Read the text Banks

The London Tube

A glimpse of Great Britain

Word origin SANDWICH

Read the article without a dictionary, try to retell it.

At leisure

Our sandwich shops of today seem to owe their name and the product that they sell to John Montagu, fourth Earl of SANDWICH, an Englishman of the 18th century. Montagu was a man of bad repute, not only incompetent and thoroughly corrupt as first Lord of the Admiralty, but also publicly immoral in his private life. Gambling was one of his lesser vices, and it was his pas sion for the gaming table that gave us our modern SANDWICH. During one 24-hour session the Earl is said to have refused to stop even for his meals, and he directed that slices of bread with roast beef nested between be brought to him to eat while he played. Thus the Earl of SAND WICH contributed the SANDWICH to the world.

2. Read and translate the proverbs, think of Russian equivalents,
give a situation using them.

— Burn not your house to rid it of the mouse.

— Every cloud has a silver lining.

Anyone who has to travel a long way to get to work (or school, college, university etc.) knows that it is not very much fun. And if the modern Moscow Metro with its beautiful stations and more or less comfortable trains seems like hell during rush hour, try to imagine what it’s like travelling on the London Underground. The London Underground (or the Tube as it’s often called) is the oldest metro system in the world. The London Tube carriages are much smaller and stuffier than the Moscow ones. London is not only one of the largest cities in the world, but also one of the widest. So getting around London often takes a long time. Every morning hundreds of thousands of tired commuters from all parts of England get up at the crack of dawn to start their long journey to London. In fact, even if you live in London, it can still take you two hours to get to work.

So how do London commuters entertain themselves while travelling on the tube? Most people read a book or a newspaper or listen to some music. British people don’t normally chat to other passengers on the train because they don’t want to disturb other people.

Unit 11

Pre-text exercises

1. Find the transcription of new words in a dictionary:

account, earn, burgle, compensate, inflation, individual, borrow, reliable, immediately, finance, accessible, loan, security, default, percentage.

Try to read them fluently.

2. Word-building
Compile and translate :
to borrow υ. + -er →
access n. + -ible →
finance n. + - ial →
immediate a. + - ly →

If you work, you’ve probably got a bank account. You could keep the money you earn each month in a box under your bed, but it wouldn’t be very sensible. One reason is that it’s not very safe. If your house gets burgled, you’ll lose everything you’ve saved. Another reason is that your money will lose value.

As prices rise, the money in a box under your bed will be able to buy fewer and fewer things. Money in a bank savings account, however, will earn interest. The interest will help compensate for the effect of inflation. But banks are more than just safe places for your money. What other services do they offer?

The other main service is lending money. Individuals and businesses often need to borrow money, and they need a lender that they can trust. This is exactly what banks are reliable lenders. In fact, most of the money that people deposit in their bank accounts is immediately lent out to someone else.

Apart from storing and lending money, banks offer other financial services. Most of these are ways of making money more accessible to customers. For example, banks help people to transfer money securely. They give customers cheque books and credit cards to use instead of cash. They provide ATM so that people can get cash any time of the day or night.

But how do banks make a living? Basically, they make a living by charging interest on loans. Of course, when you make a deposit into a bank savings account, the bank pays you interest on that money. However, the rate they pay savers is less than the rate they charge borrowers. The extra money they make by charging interest on loans is where banks earn most of their money.

For banks, interest is also a kind of security. Sometimes people do not pay back money they borrow. This is called defaulting on a loan. When someone defaults on a loan, the bank uses money earned from interest to cover the loss.

All of this entire means that most of the money people have saved in the bank is not there at all! A small amount of the total savings is kept by

the bank so that customers can make withdrawals. The rest, however, is made available for loans. The amount that is kept is called the reserve. The reserve must be a certain percentage of all the savings received from customers – for example, 20 per cent. This figure is set by the central bank, and this is one of the ways that governments can control the amount of money circulating in the economy.

Words:

bank account — банковский счет accessible — доступный
to earn — зарабатывать cheque book — чековая книжка
sensible — разумный ATM — automatic teller
to burgle — воровать machine — банкомат
to lose — терять to charge interest on loans — на-
interest — процент числять проценты на кредиты
to lend money — давать в долг deposit — вклад
деньги to deposit — делать вклад
lender — кредитор saving account — сберегатель-
to borrow money — брать деньги ный счет

в долг to default on a loan — отказать-
to trust — доверять ся вернуть кредит
reliable — надежный withdrawal — изъятие вклада
apart from — кроме

Post-text exercises

Working on the text

Дата добавления: 2014-12-29