Упражнения

№ 1

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G lobalization is a process of interaction among the people, companies, and governments of different nations, a process driven by international trade and investment and aided by information technologies. This process has effects on the environment, on culture, on political systems, on economic development and prosperity, and on human physical well-being in societies around the world.

G

Рис. 3.

lobalization is not new, though. For thousands of years, people—and, later, corporations—have been buying from and selling to each other in lands at great distances, such as through the famed Silk Road across Central Asia that connected China and Europe during the Middle Ages. Likewise, for centuries, people and corporations have invested in enterprises in other countries. In fact, many of the features of the current wave of globalization are similar to those prevailing before the outbreak of the First World War in 1914.

In the years since the Second World War many governments have adopted free-market economic systems, vastly increasing their own productive potential and creating new opportunities for international trade and investment. Governments also have negotiated dramatic reductions in barriers to commerce and have established international agreements to promote trade in goods, services, and investment. Taking advantage of new opportunities in foreign markets, corporations have built foreign factories and established production and marketing arrangements with foreign partners. A defining feature of globalization, therefore, is an international industrial and financial business structure.

Technology has been the other principal driver of globalization. Advances in information technologies, in particular, have dramatically transformed economic life.

However, globalization is deeply controversial. Proponents of globalization argue that it allows poor countries and their citizens to develop economically and raise their standards of living, while opponents of globalization claim that the creation of an unfettered international free market has benefited multinational corporations in the Western world at the expense of local enterprises, local cultures, and common people. Resistance to globalization has therefore taken shape both at a popular and at a governmental level as people and governments try to manage the flow of capital, labor, goods, and ideas that constitute the current wave of globalization.

1. What is globalization?

2. What are the effects of globalization?

3. Were there any similar processes in the past?

4. Do advances in information technologies lead to globalization?

5. Why do some people claim that globalization has more negative effects that positive ones?

№ 2

Распределите слова и выражения по следующим категориям:

• Multinational corporations

• Information Technologies

• Politics

Trade, lap top, communication, industrial and commercial ownership, environmental awareness, the Internet, investment, WTO, NATO, NAFTA, UN, cell phone, franchise operations, Microsoft, productive potential, economic development, data transmission, free market, enterprises, international agreements, foreign partners, computer networks, financial business structure, standards of living, the flow of capital, software.

№ 3

Выберите правильный вариант ответа

1. WTO a) Water Tourism Organization;

b) World Trade Organization.

2. OSCE a) Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe;

b) only self-confident employees.

3. Co. a) cooperative;

b) company.

4. IFC a) International Finance Corporation;

b) International Franchising Cooperation.

5. B2B a) business to business;

b) bed and breakfast.

6. COD a) company on demand;

b) cash on delivery.

7. UN a) Unified Network;

b) United Nations.

8. AOB a) any other business;

b) at other building.

9. IT a) internal transmission;

b) information technologies.

10. R&D a) report and delivery;

b) research and development.