Text 7 advertising

I. Read and translate the text.

Advertising is one of the largest industries. Since consumers are the principal targets of these sales campaigns, we ought to know something about the services advertisers perform, as well as some of the techniques they use.

Advertising benefits consumers and the economy in a number of ways:

• It provides us with information about prices, recent improvements in certain goods and services, and the availability of new ones.

• Advertising often results in lower prices. Large-scale production can reduce costs. By creating mass markets, advertising enables producers to reduce the costs of their products and pass those savings on to the consuming public.

• Advertising stimulates competition, and competition benefits us all. Advertising by one firm, puts pressure on others within the industry to do at least as well to attract the consumer’s money.

• Advertising pays most of the cost of magazines and newspapers, and all of the cost of commercial radio and TV.

Advertising helps the economy as a whole by stimulating consumer demand. Consumer spending has a direct effect on the health of the economy. Advertising helps to keep that spending at healthy levels.

Not everyone agrees that advertising benefits the economy. Critics list the following points of its disadvantages:

• The information contained in advertising does not inform and often misleads the consumer.

• Because it costs money to advertise, this cost adds to the price consumers pay.

• Consumers are tempted to spend money for products they do not really need.

• Radio and TV are not really free because the cost of advertising on them is also passed on to the consumer.

II. Answer the following questions to the text:

1. Do you think advertising is an important element of a market economy?

2. How can you get to know the information about new products and services?

3. How can advertising regulate prices?

4. What is the role of advertising in competition stimulation?

5. What way do commercial radio and TV and most magazines and newspapers pay their costs?

6. What are the main points of advertising disadvantages?

Text 8

Internet

I. Read and translate the text.

The best way to think of the Internet, or Net as it is often called, is a vast global network of networks connecting computers across the world. At present, more than 35 million people use Internet and over three million computers worldwide are linked in. They use the Net for transferring data, playing games, socializing with other computer users, and sending e-mail.

The Net was dreamt up in the late 1960s by the US Defense Department’s Advanced Research Projects Agency which decided that it needed a means by which messages could be sent and received even if phone lines were inoperative. In 1969, there was a network of just four computers. By 1972 the number had risen to 40. About this time the idea of electronic mailbox was born. By 1984 the Internet began to develop into the form we know it today.

The Internet can be divided into five broad areas.

Electronic mail, which is much faster than traditional mail. Anything that can be digitized (converted into digital form) – pictures, sound, video – can be sent, retrieved, and printed at the other end.

Information sites. This is perhaps the fastest growing area of the Internet as more and more people put their own information pages on line. Computers process vast amounts of information very fast, by specifying a key word or phrase. The computer can then search around the Net until it finds some matches. These information sites are usually stored on big computers that exist all over the world. The beauty of the Net is that you can access all of them from your home, using your own PC.

The World Wide Web, usually referred to as WWW or 3W, is a vast network of information databases that feature text, sound, and even video clips. On the WWW you can go on a tour of a museum or exhibition, see the latest images from outer space, go shopping, and get travel information on hotels and holidays.

Usenet is a collection of newsgroups covering any topic. Each newsgroup consists of messages and information posted by other users. There are more than 10,000 newsgroups and they are popular with universities and businesses.

Telnet programs allow you to use your personal computer to access a powerful mainframe computer.