Insurance

1. Insurance plays a central role in the functioning of modern economies. Life insurance offers protection against the economic impact of an untimely death; health insurance covers the sometimes extraordinary costs of medical care; and bank deposits are insured by the federal government. In each case a small premium is paid by the insured to receive benefits should an unlikely but high-cost event occur.

2. An understanding of insurance must begin with the concept of risk, or the variation in possible outcomes of a situation. A shipment of goods to Europe might arrive safely or might be lost in transit. A person may incur zero medical expenses in a good year, but if he is struck by a car, they could be upward of $100,000.

3. We cannot eliminate risk from life, even at extraordinary expense. Paying extra for double-hulled tankers still leaves oil spills possible. The only way to eliminate auto-related injuries is to eliminate automobiles. Thus, the effective response to risk combines two elements: efforts or expenditures to lessen the risk, and the purchase of insurance against the risk that remains.

Завершите утверждение согласно содержанию текста.

The effective reaction to the risk is …}

+: [the acquisition of insurance against it and attempts to lessen the risk}

-: {elimination of the risk and attempts to avoid it in future}

-: {elimination of insurance against it}

-: {paying extra money for safety}

V2: {Изучающее чтение с элементами анализа информации}

I: {{149}}

S: {Прочитайте текст и выполните задания.

Psychology

1. Psychology is a discipline that involves the scientific study of human or animal mental functions and behaviors. In this field, a professional practitioner or researcher is called a psychologist. Psychologists attempt to understand the role of mental functions in individual and social behavior, while also exploring underlying physiological and neurological processes.

2. Psychologists study such topics as perception, cognition, attention, emotion, motivation, brain functioning, personality, behavior, and interpersonal relationships. Some, especially depth psychologists, also consider the unconscious mind. Experimental psychologists try to determine causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables.

3. Psychological knowledge is applied to various spheres of human activity, including the family, education, employment, and the treatment of mental health problems, as well as wider historical dimensions such as the attainment of greatness in fields such as politics, music, art, and literature. Psychology includes many diverse sub-fields, such as developmental psychology, sport psychology, health psychology, industrial and organizational psychology, media psychology, legal psychology, and forensic psychology.

Ответьтенавопрос

What branches can psychology be subdivided into?}

+: {It can be subdivided into developmental psychology, health psychology, industrial psychology and other branches.}

-: {It can be subdivided into cognition, attention, emotion, motivation, brain functioning, personality, behavior.}

-: {It can be subdivided into causal and correlational relationships between psychosocial variables.}

-: {It can be subdivided into historical dimensions such as politics, music, art, and literature.}

I: {{150}}

S: {Прочитайте текст и выполните задания.

Geography

1. Geography as a discipline can be split broadly into two main subfields: human geography and physical geography. The former focuses largely on the built environment and how space is created, viewed and managed by humans as well as the influence humans have on the space they occupy. The latter examines the natural environment and how the climate, vegetation and life, soil, water and landforms are produced and interact. As a result of the two subfields using different approaches a third field has emerged, which is environmental geography.

2. Geographers attempt to understand the earth in terms of physical and spatial relationships. The first geographers focused on the science of mapmaking and finding ways to precisely project the surface of the earth. In this sense, geography bridges some gaps between the natural sciences and social sciences. Historical geography is often taught in a college in a unified Department of Geography.

3. Modern geography is an all-encompassing discipline, closely related to GISc, that seeks to understand humanity and its natural environment. Practitioners of geography use many technologies and methods to collect data such as GIS, remote sensing, aerial photography, statistics, and global positioning systems (GPS).

Ответьтенавопрос

What are the sources of environmental geography?}

+: {They are human geography and physical geography.}

-: {They are human geography and modern geography.}

-: {They are physical geography and modern geography.}

-: {They are historical geography and modern geography.}

I: {{151}}

S: {Прочитайте текст и выполните задания.

Law

1. Law in common parlance means a rule which (unlike a rule of ethics) is capable of enforcement through institutions. The study of law crosses the boundaries between the social sciences and humanities, depending on one's view of research into its objectives and effects. Law is not always enforceable, especially in the international relations context. It has been defined as a «system of rules», as an «interpretive concept» to achieve justice, as an «authority» to mediate people's interests, and even as "the command of a sovereign, backed by the threat of a sanction".

2. However one likes to think of law, it is a completely central social institution. Legal policy incorporates the practical manifestation of thinking from almost every social sciences and humanity. Laws are politics, because politicians create them. Law is philosophy, because moral and ethical persuasions shape their ideas.

3. Law tells many of history's stories, because statutes, case law and codifications build up over time. And law is economics, because any rule about contract, tort, property law, labour law, company law and many more can have long lasting effects on the distribution of wealth.

Ответьтенавопрос

Why can law be called a part of philosophy?}

+: {Because laws are made on the basis of moral and ethical beliefs.}

-: {Because law is a part of many sciences.}

-: {Because law is one of humanities as well as social sciences.}

-: {Because laws may have long lasting effects on sciences.}

I: {{152}}

S: {Прочитайте текст и выполните задания.

Education

1. Education has as one of its fundamental aspects the imparting of culture from generation to generation. It is an application of pedagogy, a body of theoretical and applied research relating to teaching and learning and draws on many disciplines such as psychology, philosophy, computer science, linguistics, neuroscience, sociology and anthropology.

2. The education of an individual human begins at birth and continues throughout life. Some believe that education begins even before birth, as evidenced by some parents' playing music or reading to the baby in the womb in the hope it will influence the child's development.

3. For some, the struggles and triumphs of daily life provide far more instruction than does formal schooling (thus Mark Twain's admonition to "never let school interfere with your education"). Family members may have a profound educational effect – often more profound than they realize – though family teaching may function very informally.

Ответьтенавопрос

Why do some parents try to educate an unborn baby?}

+: {They believe that this can influence the child’s further development.}

-: {They believe that this can educate a future genius.}

-: {They believe that this can make childbirth easy.}

-: {They believe that this can influence the character of the child.}

I: {{153}}

S: {Прочитайте текст и выполните задания.

Linguistics

1. Linguistics investigates the cognitive and social aspects of human language. The field is divided into areas that focus on aspects of the linguistic signal, such as syntax, semantics, morphology, phonetics and phonology; however, work in areas like evolutionary linguistics and psycholinguistics cut across these divisions.

2. The majority of modern research in linguistics takes a predominantly synchronic perspective (focusing on language at a particular point in time), and a great deal of it aims at formulating theories of the cognitive processing of language. However, language does not exist in a vacuum, or only in the brain, and approaches like contact linguistics, creole studies, discourse analysis, social interactional linguistics, and sociolinguistics explore language in its social context.

3. Sociolinguistics often makes use of traditional quantitative analysis and statistics in investigating the frequency of features, while some disciplines, like contact linguistics, focus on qualitative analysis. Ferdinand Saussure is considered the father of modern linguistics.

Ответьтенавопрос

What linguistic discipline makes use of qualitative analysis?}

+: {Contact linguistics does.}

-: {Sociolinguistics does.}

-: {Evolutionary linguistics does.}

-: {Discourse analysis does.}

I: {{154}}

S: {Прочитайте текст и выполните задания.

Demand

1. One of the most important building blocks of economic analysis is the concept of demand. When economists refer to demand, they usually have in mind not just a single quantity demanded, but what is called a demand curve. A demand curve traces the quantity of a good or service that is demanded at successively different prices.

2. The most famous law in economics, and the one that economists are most sure of, is the law of demand. On this law is built almost the whole edifice of economics. The law of demand states that when the price of a good rises, the amount demanded falls, and when the price falls, the amount demanded rises.

3. It is not just price that affects the quantity demanded. Income affects it too. As real income rises, people buy more of some goods (which economists call normal goods) and less of what are called inferior goods. Urban mass transit and railroad transportation are classic examples of inferior goods. That is why the usage of both of these modes of travel declined so dramatically as postwar incomes were rising and more people could afford automobiles.

Ответьтенавопрос.

What factors affect the quantity demanded?}

+: {The quantity demanded is affected by price and real income of population.}

-: {The quantity demanded is affected by price and railroad transportation.}

-: {The quantity demanded is affected by normal goods.}

-: {The quantity demanded is affected by price and inferior goods.}

I: {{155}}

S: {Прочитайте текст и выполните задания.

World Bank

1. World Bank or International Bank for Reconstruction and Development is a multinational institution set up in 1947 to provide economic aid to member countries - mainly developing countries – to strengthen their economics. The Bank has supported a wide range of long-term investments including infrastructure projects such as roads, telecommunications and electricity supply; agriculture and industrial projects including the establishment of new industries, as well as social, training and educational programmes.

2. The Bank's funds come largely from the developed countries, but it also raises money on international capital markets. The Bank operates according to 'business principles' lending at commercial rates of interest only to those governments it feels are capable of servicing and repaying their debts.

3. In 1960, however, it established an affiliate agency, the International Development Association, to provide low-interest loans to its poorer members. Another affiliate of the World Bank is the International Finance Corporation which can invest directly in companies by acquiring shares.

Ответьтенавопрос.

What are business principles of World Bank?}

+: {The Bank lends money at commercial rates of interest to the countries which are capable of repaying their debts.}

-: {The Bank lends money at low rates of interest to the countries which are capable of repaying their debts.}

-: {The Bank lends money at commercial rates of interest to the countries whether they are capable of repaying their debts or not.}

-: {The Bank lends money at low rates of interest to the countries whether they are capable of repaying their debts or not.}

I: {{156}}

S: { Прочитайте текст и выполните задания.

Hyperinflation

1. Inflation is a sustained increase in the aggregate price level. Economists generally reserve the term hyperinflation to describe episodes where the monthly inflation rate is greater than 50 per cent.

2. Hyperinflations are largely a twentieth-century phenomenon. The most widely studied hyperinflation occurred in Germany after World War I. The ratio of the German price index in November 1923 to the price index in August 1922 – just fifteen months earlier – was 1.02 × 1010. This huge number amounts to a monthly inflation rate of 322 per cent.

3. Hyperinflations are caused by extremely rapid growth in the supply of «paper» money. They occur when the monetary and fiscal authorities of a nation regularly issue large quantities of money to pay for a large stream of government expenditures. In effect, inflation is a form of taxation where the government gains at the expense of those who hold money whose value is declining. Hyperinflations are, therefore, very large taxation schemes.

Ответьтенавопрос.

What is hyperinflation caused by?}

+: {It is caused by issuing large amounts of paper money to pay for government expenses.}

-: {It is caused by issuing large amounts of government documents.}

-: {It is caused by rapid growth of industry.}

-: {It is caused by rapid growth of tax rates.}

I: {{157}}

S: {Прочитайте текст и выполните задания.

Privatization

1. Privatization is the process by which the production of goods or services is removed from the government sector of the economy. This has been done in a variety of ways, ranging from the public sale of shares in a previously state-owned enterprise to the use of private businesses to perform government work under contract.

2. The leader in this innovative strategy was the Thatcher government of Great Britain from 1979 to 1990. Previous governments had tried limited denationalization, which is the restoration of nationalized enterprises to their previous owners, but with limited success. Privatization involved totally new owners. In some cases the state enterprises that were «privatized» had never been in the private sector.

3. Governments all over the world were confronted in the seventies by the problems inherent in state ownership. Because state-owned companies have no profit motive, they lack the incentive that private companies have to produce goods that consumers want and to do so at low cost. An additional problem is that even if they want to satisfy consumer demands, they have no way of knowing what consumers want, because consumers indicate their preferences most clearly by their purchases.

Ответьтенавопрос.

What problems do state-owned companies face?}

+: {State-owned companies unlike private ones do not know consumer demands.}

-: {State-owned companies unlike private ones know consumer demands.}

-: {State-owned companies unlike private ones produce goods at low cost.}

-: {State-owned companies unlike private ones have a strong profit motive.}

I: {{158}}

S: {Прочитайте текст и выполните задания.