Unit 7. Money

Money never starts an idea; it is the idea that starts the money.

W.J. Cameron (1879-1953),

spokesman for Henry Ford

Lead-in

Think of two or three things that you spend your money on every day. Do you spend it on the same things?

When you go shopping, how do you pay for goods: in cash or by credit card?

Have you ever put your money in a piggy-bank?

Some people put their money on deposit in a bank; others invest it in companies by buying their shares? What else do people do with their money?

Do you think that in time people will live in a cashless society?

PRE-TEXT EXERCISES

A. Reading drills

Ex.1. Revise the reading rules of the following letter combinations ir / ur/ er; ow/ ou; ee /ea and read the words:

firm, thirdly, circle, circulate; return, further, furthermore, purchase; serve, service, transfer, convert, emergence; decree, redeem, irredeemable; easily, cheap, means; nowadays, powerful, countable, amount, account, cowrie

Ex. 2. Practice reading the words with qu.

qu [kw] quarter, quota, quote, quotation, quit, quarrel, liquidity, acquisition;

[k] technique, unique, cheque, picturesque, grotesque, queue

Require, qualified, questionable, unique, liquid, queue, quality, quantity, technique

Ex.3. The letters in bold are silent in the following words. Read the words accurately.

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]:

ghost, 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.

Ex.6. Now, read the sentences with some of the words from Ex.5.

I try to avoid conflict wherever possible. This conflicts with the police evidence. She is in conflict with her employers over sickness pay.

Helen was transferred from marketing to sales. We’re currently dealing the paperwork for your transfer. We’re transferring our production to Detroit.

Learning a foreign language is a slow process. Data is processed as it is received.

Food prices increased by 10% in less than a year. Our costs have increased dramatically. Sales have been good despite last year’s price increases.

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.