Departamento de Economía y Administración

Departamento de Cs. Sociales y Humanidades

Inglés I

Assignment 2

1. Checking

a) Fill in the blanks. Do a research and write the correct word/phrase for each sentence.

 …………………………… is a social science concerned with the production, distribution, and

consumption of goods and services.

a)Economy b)Economies c)Economics

 ………………………………focuses on how individual consumers and firm make decisions; these

individuals can be a single person, a household, a business/organization or a government
agency.

a)Microeconomics b)GDP c) Macroeconomics

 An …………………………. is the value of one nation's currency versus the currency of another
nation or economic zone. For example, how many U.S. dollars does it take to buy
one euro?

a) investment b) exchange rate c) Automated Teller Machine (ATM)

2. Comprehension

a) Previewing: Leer las dos primeras oraciones y la última oración del texto y elaborar una
hipótesis de lectura sobre el tema tratado en el artículo.
 Departamento de Economía y Administración
Departamento de Cs. Sociales y Humanidades
Inglés I
Argentina and the magic soybean: the commodity export
boom that wasn't
Argentina's record levels of employment and massive reductions in poverty have little to do
with exports

Mark Weisbrot
theguardian.com, Friday 4 May 2012 19.59 BST
Jump to comments (92)

1 One of the great myths about the Argentine economy that is repeated nearly every day is
that the rapid growth of the Argentine economy during the past decade has been a
"commodity export boom".

5 However, I haven't seen any economists make the claim that Argentina's remarkable
economic growth over the past nine years has been driven by soybeans or a
commodities export boom. Maybe that is because it is not true.

What does it mean to have a "commodities boom", or growth driven by the export of
10 commodities? One possibility would be based on quantity: the production and export of
these commodities grows so fast that it makes up a large part of the country's real
growth in output. Thus, as a matter of accounting, we could look at real GDP growth for
2002-2010 and ask how much of this real, inflation-adjusted, growth is due to exports of
commodities?
15 It turns out that only 12% of Argentina's real GDP growth during this period was due to
any kind of exports at all. And just a fraction of this 12% was due to commodity exports,
including soybeans. So Argentina's economic growth from 2002-2010 was not an export-
led growth experience, by any stretch of the imagination, still less, a "commodities
boom".
20
In other words, there is no plausible story that anyone can tell from the data to support
the idea that Argentina's growth over the past nine years was driven by a "commodities
boom."

Adapted from: http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/cifamerica/2012/may/04/argentina-magic-soybean-

export-boom

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b) Complete the chart with words taken from the text and write a second reading
hypothesis.
 Departamento de Economía y Administración
Departamento de Cs. Sociales y Humanidades
Inglés I

TRANSPARENT /COGNATES REPEATED/KEY FALSE COGNATES

c) Reference: What do they refer to?

 I (line 5):
 it (line 7):
 we (line 12):

d) True or False. Justify by underlining.

 Argentina's record levels of employment and massive reductions in poverty were achieved
by the commodity export boom of soybean. T/F

 Only 12% of Argentina's real GDP growth during 2002-2010 was due to soybean exports.
T/F

 Argentina's economic growth from 2002-2010 was driven by a "commodities boom". T/F

3. Linguistic analysis

a- Identify:

 A simple Present sentence.

 A Past Simple sentence.
 A modal verb expressing possibility/probability.

b- ¿Cuál es la diferencia entre las palabras en cursiva y negrita en el texto? Explicar.

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c- ¿Qué nombre reciben las palabras subrayadas en el texto? ¿Cuál es su función?

Clasificarlas en el siguiente cuadro. Elegir uno y explicar las ideas que conecta.

Reason Contrast Result Reformulation

 Departamento de Economía y Administración
Departamento de Cs. Sociales y Humanidades
Inglés I
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d- Translate the following noun phrases:

 “…the rapid growth of the Argentine economy…”

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 "…commodity export boom".

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 “…Argentina's remarkable economic growth over the past nine years…”

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4. Conceptualization

a) Remítase a la sección de comprensión, seleccione palabras claves y utilícelas para

redactar un párrafo que conceptualice la idea central del texto.
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