7 Ответьте на вопросы по тексту:

1) What kind of a bank is Barclays to the world's biggest companies?

2) What are Britain’s top two universities?

3) What is the reason that the government seems intent on removing the extra funding, of around £1,700 a year for each student, paid to the colleges of Oxford and Cambridge?

4) What is the tuition cost of a Cambridge engineer?

5) Do other universities deliver the same quality of education without the luxury of individual coaching?

6) What are the investments of Oxford and Cambridge?

7) Why do they need extra fees?

8 Составьте аннотацию к тексту (2 - 3 предложения).

9 Составьте реферат текста (10 - 15 предложений).

10 Составьте план текста и перескажите текст.

Вариант № 6

1 Прочитайте и переведите тексты

TEXT

It is hard to object to recycling. Putting all that waste to good use seems as virtuous as thrift and hard work. The past decade has seen dozens of laws that exhort, encourage and inevitably command people to recycle their rubbish. A dozen American states are considering laws that would require products such as paper to contain a fixed proportion of recycled material, or decree how much garbage must be recycled. The federal government wants Americans to be recycling 35% of their rubbish by 2000. Several European countries are toying with similar requirements.

Governments would do well to restrain their puritanical urges. Ever since Samson recycled the jawbone of an ass, rubbish has been put to bad ends as well good. Without compulsion, America now recycles two out of every three tonnes of the steel it consumes. By contrast, laws that require recycling are not only a wrongheaded way of helping the environment, they could even end up harming it.

By their very nature, national or state-wide quotas are arbitrary, because they ignore the particular local conditions that determine how much recycling costs. In lightly populated areas where recycling centres are few and landfill is cheap, recycling can cost three or four times as much as the alternatives. Where landfill is dear and there is a demand for recycled materials, recycling can make sense. There is no reason why both places should recycle the same proportion.

For Americans there is a political question too. High levels of recycling tend to cost more than dumping or burning. When state politicians require recycling, they are therefore placing a burden on municipal finances. This imposition is more than an argument about political power. If a town's politicians are told to spend more on recycling, that leaves less for things they may have been elected to invest in, such as parks, teachers, or even other environmental efforts.

In extreme cases, targets can even damage the environment, because they do not guarantee that sorted waste will actually be reused. Germany, which requires manufacturers to recycle their packaging, has more of the stuff than it could ever sell to the firms whose alchemy might turn it into something useful. The country created an uproar last year when it tried to send almost 60,000 tonnes of unwanted (but scrupulously sorted) rubbish to North Korea. American hauliers have exported trash to China. This may have made sense, if landfill in China is plentiful and cheap, but the suspicion remains that a proper calculation was never made, encompassing time, transport, energy and environmental costs.

What Is International Trade?

When Honduras exports bananas to Switzerland, they can use the money they earn to import Swiss chocolate — or to pay for Kuwaiti oil or a vacation in Hawaii. The basic idea of international trade and investment is simple: each country produces goods or services that can be either consumed at home or exported to other countries.

The main difference between domestic trade and international trade is the use of foreign currencies to pay for the goods and services cross­ing international borders. Although global trade is often added up in U.S. dollars, the trading itself involves various currencies. Japanese videocassette recorder is paid for in German marks in Berlin, and German cars are paid for in U.S. dollars in Boston. Indian tea, Brazilian coffee, and American films are sold around the world in currencies as diverse as Turkish liras and Mexican pesos.

Whenever a country imports or exports goods and services, there is a resulting flow of funds: money returns to the exporting nation, and money flows out of the importing nation. Trade and investment is a two-way street, and with a minimum of trade barriers, international trade and investment usually makes everyone better off.

In a interlinked global economy, consumers are given the opportu­nity to buy the best products at the best prices. By opening up markets, a government allows its citizens to produce and export those things they are best at and to import the rest, choosing from whatever the world has to offer.

Some trade barriers will always exist as long as any two countries have different sets of laws. However, when a country decides to protect its economy by erecting artificial trade barriers, the result is often dam­aging to everyone, including those people whose barriers were meant to protect.

The Great Depression of 1930 s, for example, spread around the world when the United States decided to erect trade barriers to protect local producers. As other countries retaliated, trade plumpered, jobs were lost, and the world entered into a long period of economic decline.

In the Bank (about a Credit-Card System)

In a large, dimly lighted room with acoustic walls and ceilings to deaden sound, about fifty operators — predominantly women — are sitting at a battery of monitors with a keyboard beneath each. It is here that holders of the blue, green, and gold credit cards are given or refused credit.

When a card is presented anywhere in payment for goods or ser­vices, the place of business can accept the card without question if the amount is below an agreed limit, usually between twenty-five and fifty dollars. For a larger purchase, authorization is needed, though it takes only seconds to obtain.

The approval procedures move at jet speed. From wherever they are, merchants and others dial directly to the credit-card processing center of the bank. Automatically each call is routed to a free operator, whose first words are, "What is your merchant number?" As soon as the answer has been given, the operator types the figures, which appeares simultaneously on the monitor. Next she askes the card number and amount of credit being sought. They are also typed and displayed.

The operator presses the key, feeding the information to a comput­er, which instanly signals "accepted" or "declined". The first means that credit is good and the purchase has been approved, the second that the cardholder is delinquent and credit has been cut off. The operator informs the merchant, the computer records the transaction. On a nor­mal day fifteen thousand calls come in.

Sometimes a monitor flashes a message from the computer — "stolen card". In this situation an operator, speaking calmly, as trained, has to answer, "The card presented to you has been reported as stolen. If possible, detain the person presenting it and call police. Retain the card. The bank will pay you thirty dollars reward for its return."

Storekeepers are usually pleased at the prospect to get an easy thir­ty dollars. For the bank it is also a good deal, since the card, left in cir­culation, can be used fraudulently for a much greater total amount.

But this system works well only when the bank has got the informa­tion and can program the computer. Unfortunately most of the defraud­ing happens before a missing card is reported. To avoid this the compu­ter also warns the operators about excessive purchasing: when a card­holder makes ten or more purchases during a single day, the computer alerts an operator. Since an ordinary cardholder never makes more than six or eight purchases a day, a card showing more than normal use may be fraudulent, even though the owner might be unaware of its loss.

However, despite all the warning systems, a lost or stolen card, if used cautiously, is still good for twenty thousand dollars' worth of fraudulent purchases in the week or so during which most stolen cards stayed unreported.

Moreover, there are devices used by criminals to decide whether a stolen card can be used again or if it is not. A favorite is to pay a wait­er twenty-five dollars to check a card out. He can get the answer easi­ly by consulting a weekly confidential warning list issued by the cred­it card company to merchants and restaurants.

2 Переведите на русский язык следующие английские словосочетания:

1) particular local conditions; 6) flow of funds;

2) confidential warning list; 7) artificial trade barriers;

3) municipal finances; 8) to protect local producers;

4) international trade; 9) a long period of economic decline;

5) foreign currencies; 10) the credit-card processing center.

3 Найдите в тексте английские эквиваленты следующих словосочетаний:

1) внутренняя торговля; 6) государственные политики;

2) мировая торговля; 7) кредитная карта;

3) товары и услуги; 8) торговые барьеры;

4) сумма кредита; 9) великая депрессия;

5) владелец карты; 10) импорт и экспорт.

4 Найдите в тексте слова, имеющие общий корень с данными словами. Определите, к какой части речи они относятся, и переведите их на русский язык:

To require, to govern, wrong, to want, to compass, environment, a card, to act, to store, to inform.

5 Задайте к, выделенному в тексте, предложению все типы вопросов: общий, альтернативный, разделительный, два специальных: а) к подлежащему, б) к любому члену предложения.

The main difference between domestic trade and international trade is the use of foreign currencies to pay for the goods and services cross­ing international borders.

6 Выполните анализ данных предложений, обратив внимание на следующие грамматические явления: формы и функции инфинитива, инфинитивные конструкции (сложное дополнение, подлежащее), существительное в роли определения, функции слов one (ones), that (those), условные предложения:

1) It is hard to object to recycling.

2) A dozen American states are considering laws that would require products such as paper to contain a fixed proportion of recycled material, or decree how much garbage must be recycled.

3) Governments would do well to restrain their puritanical urges.

4) If a town's politicians are told to spend more on recycling, that leaves less for things they may have been elected to invest in, such as parks, teachers, or even other environmental efforts.

5) When a card is presented anywhere in payment for goods or ser­vices, the place of business can accept the card without question if the amount is below an agreed limit, usually between twenty-five and fifty dollars.

6) Storekeepers are usually pleased at the prospect to get an easy thir­ty dollars.

7) To avoid this the compu­ter also warns the operators about excessive purchasing: when a card­holder makes ten or more purchases during a single day, the computer alerts an operator.