Reading

Date: 2015-10-07; view: 473.

The first forms of money

9. Before you read try to answer these questions.

a.What do you know about the first money?

b.Do you know anything about the first forms of money?

c.How did people trade without money?

10. Read this text and answer the questions.

The word barter comes from the French word barrater meaning “to trade”.

As man satisfied his basic needs, his want to make hunting, building shelter, and access to water easier, grew. Some people were good hunters, some were better gardeners, and some built huts faster. That was the beginning of barter.

An example of early barter is a man would trade ten rabbits for a man to build him a hut. This worked for a little while. However people needing huts couldn't always carry around ten rabbits. They needed something easier and smaller. So people started using beads, shells, small animals and crops as early forms of money. Later money evolved into crude lumps of different metals. Now people needing huts could pay the builder a given number of those lumps in exchange for a hut. Very soon people understood about how many lumps they spent because it was getting harder for them to find such metals, and they wanted to know if their trade is fair. Next, people started stamping those lumps into coins only a little bigger than our present-day coin. They were only made of certain metals and were given a value. The earliest metal coins came from China, where people used small pieces of bronze to trade things starting around 1500 BC. People knew how many of those coins they needed for a certain thing, but all of those coins could get heavy fast.

Because of that, people started using paper money which soon brings us to present-day banks and things like that. Paper money, a promise to pay gold or silver or bronze in exchange for this piece of paper, was first used around 1150 AD, in China. So people in China had the first idea for both coins and paper money.

Now money is a very important part of our everyday lives whether we know it or not!

1.What is barter?

2.Why did people need money?

3.What could they exchange money for?

4.Why did paper money appear?

11. Give English equivalents for the following words and phrases from the texts.

Развиться в, торговать, наделять стоимостью, в обмен на, честная, первые монеты, обещание оплатить, штамповать, необработанные куски металла, бумажные деньги, современная.

12. Choose a, b or c.

1.Before there was money, people ______ .

a) exchanged goods b) traded c) found metals

2.The exchange of a good or a service is called ______.

a) a profit b) a loss c) a barter

3.Coins were made of _____.

a) different metals b) precious metals c) heavy metals

1. People started using coins because it was _____ .

a) convenient b) valuable c) important

5.Name 3 things people used to trade.

a) ______ b) _____ c) ______

6.First money appeared in China and looked like ______ .

a) small pieces of paper b) small pieces of metals c) heavy coins

7.Money is basically _____ between people.

a) a piece of paper b) metal coins c) an agreement

8.Money is a good that acts as _____ in transactions.

a) a medium of exchange b) a unit of account c) a store of value

9.The value of modern money is equal to _____ .

a) nothing b) the value of the metals they contained c) gold

10.People started to use paper money and coins at _____ .

a) the same time b) different times c) different ages

13. In pairs, answer the questions.

1.Do you agree that … ?

• barter is not always convenient

• present-day money has no real value

• money is a very important part of our everyday lives

2.What do you think of the first forms of money? Would you like to use them today?