com/health/coronavirus
https://www.bbc.com/news/coronavirus
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-health-coronavirus-brazil/brazil-registers-25800-new-coronavirus-cases-death-toll-tops-94000-idUSKBN24Y0QD
https://www.nytimes.com/2020/08/04/us/minneapolis-defund-police.html?campaign_id=9&emc=edit_nn_20200805&instance_id=20988&nl=the-morning&regi_id=124243894&segment_id=35289&te=1&user_id=29c9c34ef721057cf1ede4e6f5237868
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/fixgov/2020/06/19/what-does-defund-the-police-mean-and-does-it-have-merit/