Your extract deals with the positive sides of globalization. Your partner’s extract presents a totally different point of view. Share the information you have and discuss the issue.

There is no doubt that globalization is the most important socio-economic phenomenon of this generation. With every day that passes, the world becomes more and more like a global village, as trade, technology and the information age erode national boundaries and transform the planet into one enormous metropolis, wired together by the Internet, fax modems and jet aircraft.

The effect has been profound and has affected every area of our lives--the economy, transportation, government, the media, culture, even personal friendships and family life. Intensification of commercial, investment and technological exchanges between different regions, facilitation of contacts between people, knowledge sharing, and a better understanding of different cultures are undoubtedly beneficial for mankind.

Economically, market integration has been beneficial for global prosperity as new trade and investment instruments and the removal of barriers in emerging economies have unleashed an unprecedented flow of capital. Over the past decade, for example, the ratio of trade to work GDP rose three times faster than in the previous decade, while investment has increased at an even higher rate.

Politically, globalization has meant the triumph of liberal democracy over totalitarian and authoritarian regimes and the universal acceptance of, if not always respect for, fundamental human rights. On the whole it does look as though a global information society has a structural relationship to the expansion of parliamentary democracy. Even if you take quite a narrow definition of successful parliamentary democracy, there are three times as many democratic states in the world — even allowing for the growth of the total number of states in the world — as there were 30 years ago.

STUDENT 2

Your extract deals with the negative sides of globalization. Your partner’s extract presents a totally different point of view. Share the information you have and discuss the issue.

Globalization raises new challenges. Many dangers like ecological and technological calamities, transnational crime, international terrorism, and others acquire a regional and sometimes, even a global character. The uncontrolled expansion of low-quality, mass cultural models negatively impacts national and traditional cultures of different peoples, and threatens their originality. Development of globalization is also accompanied by dangers to national economies. Moreover, because of the non-uniform distribution of advantages of globalization, negative sides of this process will have a stronger impact on developing countries, leaving a number of countries on the edge of progress or even outside it.

Transnational Corporations become the main economic organizations; they place their factories and trade their goods where it is most convenient for them, irregardless of borders. As a result, international division of labor is intensifying, and within a country, even if it is a developed one, emerge: “double” economies, “blossoming enclaves”, “donor regions”, and “credit-receiving regions”. Whole regions are being transformed into suppliers of raw materials and markets for transnational corporations, without developing their own production. The gap between rich countries and poor countries is continuously increasing.

Last but not least, as strange as it might seem, but globalization limits democracy, because in order to influence a community it is enough to influence the elite, which is a model for imitation. As a result, the potential of democracy is reduced to 20-30 per cent of population. In most of the countries two social classes emerge - one of them participates in the creation of people’s awareness and gains a profit from it, and the rest are just subjects that are influenced. I believe this is one of the reasons for mankind’s repulsive reaction towards globalization.

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