⬛ TEXTO 3 (clique para abrir / fechar)
The arm of Liberty
Anonymous
The Statue of Liberty is probably the ______ icon of the USA.
When the American Civil war ended, Édouard de Laboulaye wanted to commemorate the end of the slave trade with a gift. He and other people who opposed slavery raised money and hired a sculptor, Frédéric-Auguste Bartholdi, to design the Statue. Bartholdi later employed the French engineer, Gustave Eiffel, to devise its structure.
Eiffel designed the Statue to be built around a massive metal skeleton, similar to the Eiffel Tower. In 2018, a map dealer bought some historic papers at an auction in Paris, which included original plans. After special treatment, the papers clearly showed that Eiffel’s plans had been changed by Bartholdi.
We don’t know what Eiffel thought of Bartholdi’s changes. By then, Eiffel was working on other projects, and only his assistants were working with Bartholdi.
At first, visitors could climb a ladder to the torch in Liberty’s arm, but in 1916, there was an explosion on a nearby island. It damaged the Statue and made it unsafe, and the stairway to the torch has been closed ever since. During restoration work in the 1980s, engineers noticed that the structure inside Liberty’s head, shoulders, and arm were different from how they were shown on Eiffel’s plans. They thought that the builders had made mistakes, but some historians believed that Bartholdi had changed Eiffel’s design. The newly discovered papers confirm those theories.
🔗 Adapted from: https://test-english.com/reading
🟨 QUESTÃO 35
Choose the alternative which refers to the pronoun “They” in bold in the text.
🄰 historians
🄱 shoulders
🄲 engineers
🄳 plans
🔐 Gabarito trancado (clique para revelar)
🧭 1️⃣ Leitura orientada
O pronome “They” retoma o sujeito imediatamente anterior da frase. No texto, quem notou as diferenças estruturais e pensou que havia erros foram os engineers.
📝 2️⃣ Análise técnica das alternativas
(A) ❌ historians
Os historiadores aparecem depois, com uma opinião diferente.
🚩 Pegadinha: proximidade temática, mas não sintática.
(B) ❌ shoulders
“Shoulders” é parte da estátua, não agente de pensamento.
🚩 Pegadinha: palavra próxima ao pronome, mas semanticamente impossível.
(C) ✅ engineers
São eles que observaram a estrutura e formularam a primeira hipótese.
🚩 Pegadinha: exige leitura atenta da cadeia referencial.
(D) ❌ plans
“Plans” são objetos, não podem “think”.
🚩 Pegadinha: confundir referência gramatical com proximidade lexical.
🧠 Resumo Final
✔ Pronome retoma o sujeito anterior
✔ “They” refere-se aos engineers
✔ Leitura sintática evita confusão temática
🎯 Gabarito confirmado: (C)