p /b receipt, psychology, debt, plumber, doubt, climb
k before n: know, knowledge, known, knee, knight, knit, knob, knock
g before n at the beginning or at the end of a word:
sign, resign, design, reign,gnat
t often after s: fasten, castle, listen, bristle, glisten, whistle, rustling
h honour, honourable, honest, hour, hourly
gh after i, au, ou and before t: sigh,sightseeing, brightly, highlight;
taught, caught; brought, sought, thought
but at the beginning of a word, these letters are read as [g]:
gh ost, ghosting, ghetto, ghastly
w wholesale,wholly, whose, answer, wrap, wreck, wrong, written
Debtor, highlighter, reign, honesty, soften, doubting, listening, answerphone, well-known, hustle, firefighter, whistle, Knightsbridge, walk, ghostwriter, climbing, knot, sight, bought, ghastly, knees, fought, resign, sigh, island, iron, government.
Ex. 4. Read the words in the groups below. Pay attention to the word stress.
a) words with the stress on the first syllable:
ancient, attribute, asset, barter, constitute, counterfeit, cumbersome, diamond, dominant, effort, iron, medium, measure, mechanism, origin, output, perishable, precious, privacy, purchase, relatively, standard;
b) words with the stress on the second syllable:
coincidence, commodity, convenient, convertible, criterion, decree, determine, divisible, economy, economist, effect, emergence, essential, millennium, occur, percentage, possess, society, simplicity, spontaneous, withstand;
c) polysyllabic words with the main and secondary stress:
characteristic, electronically, evolutionary, introduction, independently, irredeemable, organization, representative.
Ex. 5. Read these two-syllable words. Pay attention to the change of the word stress.
| Noun | Verb |
| conflict contrast convert decrease increase export import process progress record transfer | conflict contrast convert decrease increase export import process progress record transfer |
Ex.6. Now, read the sentences with some of the words from Ex.5.
1. I try to avoid conflict wherever possible. This conflicts with the police evidence. She is in conflict with her employers over sickness pay.
2. Helen was transferred from marketing to sales. Were currently dealing the paperwork for your transfer. Were transferring our production to Detroit.
3. Learning a foreign language is a slow process. Data is processed as it is received.
4. Food prices increased by 10% in less than a year. Our costs have increased dramatically. Sales have been good despite last years price increases.
5. Profits were $1million, which is a decrease of 5 per cent on last year. Prices are expected to decrease by less than 1% this year. There has been a decrease in the annual birth rate for the last twenty years.
B. Word formation
Ex. 7. Make up adverbs by adding the ending - ly to adjectives.
Model: adjective + - ly = adverb
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e.g. usual→ usually; happ y - happ il y
Absolute, eventual, easy, exact, immediate, independent, normal, original, particular, preferable, smooth, universal.
Ex. 8. Form verbs by adding the ending ize/-ise to the following nouns and adjectives.
Model: noun/adjective + -ize (ise) = verb
e.g. American → Americanize
Legal, industrial, modern, national, neutral, popular, private, rational, visual; author, apology, computer, hospital, stability, symbol, sympathy
Ex.9. What is the difference between these words? Compare the suffixes er/or and ee.
Addresser addressee, consigner consignee, dedicator dedicatee, donor donee, employer employee, endorser endorsee, inspector inspectee, inviter invitee, nominator nominee, payer payee, vendor vendee.
Ex.10. Form nouns by adding suffix -ee to the verbs below. Translate these words.
Model: Absent - absentee, etc.
Examine, interview, license, mortgage, refer, train, trust.
TEXT A: MONEY AND ITS ROLE IN THE ECONOMY
Active Vocabulary
| Key terms:barter, bank account, cash, coin, coincidence of wants,convert smth into smth, credit/debit card, counterfeit, currency, commodity/representative/ credit/fiat money, electronic money, exchange smth for smth, in payment for, irredeemable, legal tender, means of liquidity, medium of exchange, measure of value, monetary unit, money supply, purchasing power, quote prices, redeem, store of value, transfer, transaction, unit of account Other words and expressions: attribute, basic/essential characteristics, demand/need for, grow dramatically, in terms of, judge on, keystone of, the origin(s) of, perform a function, serve as, solve a problem, solution to (a problem), supersede Linking words and phrases:to begin with, originally, eventually, firstly/secondly/thirdly/finally, in addition to, of no less importance, as a matter of fact, in fact, in this way, to summarise |
What is money? Why do we use money at all? In order to better understand the concept of money and get an answer to these questions, let us turn to the origins of money and examine its principal functions.
To begin with, money is the result of a long evolutionary process. Before there was money, people living in primitive societies used barter as a means of exchanging goods and services, and it worked quite well. However, as time went by and society advanced, the volume and range of goods and services expanded. Eventually, bartering became very complicated and cumbersome.
It was money that solved the basic problems created by barter - indivisibility and coincidence of wants. The emergence of money was spontaneous. No king, government or person created money. It came into being through barter, and evolved independently in different parts of the world. The oldest recorded use of money dates back to ancient Mesopotamia (now southern Iraq) about 4,500 years ago.
Originally, money took the form of commodity money or money with its own value as a good. It means that the commodity itself constitutes the money, and the money is the commodity. In fact, any commodity used as a medium of exchange is commodity money. At different times different commodities were used as money: iron and bronze, cattle and fish, furs and skins, cowries and precious metals, specifically gold and silver. Gold coins are examples of commodity money because gold is worth something as a commodity, not just as a monetary unit.
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Over time other types of money came into use: representative, fiat money, credit money, etc. The system of commodity money in many instances evolved into a system of representative money which refers to paper currency backed by a government or banks promise to redeem it for a given weight of precious metal (gold or silver). During the late 19th and early 20th century, most currencies were examples of representative money. Money of this type was based on the gold standard, and, in theory, could be exchanged for a fixed amount of gold. For example, the US dollar was convertible to gold until 1934.
Currency that is found today in most countries is fiat money. Unlike representative money, fiat money is not backed by any commodity, and is absolutely irredeemable. It serves as legal tender by a government decree, or fiat which means in Latin let it be done. Legal tender for all debts, public and private is written on the US dollar. The value of fiat currency is based merely on trust that people will accept it in payment for goods and services and that its value will remain relatively stable. A prime example of fiat money is the new international currency - the euro. The introduction of the euro changed the face of money, superseding many of the world's oldest currencies.
Whatever the type of money, it should be judged on how well it performs its major functions: (1) a medium of exchange, (2) a measure of value, and (3) a store of value. As a matter of fact, money is what money does.
