Financial trends

A. Put the words in the correct category.

B. Pair Work. Now try these questions. Some of the answers can be found in the table below.

1. What is GDP? Is it:

1. how much money the country earns from its economic activity? or
2. the monetary value of the goods and services which the country produces?

2. How is GDP different from industrial production?

3. Which of the following refers to inflation:

1. GDP
2. Industrial Production
3. Consumer Prices

4. Where can you find this kind of market information about your country?

Market indicators

C. Roleplay

Student A

Latin America

1. You are an economic correspondent for Latin America. Complete the chart with the information below.

1. In Mexico, consumer prices rose by 15.4%.
2. Industrial production dropped in Chile by 1.0%. Over the same period inflation increased by 5.2%.
3. Brazil's GDP went up by 1.9%.

Now give the information in Section 1 to your partner.

2. Listen to the Asia correspondent. Note the market information on Asia in the chart.

3. Check that you and your partner have the same information in your charts.

4. Discuss the results using these questions to help you.

Which country has the highest inflation?

Which country has the lowest GDP?

Student B

Asia

1. You are an economic correspondent for Asia. Complete the chart below with this information on Asia.

Hong Kong's GDP went up by 5.7%.

In South Korea, inflation increased by 9.5%.

Industrial production fell by 10.3% in South Korea.

2. Listen to the economic correspondent for Latin America. Note the information on the Latin American markets in the chart below.

Now give the market information in Section 1 to your partner.

3. Check that you and your partner have the same information in your charts.

4. Discuss the results using these questions to help you.

Which country has the highest inflation?

Which country has the lowest GDP?

Key

1. b

2. GDP refers to goods and services. Industrial production refers to goods only.

3. c. Consumer prices

4. This information comes from "The Economist" magazine. But maybe there are other sources of information in your country.

C

Teacher's notes

For many business people, financial information is of great importance. In addition, they may need to give presentations or attend meetings, in which they have to discuss recent changes in their company. This unit therefore offers the opportunity to describe changes and to discuss financial matters, as well as to gain further practice in countries and numbers.

A.

Explain the task. Read aloud the words in the list and the verbs in the box getting students to repeat them. Explain any new vocabulary. If possible, encourage students to guess the meaning or to share their knowledge with each other.

Model how to do the first item in the chart. Then students complete the task individually. Give help as needed. If time permits, have groups compare answers. Then check the students’ answers around the class.

Add additional information about the verbs, eg, the past tense of "rise" is "rose", the past tense of "fall" is also irregular.

B.

Explain that the financial information in the chart is about Argentina. The information includes the GDP, industrial production and consumer prices. The chart shows us what has happened over a specific period. We can see what has gone up and what has gone down.

Elicit information about the first column, eg, what does GDP stand for? Students read the first question and decide which is the correct definition.

Draw the students' attention to the second column. Students answer the second question.

Encourage some discussion about the GDP, inflation, etc in your country, eg, Is inflation rising or falling in your country? By how much?

C

This is an information gap activity, in which some students have financial information about Latin America, and others have information about Asia.

Ask students about financial correspondents. Have they ever seen them on the news? What do they do? Tell them they are going to be correspondents.

Divide your students into Student A (Latin America correspondents) and Student B (Asia correspondents).

Students do the short reading task. Individually, they read the sentences and complete their chart.

Students compare answers with "correspondents" from their own region.

Organise the students into pairs (one Latin America correspondent with one Asia correspondent).

The Latin America correspondents read out their sentences to the Asia correspondents. The Asia group listens and fills in the chart.

The students then change roles. The Asia correspondents read out their information to their Latin America counterparts, who fill in their charts.

Students check their answers in pairs.

Encourage some discussion about the financial information, eg, which country has the highest inflation? which country has the lowest GDP?