Questões de Concurso

Read the text about a tribute to Franz Kafka for the question

Google Doodle celebrates Franz Kafka’s 130th birthday with ‘The Metamorphosis’ tribute Google has created a ‘doodle’ in tribute to Franz Kafka on the 130th anniversary of the Germanlanguage novelist’s birth.

The doodle is based on Kafka’s 1915 novella ‘The Metamorphosis’ – considered by many to be one of the most important works of fiction of the 20th Century – and shows the character Gregor Samsa walking into a room in the guise of a large insect.

In the much-celebrated work, Samsa is a travelling salesman who transforms into an insect overnight. The rest of novella focuses on his struggle to come to terms with his new existence and the burden it places on his family.

Kafka was born into an Ashkenazi Jewish family on 3 July 1883 in Prague, which was then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire.

He originally trained as a lawyer but began writing short stories in his spare time - eventually coming to consider it his calling – despite only a handful of his works being published during his lifetime.

Regarded as one of the 20th Century’s most influential authors, Kafka’s works are dominated by unreliable narrators who often tell dark tales of existentialist difficulties.

Kafka’s notoriously difficult relationship with his father Hermann is believed to have strongly influenced his work – with The Metamorphosis itself thought to be based upon Kafka’s own fears of insignificance and repulsiveness to his own family.

From: HALL, John. Available at:<http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/google-doodlecelebrates-franz-kafkas-130th-birthday-with-the-metamorphosis-tribute-8685557.html>.

Characteristics of a good test

In order to judge the effectiveness of any test, it is sensible to lay down criteria against which the test can be measured, as follows:

Validity: a test is valid if it tests what it is supposed to test. Thus it is not valid, for example, to test writing ability with an essay question that demands specialist knowledge of history or biology — unless it is known that all students share this knowledge before they do the test.

A particular kind of ‘validity’ that concerns most test designers is face validity. This means that the test should look, on the ‘face’ of it, as if it is valid. A test which consisted of only three multiple choice items would not convince students of its face validity however reliable or practical teachers thought it to be.

Reliability: a good test should give consistent results. For example, if the same group of students took the same test twice within two days — without reflecting on the first test before they sat it again — they should get the same results on each occasion. If two groups who were demonstrably alike took the test, the marking range would be the same.

In practice, ‘reliability’ is enhanced by making the test instructions absolutely clear, restricting the scope for variety in the answers. Reliability also depends on the people who mark the tests. Clearly a test is unreliable if the result depends to any large extent on who is marking it. Much thought has gone into making the scoring of tests as reliable as possible.

(Jeremy Harmer. The practice of English language teaching.2007. Adaptado)