Reading drills

1. Practise the pronunciation of the following words:

a) stress the first syllable:

satisfy, scarcity, factor, labour, capital, nature, natural, naturally, effort, gift, land, desert, fertile, rainfall, sunshine, grow, growth, farmland, minerals, crop, fix, famine, impact, quantity, quality, primary;

b) stress the second syllable:

produce, production, productive, distribute, deposits, available, dramatic, expand, supply, include, provide, ability, enjoy, disease, indefinitely;

c) stress the third syllable:

population, immigration, manufacture, represent.

Text A

The reason people cannot satisfy all their wants and needs¹ is the scarcity of productive resources. These resources or factors of production² are called land, labour, capital, and organization or entrepreneurship³. They provide the means for a society to produce and distribute its goods and services.

As an economic term land means the gifts of nature⁴ or natural resources not created by human efforts. They are the things provided by nature that go into the creation of goods and services. Land has a broad meaning. It is not only land itself, but also what lies under the land (like coal and gold), what grows naturally on top of the land (like forests and wild animals), what is around the land in the seas and oceans and under the seas and oceans (like fish and oil). It includes deserts, fertile fields, forests, mineral deposits, rainfall, sunshine and the climate necessary to grow crops.

Because there are only so many natural resources available at any given time, economists tend to think of land as being fixed or in limited supply. There is not enough good farmland to feed all of the earth’s population enough, sandy beaches for everyone to enjoy, or enough minerals to meet people’s expending energy needs indefinitely.

The second factor of production is labour — people with all their efforts and abilities. Unlike land, labour is a resource that may vary in size over time. Historically, factors such as population growth, immigration, famine, war and disease have had a dramatic impact⁵ on both the quantity and quality of labour.

Labour is the human input into the production process. It may be mental or physical. But in many tasks it is necessary to combine mental activity with physical effort. The price paid for the use of labour is called wages⁶. Wages represent income⁷ to workers, who own their labour. Land and labour are often called primary factors of production⁸. It is one whose quantity is determined outside the economy.

Comments

1. wants and needs — бажання та потреби

2. factors of production — фактори виробництва

3. entrepreneurship — підприємництво

4. gifts of nature — дари природи

5. dramatic impact — вирiшальний вплив

6. wages — заробітна плата

7. income — дохід, прибуток

8. primary factor of production — первинний фактор виробництва

Vocabulary exercises

I. Give the corresponding nouns to the following verbs:

to produce, to distribute, to grow, to populate, to enjoy, to satisfy, to vary, to immigrate, to require, to educate, to construct, to distinguish, to manufacture, to determine, to create, to equip, to combine.