Unit IX

WORD-STUDY

Exercise 1. Check the translation in a dictionary, read and translate the words listed below.

Nouns

achievement, disposal, resource, statistics, figure, volunteer, spouse.

Verbs

evaluate, accept, complete.

Adjectives

total, perfect, meaningful, foreign.

Adverbs

consequently, completely, rarely, commonly.

Exercise 2. Make adjectives from nouns using the suffixes:

Model: noun+-ful-: (use-useful); meaning, help, success.

UNDERSTANDING A PRINTED TEXT

HOW ARE THE WORLD'S ECONOMIES COMPARED?

If a small country like Ireland or Sri Lanka were to win all of the gold medals at the Summer Olympics, it would mean a lot more than a victory by a large country like China or the United States. In the same way, it would be difficult to evaluate the economic achievements of any country without looking at its size and the resources at its disposal.

It is rarely useful, for example, to compare the economic statistics of different countries by using figures in the local currency. What does it mean to say that during the 1980s the Soviet Union spent more than forty trillion rubles per year on their military? How does this relate to spending in other countries where ruble figures mean little?

In order to compare countries around the world, economic statistics have to be related to the country's size or translated into a commonly accepted unit of measure. The Soviet Union's military spending in the 1980s, for example, can be compared to the military spending of other countries by relating it to the size of its total economy, measured either by GDP (gross domestic product) or GNP (gross national product). It would then become meaningful to say that Soviet military spending was 20 percent of its GDP, compared to U.S. military spending of 8 percent of its GDP during the same period.

GDP is often used to compare spending figures of different countries because it represents only the domestic production of goods and services. GDP is useful for comparing countries' sizes because it does not include the international components

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