Commercial Documentation in English. Учебное пособие

Reading Comprehension Practice

English Business Letters

1. Read and translate the text:

Letter writing is an essential part of business communication. A cheque, a contract or any other business paper sent by mail or e–mail should always be accompanied by letter. The letter says what is being sent, so that the recipient should know exactly you intended to send. It is a typical business letter called “routine”. A well arranged letter will make a better impression on the reader, thus good letter make good business partners.

There are three stages of transactions involving business contracts: first – negotiation of terms, second – drafting documents, reflecting these terms, and third – litigation (спор) to enforce or to avoid executing these terms. Business letters are divided into official and semi–official. The first kind of letter is characteristic of those people working in the business: an executive manager, a sales manager, a specialist in business and technology. But also people may want to buy something, to accept an invitation or to congratulate somebody – this is kind of semi–official letter. The first kind of letter may in turn be subdivided into such groups as: enquiries, offers, orders, complaints, adjustments, advertising and answering letters. The enquiry is the request of detailed information about the goods in question, their prices and terms of possible transaction. A business transaction often starts with an enquiry which may later be followed by an offer. Both enquiry and order are meant to arise and stimulate business activity on the part of recipient. They are typically asking letters. Orders express the writer’s intention to do business with his correspondent, usually to buy some goods from them. Mistakes can happen no matter how efficient a business firm tries to be. There might be misunderstanding about the goods to be supplied; sometimes the consignment is dispatched too late or delays are caused in transit:

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defect is discovered when the equipment is put into operation and so on. Letters are written in response to claim may be called adjustments. These letters are among the most difficult to write as they require under all circumstances patience, tact, diplomacy. You will not lose your customer if you react at his claim promptly.

A Memo Letter

A memorandum (a memo) is a very common form of business which is exchanged between members of the same organization. The memo usually focuses on one message or piece of information, and often request action to be taken. It may be sent to a single or a group of people. There are many different techniques used in memo writing, but several basic rules should always be applied:

Since memos are a little less formal than business letters, it is best way to use simple language.

Keep your memo clear, use short, simple sentences. A memo should not be longer than one page.

The opening and closing formula can be more direct and less formal than in a letter.

2. Answer the questions:

1.What groups may business letters be subdivided?

2.What is memo?

3.Who writes memos?

4.What are the rules of memo–writing?

What is the Manager?

1. Read and translate the text:

A number of different terms are often used instead of the term «manager», including «director», «administrator», «president». The term «manager» is used more frequently in profit–making organizations, while the others are used more widely in government and non–profit organizations such as universities, hospitals and social work agencies.

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Reading Сomprehension Practice

So, who do we call a manager? In its broad meaning the term «manager» applies to the people who are responsible for making and carrying out decision within a certain system. A personnel manager directly supervises people in an organization. Financial manager is a person who is responsible for finance. Sales manager is responsible for selling products.

Almost everything a manager involves decision–making. When a problem exists a manager has to make a decision to solve it. In decision–making there is always some uncertainty and risk.

Management is a variety of specific activities. Management is a function of planning, organizing, coordinating, directing and controlling. Any managerial system, at managerial level, is characterized in terms of these general functions. Managing is a responsible and hard job. There is a lot to be done and relatively little time to do it. In all types of organizations managerial efficiency depends on manager’s direct personal relationships, hard work on a variety of activities and preference for active tasks.

A bank manager, who is responsible for a branch of business, usually begins his career as loan officer and acquires skills and experiments going through several jobs. Bank loan offices make initial contacts with new customers, accept their loan application and assist them how to fill out a loan request.

Managers of the accounting and operation division control and direct one of the leading business areas concerned with financial planning through the interpretation and use of financial data for one thing. They are in charge of processing commercial transactions and clearing on behalf of their customers for another. Managers of the operations division of a bank supervise the work of teller (банкомат) and handle customers’ problem with their checking accounts. The maintaining and improving the bank’s facilities are also in their line of business as well as security problems. The scope of their business demands that manager in the bank’s accounting and operations division should have solid training in the field of business and financial management and sufficient knowledge in up–to–date computer network system.

The characteristics of management often vary according to national culture, which can determine how managers are trained, how they lead people and how they approach their jobs.

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The amount of responsibility of any individual in a company depends on the position that he or she occupies in its hierarchy. Managers, for example, are responsible for leading the people directly under them, who are called subordinates. To do this successfully, they must use their authority, which is the right to take decisions and give orders. Managers often delegate authority. This means that employees at lower levels in the company hierarchy can use their initiative that is to make decisions without asking their manager.

2. Answer the questions:

1.What is manager’s role in an organization?

2.What concrete activities are production manager, financial manager, personnel manager, marketing manager responsible for?

3.What is the difference between sales management and marketing management?

4.What does it mean to delegate authorities?

Banking

1. Read and translate the text:

Banking is the transactions carried on by any person or firm engaged in providing financial services to consumers or businesses.

For these purposes there exist commercial banks, central banks, savings banks, trust companies, finance companies and merchant banks. Banking consists of safeguarding and transfer of funds, lending or facilitating loans, guaranteeing creditworthiness and exchange of money. In other words, banking is the acceptance, transfer, and creation of deposits. The depository institutions are central banks, commercial banks, savings and loan associations, building societies, and mutual savings banks.

Safeguarding and transfer of funds

Vaults and safes are the means for safeguarding of funds. Money is physically stored there. These physical deposits are in most cases insured against theft, and against the bank being bankrupt and unable to repay the funds. In some banks customers

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can use safety deposit boxes for valuables. To save money in bank is profitable because bank customers receive interest given on savings accounts, a percentage return on the banks investments with the money.

Transfer of funds can be handled through written instruments: contracts, cheques, or direct transfers performed electronically. Nowadays banks provide the customers with additional ways of gaining access to their funds and using them. These are credit cards and account debit cards, electronic cash tills, computer on–line banking, and other services.

Automated clearing houses perform similar services for business customers by handling regular payments, such as wages, for a company banking with the bank. Longer–term schemes for providing regular income on savings are often offered through trust funds or other investment schemes.

Lending and loans

Loans to bank customers are drawn on the funds deposited with the bank and yield interest which provides the profits for the banking industry and the interest on savings accounts. These loans may take the form of mortgages or other policies. Banks may guarantee credit for customers who wish to obtain loans from other institutions. They also provide foreign exchange facilities for individual customers, as well as handling large international money transfers.

2.Answer the following questions:

1.What is banking?

2.What kinds of banks exist there?

3.What are the depository institutions?

4.What are the vaults and safes used for?

5.Why is it profitable to save money in banks?

6.How can the transfer of funds be done?

7.How can the customers gain access to their funds and use

them?

8.What are loans to bank customers drawn on?

9.Do banks give the interest on savings accounts?

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Banks

1. Read and translate the text:

Banks are organizations that carry out the business of banking, taking deposits and then using those deposits to make loans. In essence, a bank aims to make a profit by paying depositors a lower rate of interest than the rate the bank charges borrowers. In accounting terms, deposits are considered liabilities (because they have to be repaid), and loans are considered assets.

Banks in most countries are supervised by a central bank, such as the Bank of England in the United Kingdom, the Bundesbank in Germany, the Federal Reserve System in the United States and the Central Bank in Russia.

There are many different types of bank, and the banking structure varies from one country to another. Banks can fall into the following categories:

Retail banks are often referred to as commercial banks. In addition to conventional banking services, such as the provision of chequing accounts, they deal in foreign exchange, issue credit cards, provide investment and tax advice, and sell financial products such as insurance. In the United Kingdom the biggest retail banks (by assets) are Barclays Bank, National Westminster Bank, Midland Bank, Abbey National Bank and Lloyds Bank.

Merchant or investment banks act as intermediaries between investors and private or public concerns seeking medium to long– term funds, often acting as underwriters for an issue of shares. Increasingly they have played a fundamental role in advising on mergers and acquisitions, and on management buy–outs. In the United Kingdom, some of the longest established and best–known merchant banks are still privately owned.

Building societies were set up in the United Kingdom to take deposits in order to provide long–term loans (mortgages) to homebuyers. They are owned by their members (those who have deposited money with or borrowed money from them).

Savings Banks were set up with the aim of attracting small savers. They resemble retail banks in the services they provide.

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Reading Сomprehension Practice

Credit unions are the equivalents of savings banks, and are run as a cooperative nonprofit–making organization. Credit unions are widespread in the United States. France’s biggest bank, Credit Agricole, is essentially a federation of more than 3,000 credit unions.

Universal banks are those, such as Germany’s Deutsche Bank, Dresden Bank, and Commerzbank, which do everything that the above types of banks do.

2. Answer the questions:

1.What does banking business consist of?

2.What are the aims of banks?

3.What are the types of banks?

4.Describe the activities of different types of banks.

Money and its Functions

1. Read and translate the text:

The main feature of money is its acceptance as the means of payment or medium of exchange. Nevertheless, money has other functions. It is a standard of value, a unit of account, a store of value and a standard of deferred payment.

The Medium of Exchange

Money, the medium of exchange, is used in one–half of almost all exchange. Workers work for money. People buy and sell goods in exchange for money. We accept money not to consume it directly but because it can subsequently be used to buy things we do wish to consume. Money is the medium through which people exchange goods and services.

In barter economy there is no medium of exchange. Goods are traded directly or swapped for other goods.

In a barter economy, the seller and the buyer each must want something the other has to offer. Each person is simultaneously a seller and a buyer. There is a double coincidence of wants.

Trading is very expensive in a barter economy. People must spend a lot of time and effort finding others with whom they can

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make mutually satisfactory swaps. Since time and effort are scarce resources, a barter economy is wasteful.

Money is generally accepted in payment for goods, services, and debts and makes the trading process simpler and more efficient.

Other Functions of Money

Money can also serve as a standard of value. Society considers it convenient to use a monetary unit to determine relative costs of different goods and services. In this function money appears as the unit of account, is the unit in which prices are quoted and accounts are kept.

To be accepted in exchange, money has to be a store of value. Money is a store of value because it can be used to make purchases in the future.

Houses, stamp collections, and interest–bearing bank accounts all serve as stores of value. Since money pays no interest and its real purchasing power is eroded by inflation, there are almost certainly better ways to store value.

Finally, money serves as a standard of deferred payment or a unit of account over time. When you borrow, the amount to be repaid next year is measured in money value.

Different Kinds of Money

Golden coins are the examples of commodity money, because their gold content is a commodity.

A token money is a means of payment whose value or purchasing power as money greatly exceeds its cost of production or value in uses other than as money.

A $10 note is worth far more as money than as a 3x6 inch piece of high–quality paper. Similarly, the monetary value of most coins exceeds the amount you would get by melting them down and selling off the metals they contain. By collectively agreeing to use token money, society economizes on the scarce resources required to produce money as a medium of exchange. Since the manufacturing costs are tiny, why doesn’t everyone make $10 notes? The essential condition for the survival of token money is the restriction of the right to supply it. Private production is illegal.

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Reading Сomprehension Practice

Society enforces the use of token money by making it legal tender. The law says it must be accepted as a means of payment. In modern economies, token money is supplemented by IOU money. An IOU money is a medium of exchange based on the debt of a private firm or individual.

A bank deposit is IOU money because it is a debt of the bank. When you have a bank deposit the bank owes you money. You can write a cheque to yourself or a third party and the bank is obliged to pay whenever the cheque is presented. Bank deposits are a medium of exchange because they are generally accepted as payment.

2. Find English equivalents for the following:

1)средство платежа;

2)средство обращения; мера стоимости;

3)средство сбережения (средство сохранения стоимости);

4)единица учета;

5)средств погашения долга;

6)в обмен на;

7)может быть впоследствии использовано;

8)обмениваться товарами и услугами;

9)бартерная экономика;

10)обесцененный;

11)платить проценты;

12)изменяться;

13)покупательная способность;

14)промышленное использование;

15)потребительское использование;

16)деньги – товар;

17)денежные знаки (символические деньги);

3. Answer the questions:

1.What main functions does money have?

2.Is there any medium of exchange in barter economy?

3.What kinds of money do you know?

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Electronic Money and Banking

1. Read and translate the text:

Electronic money (also known as e–money, electronic cash, electronic currency, digital money, digital cash or digital currency) refers to money which is exchanged only electronically. Internet currency was a form of electronic money for the Internet. Typically, this involves use of computer networks, the internet and digital stored value systems. Financial cryptography and technologies based on it enable to fulfill it.

While electronic money has been an interesting problem for cryptography, to date, use of digital cash has been relatively low– scale. Technically electronic or digital money is a representation, or a system of debits and credits, used to exchange value, within another system, or itself as a stand alone system, online or offline. Also sometimes the term electronic money is used to refer to the provider itself. A private currency may use gold to provide extra security, such as digital gold currency.

Although digital cash can provide many benefits such as convenience and privacy, increased efficiency of transactions, lower transaction fees, new business opportunities with the expansion of economic activities on the Internet, there are many potential issues with the use of digital cash. The transfer of digital currencies raises local issues such as how to levy taxes or the possible ease of money laundering. There are also potential macroeconomic effects such as exchange rate instabilities and shortage of money supplies (total amount of digital cash versus total amount of real cash available, basically the possibility that digital cash could exceed the real cash available). These issues may only be addressable by some type of cyberspace regulations or laws that regulate the transactions and watch for signs of trouble.

An e–commerce payment system facilitates the acceptance of electronic payment for online transactions. Also known as Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), e–commerce payment systems have become increasingly popular due to the widespread use of the internet–based shopping and banking. In the early years of B2C

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