Практический курс английского языка = Practical Course of English for Students of Economics. Учебное пособие для студентов экономических специальносте

ПРАКТИЧЕСКИЙ КУРС АНГЛИЙСКОГО ЯЗЫКА

PRACTICAL COURSE

OF ENGLISH FOR STUDENTS

OF ECONOMICS

Допущено Министерством образования Республики Беларусь в качестве учебного пособия для студентов учреждений высшего образования по экономическим специальностям

Под редакцией В. С. Слеповича

Минск

«ТетраСистемс»

УДК 811.111(075.8) ББК 81.2Англ-923

П69

А в т о р ы:

старший преподаватель Л. В. Бедрицкая; старший преподаватель Т. К. Глазкова; старший преподаватель Г. И. Сидоренко (кафедра делового

английского языка Белорусского государственного экономического университета); кандидат филологических наук, доцент, зав. кафедрой теории и практики английской речи Белорусского государственного экономического университета Т. Ф. Солонович

Р е ц е н з е н т ы:

кафедра английского языка экономических специальностей факультета международных отношений Белорусского государственного университета; кандидат филологических наук, доцент, зав. кафедрой иностранных языков Института государственной службы Академии управления при Президенте Республики Беларусь А. Г. Храмченков

Практический курс английского языка = Practical Course of П69 English for Students of Economics : учеб. пособие для студентов экон. специальностей вузов / Л. В. Бедрицкая [и др.] ; под ред.

В. С. Слеповича. – Минск : ТетраСистемс, 2012. – 368 с.

ISBN 978-985-536-306-5.

Пособие состоит из двух частей, дополнительных текстов для чтения, ключей к заданиям. Первая и вторая части представляют собой комплекс текстов, подобранных из оригинальных английских и американских источников, и заданий, целью которых является выработка лексических, грамматических навыков, а также навыков устной и письменной речи. Дополнительные тексты для чтения могут быть использованы как в работе по основным разделам, так и для самостоятельной работы.

Пособие предназначено для студентов экономических специальностей вузов и лиц, желающих расширить свои знания английского языка в области экономики и бизнеса.

УДК 811.111(075.8) ББК 81.2Англ-923

2

ПРЕДИСЛОВИЕ

Данное учебное пособие предназначено для студентов экономических специальностей вузов. Структура пособия определяется профессиональными аспектами деятельности специалиста в области экономики и бизнеса и представлена следующими темами:

Economics, Goods and Services, Finance, Business Law (Л. В. Бедрицкая) Business Organization, Management, Marketing, Advertising (Г. И. Сидоренко), Women in Business, Employment, Banking (Т. К. Глазкова), Accounting, Small Business. Entrepreneurship (Т. Ф. Солонович).

Все разделы учебного пособия имеют единую структуру и включают следующие блоки: Lead-in (введение), Reading (тексты по специальности), Language (формально-тренировочные упражнения), Speaking (коммуникативно-содержательные упражнения), Writing (задания, направленные на формирования навыков письменной речи), Key Vocabulary (базовая лексика каждого раздела).

Базовые тексты представлены аутентичными описательными текстами, которые тематически связаны друг с другом и касаются различных сторон темы или расширяют ее. При подборе текстов авторы исходили из методической концепции неразрывности процесса познания и развития навыков работы с текстовым материалом и навыков устной и письменной речи, а также опирались на принцип реализации междисциплинарных связей, когда студенты параллельно получают базовые экономические знания в лекционных курсах по экономическим дисциплинам.

Текстовый материал, предтекстовые и послетекстовые задания направлены на совершенствование речевых навыков студентов неязыковых специальностей путем обучения восприятию и осмыслению прочитанного текста, активизации словарного запаса и речевых структур в процессе репродукции информативного содержания текста, что не исключает дополнительных заданий, которые могут быть составлены преподавателями, работающими с данным учебным пособием.

Лексические, грамматические и фонетические задания даны в блоке Language, но задания по формированию фонетических и лексических навыков могут использоваться в качестве предтекстовых. Все задания построены на активной лексике раздела, часть заданий построена на связных текстах небольшого объема, которые являются дополнительным источником информации по теме раздела. В связи с этим, помимо языковых заданий, даются задания на развитие навыков устной речи. Учитывая достаточно

3

серьезную грамматическую подготовку абитуриентов и наличие большого количества грамматических справочников, авторы ограничились включением лишь небольшого количества грамматических заданий, представляющих определенную трудность для студентов неязыковых вузов. Задания, отмеченные значком *, являются заданиями повышенной трудности и выполняются по усмотрению преподавателя в зависимости от уровня подготовки студентов.

Задания, предлагаемые в блоке Speaking, носят творческий характер и направлены на формирование коммуникативных навыков в условно-заданных речевых ситуациях, а также творческого мышления и умения формулировать собственное мнение. Особое внимание уделяется обучению всем видам пересказа, формированию навыков диалогической речи, выражению своей позиции через согласие/несогласие, а также умений аргументированно доказывать или опровергать предложенный тезис.

Целью заданий блока Writing является формирование навыков академического письма и такой важнейшей компетенции студента экономического вуза, как умение составлять целевые и обзорные рефераты, аннотации, эссе, отзывы.

Раздел Supplementary Reading содержит аутентичные тексты, дающие дополнительную информацию по темам основных разделов. Тексты данного раздела могут быть использованы как для формирования навыков различных видов чтения, так и для развития речевых навыков при выполнении заданий из блока Discussion. Эти тексты могут также служить материалом для обучения студентов реферированию и аннотированию текстов. Краткое руководство по составлению реферата и аннотации дано в Приложении (Appendix). Кроме того, эти тексты дают возможность дифференцировать обучение в зависимости от языковой компетенции студентов.

Учитывая увеличение времени, отводимого на самостоятельную работу студентов в учебном процессе, авторы снабдили часть заданий ключами, что позволит снять часть нагрузки с аудиторных занятий.

4

PART I

Unit 1

E C O N O M I C S

; Lead-in

Economics is exciting and important. Anyone who thinks otherwise has failed to realize that economic ideas and practices have moved people to rebellion, and nations to war. Many of the great issues that confront us today – among them unemployment, inflation, ecological decay – have economic roots. In order to diagnose and remedy these ailments, we must first understand their complex nature.

Milton H. Spencer

1.Do you share the opinion that economics is exciting and important? Give your reasons.

2.How can economics help understand the nature of such ailments as unemployment, inflation, etc.?

3.List the main economic problems affecting the world today. How can the knowledge of economics help solve them?

4.Why are Rembrandts expensive while water is cheap – especially since everyone needs water more than Rembrandts?

5.Why are some luxury apartments vacant while there is shortage of low-cost housing?

6.Why do the prices of some commodities fluctuate while the prices of others remain stable?

;Reading

Text 1

Read the text. Be ready to answer the following questions: 1. Why is it important to learn economic terminology? 2. What is an economic institution? 3. How can cultural norms affect economies? 4. What is meant by ‘economic reasoning’?

Introduction

Economists have developed the terminology to describe economic issues. This terminology is important because if you are going to talk about the state of the economy, you need the terminology to do it. Shareholder, GDP, GNP, capital, supply and demand, costs, benefits, exchange rate are just a few of the terms the meaning of which any educated person in

5

modern society needs to know. Two terms to be introduced to you immediately are the economy and economics. The economy is the institutional structure through which individuals in a society coordinate their diverse wants or desires. Economics is the study of the economy. That is, economics is the study of how human beings in a society coordinate their wants and desires.

An economic institution is a physical or mental structure that significantly influences economic decisions. Corporations, governments, and cultural norms are all economic institutions. Many economic institutions have social, political, and religious dimensions. For example, your job often influences your social standing. In addition, many social institutions, such as family, have economic functions. If any institution significantly affects economic decisions, it can be considered as an economic institution. Even cultural norms can affect economies. A cultural norm is a standard people use when they determine whether a particular activity or behaviour is acceptable.

Learning economic reasoning means learning how to think as an economist. People trained in economics think in a certain way. They analyze everything critically. Having put their emotions aside, they compare the costs and the benefits of every issue and make decisions based on those costs and benefits.

Text 2

Read the text. Be ready to answer the questions below it and explain the key terms of the text given both in bold and italics.

Economics

Understanding how various economies work is the basic purpose of studying economics. We seek to know how an economy is organized, how it behaves, and how successfully it achieves its basic objectives.

Economics is concerned with production, distribution, and consumption of goods and services. There are two branches of economics. Macroeconomics (macro derives from the Greek word for “large”) investigates how scarce resources are allocated within the economy as a whole or within an entire industry. Scarcity occurs because human wants exceed the production possible with our limited time and resources. Scarcity implies that every decision involves opportunity costs. Opportunity costs exist in all situations where available resources are not abundant enough to satisfy all our desires. You can select only a few of all available alternatives. For example, a little boy goes into a toy store with $10. Many different toys tempt him, but he finally narrows his choice to a Monopoly game and a magic set, each costing $10. If he decides to

6

buy the Monopoly game, the opportunity cost is the magic set. And if he buys the magic set, the opportunity cost is the Monopoly game. If a town hires an extra police officer instead of repaving several streets, the opportunity cost of hiring the officer is not repaving the streets. Opportunity cost is the cost of giving up the next best alternative. Thus scarcity forces us to choose. This idea is reflected in the following definition of economics: Economics is the study of how people, individually or collectively, allocate their limited resources to try to satisfy their unlimited wants. Commonly agreed-upon goals of macro policy include:

1.High employment. People suffer when many workers cannot find job and manufacturing plants and much machinery are idle.

2.Price stability. If average prices are volatile, people may be uncertain about how much their wages will buy or whether to consume now or invest in hopes of future returns.

3.Economic growth. People want higher incomes each year and most hope their children will be even more prosperous than they are.

Microeconomics (micro derives from the Greek word for “small”) studies the economic behavior of individual firms. Three major goals dominate micro policy:

1.Efficiency. An inefficient economy wastes resources and fails to provide the highest possible standard of living for consumers.

2.Equity. Huge gaps between the rich and the poor leave most people impoverished while a privileged few live luxuriously.

3.Freedom. Maximum freedom requires people to have the widest possible range of choices available.

In order to produce anything, we need resources, or factors of production. Factors of production are the inputs – land, labour, and capital (buildings and machinery) – we use to produce final goods and services (output). From an economist’s standpoint, resources refer to anything that can be used to produce products, that is, either goods or services.

Every society, from a tiny island nation in the Pacific to the most complex industrial giants, needs these resources: land, labour, capital and entrepreneurial ability. Land and capital are referred to as material resources. Labour and entrepreneurship are referred to as human resources. These are resources for the economy as a whole.

As a resource, land has a much more general meaning than our normal understanding of the word. Economists use the term land in a broad sense to include not only agricultural land and land for building sites but also other natural resources like minerals, water, and timber. The basic payment made to the owners of land is rent.

Capital. In economic terms, capital is ”man-made” goods used to produce other goods or services. Equipment, buildings, tools as well as the money that buys other resources are capital goods.

7

Labour. The efforts of a factory worker, a lawyer, a sales representative, or anyone who works for a business are defined as labour.

Entrepreneurial ability is the least familiar of four basic resources. The entrepreneur sets up a business, assembles the needed resources, risks his or her own money, and reaps the profits or absorbs the losses of this enterprise.

Although all economies rely on the same basic factors of production, not all are blessed with the same quantity and quality of resources. Besides each economic system reflects the country’s history, traditions, aspirations, and politics. What works for one culture might not work as well for another, and vice versa.

1.What is economics concerned with?

2.What does macroeconomics investigate?

3.Why does scarcity occur?

4.What are the main goals of macro policy?

5.What does microeconomics study?

6.What do resources refer to?

7.How many factors of production does the economic system use? What are they?

Text 3

Read the text. Ask 5-7 questions about the text.

Adam Smith’s Market Economy

The former Scottish professor of philosophy at the University of Glasgow published a monumental book entitled An Inquiry into the Nature and Causes of the Wealth of Nations. Usually known simply as The Wealth of Nations, it is an eloquent statement expounding a doctrine of economic freedom.

The book earned Smith the epithet “the founder of economics” because it was the first complete and systematic study of the subject. Smith argued that individuals know best what is good for them. If unrestricted by government controls or private monopolies, people will be motivated by the quest for profit to turn out the goods and services that society wants, people (businesses) will be led as though by an “invisible hand” to attain the greatest economic good for society. In other words, if each person (or business) is free to work at maximizing his or her economic rewards, the economy will prosper. Consequently, through free trade and free markets, self-interest will be harnessed to the common good.

Adam Smith’s theory that the government should not interfere with business is known as laissez-faire capitalism. This French term came about when a French businessman responded laissez nous faire (“leave

8

us alone”) after being asked how government could help business. This principle of pure capitalism as Smith saw it has been modified within most modern economies

Through his approach to economic questions and his organization of the science, Smith cast a mold for the main body of nineteenthcentury economic thought. His views on public policy, which became the semiofficial doctrine of the British government, left their imprint on parliamentary debates and governmental reports. For these reasons, and because of his enormous influence upon succeeding generations of scholars, Smith’s unique position in the history of economic thought is forever ensured.

Reading The Wealth of Nations today, one can see why the influence of this book reached out beyond the borders of economics. Like the Bible, Smith’s treatise contains familiar concepts and well-worn truths on almost every page. As a result, “the shy and absent-minded scholar,” as Smith was affectionately called, became the apostle of classical economic liberalism—meaning laissez-faire in his time. Today we tend to refer to such ideas as “conservatism.”

Smith’s version of the economic system as a naturally self-organizing and self-adjusting “social mechanism” – known as classical economic doctrine was never confirmed by factual evidence, as Newton’s laws of motion were; all the same, classical doctrine dominated economic thinking and national economic policy in all advanced economies for the next 150 years, and it plays its role in many countries to this day.

Text 4

Read the text. Be ready to answer the following questions: 1. What is demand? 2. What is supply? 3. What does the demand (supply) curve represent? 4. What does the intersection of the industry supply and demand curves establish?

How the Market Economy Works

The central function of every economic system is to allocate its limited resources to satisfy the needs and desires of its people. The amount of goods produced depends upon the amount of resources available and on many other factors. At the same time, the people in a society have a great variety of needs and wants. Some of these, such as the need for food and shelter, always exist. Others, such as the desire to own particular style or clothing, continually change. Economies generally try to maintain a balance between the goods and services available from their producers (supply) and the needs and wants of their customers ( demand).

Demand is the quantity of goods or services consumers are willing and able to buy at a given price. Usually the quantity demanded chang-

9

es as price changes, and we can use a demand curve to represent this change. The demand curve is a graphic representation of the relationship between various prices sellers charge for goods or services and the amount of those goods or services buyers will desire to buy at a certain price. Each point along the curve represents a different price—quantity combination. A demand curve slopes downward from left to right, reflecting the fact that the quantity of a product demanded varies inversely with the price. This is called the law of demand. (See fig. 1)

Fig. 1. Demand curve

Supply is the quantity of goods or services marketers are willing and able to sell at a given price at a given period of time. The supply curve, or schedule of supply, graphically represents the amount of goods or services marketers will supply at various prices. A supply curve shows that as prices become more attractive to suppliers (marketers), those suppliers will try to provide more of the good or service. Each point along the curve represents a different price-quantity combination. A supply curve slopes upward from left to right, reflecting the fact that the quantity of a product supplied varies directly with the price. This is called the law of supply. (See fig. 2)

The intersection of the supply and demand curves determines the equilibrium price and the equilibrium quantity. Thus, at any price above the equilibrium price, the quantity supplied exceeds the quantity demanded and the price tends to fall. At any price below the equilibrium price, the quantity demanded exceeds the quantity supplied and the price tends to rise. At the equilibrium price, the quantity supplied precisely equals the quantity demanded, and hence there is no tendency for the price to change. (See fig. 3)

10