Exercise 1

MONEY

Make a class survey to find out whether the students in your group know much about money.

How much do you know about money?

1. Do you know the price of a daily newspaper?

a) yes, exactly

b) approximately

c) I’ve got no idea

2. Do you know the price of a score of eggs?

a) yes, exactly

b) approximately

c) I’ve got no idea

3. Do you know how much you or your household spends on groceries each week?

a) yes, within 50 hryvnyas

b) yes, within 100 hryvnyas

c) I’ve got no idea

4. Do you know today’s exchange rate of Ukraine’s currency against the US dollar?

a) yes, exactly

b) approximately

c) I’ve got no idea

5. How many names of other countries’ currencies can you list?

a) ten or more

b) five to nine

c) four or fewer

6. Do you know the current rate of inflation in Ukraine?

a) yes, exactly

b) approximately

c) I’ve got no idea

7. Do you know the name and title of the person in the government in Ukraine who is in charge of finance?

a) yes, both the name and the title

b) only the name or the title

c) no, neither the name nor the title

8. How many banks in Ukraine can you name?

a) five or more

b) three or more

c) two, one or none

Give yourself 3 points for every a) answer, 2 points for every b) answer, and 1 point for every c) answer. Then add the points up.

9 points or less: you don’t know much about money.

10-15 points: you are reasonably well informed.

16-20 points: you are very well informed.

21 points: you are a money agent.

& Reading

Read the text and be ready to discuss it.

MONEY

Money is used for buying or selling goods, for measuring value and for storing wealth. Almost every society now has a money economy based on coins and paper notes of one kind or another. However, this has not always been true. In primitive societies a system of barter was used. Barter was a system of direct exchange a sheep, for example, for anything in the marketplace that they considered to be of equal value. Barter, however, was a very unsatisfactory system because people's precise needs seldom coincided. People needed a more practical system of exchange and various money systems developed based on goods which the members of a society recognized as having value. Cattle, grain, teeth, shells, feathers, skulls, salt, elephant tusks and tobacco have all been used. Precious metals gradually took over because, when made into coins, they were portable, durable, recognizable and divisible into larger and smaller units of value.

A coin is a piece of metal, usually disc-shaped, which bears lettering, designs of numbers showing its value. Until the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries coins were given monetary worth based on the exact amount of metal contained in them, but most modern coins are based on face value, the value that governments choose to give them, irrespective of the actual metal content. Coins have been made of gold (Au), silver (Ag), copper (Cu), aluminium (Al), nickel (Ni), lead (Pl), zinc (Zn), plastic and in China even from pressed tea leaves. Most governments now issue money in the form of notes, which are really ‘promises to pay’. Paper money is obviously easier to handle and much more convenient in the modern world. Cheques, bank cards and credit cards are being used increasingly and it is possible to imagine a world where ‘money’ in the form of coins and paper currency will no longer be used. Even today, in the United States, many places, especially filling stations, will not accept cash at night for security reasons.

Exercise 1

Find expressions which mean:

1. A place to buy petrol.

2. A place where goods are bought and sold.

3. The period between 1801 and 1900.

4. The bony structure of the head.

5. Round and flat in shape.

6. An exchange of goods for other goods.