12B Money

Ice-breaker

• Are you a saver or a spender?
• How much money do you spend on entertainment and having fun?

Language corner
- Not on the whole means 'not generally'.
- A slogan is a short, memorable advertising sentence or phrase, eg (It's the Real Thing or I'm lovin' it.
- An agenda is the list of things that will be discussed in a meeting. It is usually prepared before a meeting, then printed out and distributed to all participants. The final item on an agenda is often AOB (ie Any Other Business) - the part of the meeting when other things can be discussed, including items that were to late to go on the agenda. 
- A multiplex cinema is a large cinmea with many screens showing different films.
- So far so good means 'we haven't finised yet, but at this point things are still OK'.
- If something places far too much emphasis on something, it makes something much more important that it really is.
- The vast majority means 'a majority that is a high percentage of the total number'.
- When you open an account, you start a new bank account. 
- When you have a bank account, you can pay in money (ie deposit) over the counter (ie inside the bank), or use an ATM (ie Automatic Teller Machine), also known as a cash machine, a cash dispenser, an autobank or, colloquially, a hole in the wall.
- You can withdraw (ie take out) money in the same ways. 
- Cheques (US: checks) are printed documents you write on as an alternative to paying with cash or a credit card.
- A mortgage is a large loan, specifically to buy a house. When you take out a mortgage, you agree with your bank or lender to start a new mortgage.
- If you get into debt, you start to owe people money. Many people find it much harder to get out of debt.
- When you buy stocks and shares, you are investing in part of a company and hoping that the value will rise over the years so that you will make a profit. The difference between stocks and shares is that stocks is a general term used to describe the ownership certificates of any company, in general, and shares referst to the ownership certificates of a particular company.
- If you make money, you work or invest in order to get money. If you make a million, you have earned a million pounds or dollars. 






Further listening practice

Anita and Todd talk about credit cards
Discover who are the faces of US Money
Zeitgeist: A corrosive money system (conspiracy theory?)