The English We Learn

This is a book of English for economists. There are different exercises in it on translation, reading, speaking and writing. This book is designed both for classroom and independent study.

There are many words in English. It is not easy to remember all of them. Learning English is sometimes easy and sometimes difficult for you. Much depends on your interest and responsiveness. Certainly, there are a few students in your group who know English rather well. Do your best¹ to catch up with them².

English is one of the major languages in the world. There are many countries in which English is spoken. People use English as their mother tongue or as a second language for cultural and professional purposes. English has the largest vocabulary with approximately 800 000 words, including many thousands of terms and phrases in the world of economics, finance and credit, banking, management of money, marketing and business accounting.

English is one of those languages which for many seems easy in the beginning. It has very few endings, many nouns and verbs have the same form (for example, “to take a swim ” “to swim in the river”). But English is by no means³ an easy language to learn. There is the problem of spelling and pronunciation, of the large number of exceptions to any rule, it is very idiomatic and prepositions are terrible. The tense system is also very complicated. Geographically, English is the most widespread language on Earth, second only to Chinese in the number of people who speak it.

It is important for a specialist to know a foreign language. This textbook aims to help students of economics understand English as it appears in various scientific publications and discussions. This book is concerned⁴ with the language for special purposes, a sort of restricted English which has restricted vocabulary and grammar.

Better language skills depend on your ability to pay attention⁵ to structural differences between English and Russian, on your ability to sometimes guess the meaning of words in context.

Notes on idiomatic uses of words:

COMPREHENSION CHECK

Exercise 1. True or false? Follow the model working in pairs.

Is this statement true/ false?

Model: Yes, it is true/ false.

No, it isn’t true/ false.

1. Learning English is always easy.

2. English is spoken only in Great Britain.

3. English vocabulary is very large.

4. People often use English as a second language.

5. When learning English it is not important to pay attention to

structural differences between English and Russian.