Prefeitura de Porto Xavier 2018 — Questão 33 · Língua Inglesa - Compreensão e Interpretação de Texto

Instruction: Answer questions 31 to 40 based on the following text.

Oxford English Dictionary asks teenagers to explain modern slang

1. The venerable Oxford English Dictionary has launched an appeal to teenagers, hoping they
2. can help it get to grips with slippery teenage slang such as “hench” and “dank”.
3. Citing its aim to “record all distinctive words that shape the language, old and new, formal
4. and informal”, the OED said that slang terms were “always challenging” for dictionary editors
5. to track. Young people’s language today is “particularly elusive”, because terms change rapidly
6. and communication methods such as WhatsApp and Snapchat have made it more difficult to
7. monitor the changing vocabulary.
8. In …. youth slang appeal, the dictionary is asking children and teenagers to send in
9. examples of current slang words, either on Twitter at #youthslangappeal or via ….. website.
10. Adults are also invited to contribute, if they have examples of young people using “words that
11. are completely unfamiliar to you – or familiar words in very unfamiliar ways”.
12. OED senior editor Fiona McPherson said: “Lexicographers are used to _______ and
13. _______ language change. Yet, there’s something particularly innovative and elusive about
14. the way that young people adapt existing vocabulary to make new words, and in doing so
15. create what seems like a secret lexicon to those not in the know. Given that most of us at the
16. OED left our teenage years behind some time ago, who better to help us identify creative new
17. words and meanings than those who created and used them in the first place?”
18. The OED has been tracking a new sense of the word “bare” for a number of years, it said,
19. citing a 2009 example from Twitter: “Friday is going to be the BUSIEST day of my life I think.
20. Bare things poppin’ off.” It will publish an entry for the slang term at the end of the year, with
21. a draft version identifying it as chiefly British slang, meaning “many or much; a lot of”. The
22. OED says this usage “appears to have emerged in Caribbean English, and evolved from the
23. sense ‘nothing but, too much of’”.
24. Other words it will be considering include “dank”, meaning “cool or great”, and “hench”,
25. meaning “fit and muscular”. Words used by younger people “often have a bigger story to tell
26. about varieties of English used by particular ethnic or cultural groups, and ….. influence on the
27. language as a whole”, said the dictionary. The dictionary will be offering UK state schools free
28. access to the OED online for this academic year in conjunction with its appeal.

Source: adapted from https://www.theguardian.com/books/2018/sep/19/oed-appeals-to-teenagers-to-help-it-understand-slang-dictionary

Consider the following statements:

I. Lexicographers are used to _____ and _____ language change.” (l.12-13), the blanks should be filled in by ‘observing’ and ‘recording’

BECAUSE

II. We use ‘be used to’ to talk about habits or repeated actions in the past which we don't do in the present.

Considering the sentences above,