节目资讯
刊物:空中英语教室
日期:2013-11-30
难易度:High
关键字:drawback, certificate, revenue, speculate, Siberia, czar
Hello, and welcome to Studio Classroom.
My name is Gabe.
And I'm Carolyn.
And your English will improve today.
We're continuing to talk about money and the history of money - Money Down
Through the Ages.
Now I did say something yesterday.
I said everybody uses money, and we need money to buy things, and people like to
make a lot of money.
People like to get jobs that earn them a lot of money.
But just how important is money?
What do you think?
Carolyn, what do you think about this?
How important is money in our lives?
Well, I think it depends on the way you look at it.
If money is the most important thing in your life, then that's probably not good
because money really isn't that vital to your happiness.
If you want to have a happy life, you should just make more friends, spend time
with your family, your loved ones and build relationships.
But money is important to buy food and clothing, to buy shelter (we learned that
word), so you need a house, you need a place to live.
So money is important.
It is important.
The Bible does say, though, the love of money is the root of all evil.
So be careful how much you love money. All right.
Let's get started learning more about the history of money, Money Down Through
the Ages.
(Music).
Money Down Through the Ages.
Flying money.
Metal currency has many practical advantages.
It's durable and pretty hard to fake.
But it has one drawback - it's heavy.
During China's Tang Dynasty, merchants and government officials alike grew tired
of carrying around large numbers of heavy coins.
So the government started issuing certificates that could be exchanged for cash.
These certificates were called "flying money," possibly because of their light
weight or their tendency to blow away.
But "flying money" wasn't official currency.
The first official paper bills were printed around 200 years later during the
Song Dynasty.
Well, this is a very interesting way to look at money.
I had never heard of "flying money" before.
But that is what we are talking about today.
Yesterday we talked about metal currencies like gold and silver being made into
coins.
But we will learn a little bit why they didn't want to continue using those
coins.
We read: Metal currency has many practical advantages.
It's pretty durable... or it's durable and pretty hard to fake.
So there are some good things about using metal for your money.
That's right.
And as you can see here, the word "fake" is a verb.
Usually I use it as an adjective.
This money is fake.
But here this... er... hard money metal is hard to fake.
Now what do you call fake money?
That is called counterfeit money.
C-O-U-N-T-E-R-F-E-I-T.
Is it real?
Is it a real $1,000 bill or is it just a counterfeit bill?
That's a good question to ask.
And it's easier to fake paper money.
So, we're learning about metal money here.
But it has one drawback - it's heavy.
That's one drawback to metal money.
It is a drawback.
And drawback is a word from our Word Bank.
A drawback is something that makes something that is probably really good not
quite as good as it could be, so.
One drawback to metal money is that it's really heavy.
But there are lots of other good things about it.
It's true, but it does have some drawbacks.
Well, what are some other things that have drawbacks?
Maybe... maybe you really want to go to a private school, and everything about
this school is great.
But the drawback is it costs a lot of money.
So lots of things in life have positive sides.
But then of course, they also have drawbacks.
That's right.
Now this is a very interesting sentence that begins with the word: but.
And Steve and Ken have something they want to share with us about that in the
Information Cloud.
There are things about English grammar, usage and punctuation that we've been
told are rules when actually they're not.
Welcome, everybody, to another installment of English rule or English myth.
Today's topic deals with starting a sentence with a conjunction.
If you've been taught that this is wrong, unlearn it.
Conjunctions are words like and, however, because and therefore that link
sentences, clauses, phrases and words together.
In today's lesson, our author uses the conjunction "but" three times to start a
sentence.
Now many high school English teachers will frown upon this, but really, there's
no rule against it.
In regard to this practice, the only thing that professional writers and editors
warn against is placing a comma after the but.
Right. Now to be sure, as a writer, you'll want to do this carefully and
sparingly.
But when done right, a "but" at the front lends a sentence impact and emphasis.
And starting a sentence with "and" is useful for writers who want to keep a
narrative moving along.
Using "however" highlights the starkness of a contrast that the author is
making.
And "because" and "therefore" at the beginning of a sentence make very effective
transitions.
(Chinese).
Thank you, guys.
Now let's continue here.
During China's Tang Dynasty, merchants and government officials alike grew tired
of carrying around large numbers of heavy coins.
And maybe they had these coins in large bags.
Either way, it was very heavy, so people grew tired of carrying these things
around.
What do you grow tired of?
You could also say: I got tired of doing something, so I just wanted to stop.
That's right, so.
You can grow tired of doing something or become tired or get tired of doing
something, so.
They grew tired of carrying around these heavy coins.
And I'm sure it actually made them tired to carry these coins.
That's right.
And so what happened?
So the government started issuing certificates that could be exchanged for cash.
Exchange.
Well, that means to swap.
You can swap certificates for cash.
But let's take a look at this word from our Word Bank: a certificate.
This is something that has value.
Now there are many different kinds of certificates, right, Carolyn?
There are. So it is an official document that represents something.
And here we're talking about certificates that represent an amount of money.
We still use certificates, actually, called gift certificates.
Maybe you don't want to write a check or give someone cash, so you go to a store
and you get them a gift certificate as a gift.
That's a great idea, especially if someone enjoys reading, you could give them a
gift certificate to a bookstore.
And then they can buy whatever they want with that gift certificate.
There are other kinds of certificates.
If you want to be a teacher, you might need to have a teacher's certificate or
get certified.
If you want to be a diver, you need to have your diving certificate to dive
alone.
That's right.
Well, talking about these certificates that represented the money they were
using:
These certificates were called "flying money," possibly because of their light
weight or their tendency to blow away.
So heavy coins turned into flying money.
And why?
I love this reason, and this is a great name for this because money... or paper
money really does have a tendency to... to blow away if you're not careful.
So what do we see here?
But flying money wasn't official currency.
It wasn't official yet.
The first official paper bills were printed around 200 years later during the
Song Dynasty.
So I like to learn about the history of money, how it became... how it started
with flying money but now became official paper bills.
That's right.
And it's very interesting that it was not official currency.
So even though you could use these bills, you could trade them with other people
and they did represent an amount of money,
you still needed to go to a bank or an official building to exchange the bills
for coins before you could buy anything with them.
All right.
Well, we have more to learn about Money Down Through the Ages in the next part
of our lesson.
But first, let's spend some time with Michelle in the Language Lab.
She's waiting to teach us some things there.