Unit 7. Innovations

Lead-in

Exercise 1. Starting up:

1. How does economy benefit from technological and other innovations?

2. Do you usually talk loudly or quietly into your mobiles? When do you have to talk loudly? Does it irritate you when somebody talks over the phone loudly?

3. Can you find any excuses for those who talk loudly over the phone?

Exercise 2. Work in two teams. Make up a list of the innovations that made a great impact on the development of the world economy.

Listening

Exercise 3. Match the words and phrases with their definitions:

1. earbuds	вмонтировать, встраивать
2. an inevitable consequence	шумоподавляющие характеристики
3. inconsiderate	исчезать
4. advance	устранять
5. a show-off	делать выбор в пользу чего-либо
6. to opt for something	крошечный
7. noise-cancelling features	собеседник
8. to vanish	неизбежное последствие
9. an interlocutor	невнимательный
10. a background noise	успех, прогресс
11. to eliminate	человек, который любит похваляться, привлекать к себе внимание
12. to build into	наушники «пуговки»
13. tiny	фоновый шум

Exercise 4. Listen to the report on noise-cancelling technologies and say why people talk loudly into their mobiles and if there are any excuses for them at present day? (“The Economist”, February 13^th 2010)

Exercise 5. Listen to the report again and fill in the gaps in the script using the target vocabulary from Exercise 3.

Opting for the quiet life

Tiny microphones provide a new way to eliminate _______________________

Many of those who talk loudly into their mobile phones are just inconsiderate ___________________ for whom no punish­ment is too evil. Sometimes, however, there is an excuse. Noise in the background can make it hard for your interlocutor to hear what you are saying. Raised voices are an __________________________________________.

Soon, though, this __________________ will vanish. ________________ advances in manufacturing techniques, which allow miniature me­chanical components to be built into elec­tronic chips, it is now possible to add better _____________________________ features to phones, and also to other products, such as the small “earbuds” used to listen to music players.

Vocabulary and Reading

Exercise 6. Study the definitions of the English phrases and translate the examples into Russian:

• to tear apart / to disassemble – to dismantle, take to pieces;

• manufacturing trends – general production tendencies (Jeremie Bouchaud and his colleagues at the German office of iSuppliare increasingly finding a new sort of tiny microphones in the products which they tear apart in order to identify manufacturing trends);

• setting – a position on the controls of a piece of equipment;

• office hubbub – a loud noise, especially caused by a lot of people all talking at the same time (The earbuds have three separate settings: one for planes, one for trains and buses, and one for general office hubbub)

• to emerge – to appear (Other uses are emerging);

• elaborate – containing a lot of careful detail or many detailed parts;

• signal processing – performing different operations with electronic or sound waves (It also allows for elaborate signal processing);

• to suppress – to prevent, to end by force (In effect it turns an electronic ear towards someone who is speaking – when communicating with Skype, say – and thus suppresses back­ground noises);

• interference – electic noise that makes difficult to hear (see) radio (tv) programme clearly (to protect against electro-magnetic interference);

• circuitry – a system of paths where electric current flows around (MEMs microphone complete with the circuitry needed for digital output).

Exercise 7. Read the report on innovations in cell phones and decide if the following statements are true (T) or false (F):

1. Amar Bose designed pilots’ headphones that reduce the noise in the office.

2. Small mikes are easier to fit into earpieces.

3. Tiny mikes use a technology known as MEMS.

4. Nokia has been working with Apples to produce a wireless headset for mobile phones and music players that uses ten MEMS microphones.

5. Digital output helps protect against radio and electromagnetic interference.

6. Using more than one microphone improves sound quality.