December 1998

18 December 1998

Minister

Khodirev

Dear Minister,

I am writing today to invite you to our 9^th International Conference on Competition, which will be held on 10 and 11 May 1999 at the Hotel Inter­continental Berlin.

The subject of the 9^th International Conference on Competition is:

I would be very pleased to welcome you to Berlin as a participant at our 9^th International Conference on Competition. A simultaneous translation service will be available in German, English and French.

Yours sincerely,

Wolf

President.

аспирантура (канд. экз.)

Экзаменационный билет (на 2 листах) по дисциплине

английский язык

(специальность: социальная философия)

Task I. Translate from English into Russian in writing using a dictionary. Your time is 45 minutes

Too relaxed to read?

Backward readers can be helped more by teaching them to read than by teaching them to relax, according to Christopher Sharpley, of Monash University, Australia, and Steven Rowland, of the Scot's School, Australia (British Journal of Educational Psychology, vol. 56. part 1, page 40).

Previous studies have suggested that backward readers experience stress caused by anxiety at failure, and that their learning can be improved by teaching relaxation.

This study involved 50 nine to eleven year old children, in five small primary schools, in four country towns in New South Wales. The children were divided into five groups. One group were taught to lower their muscle tension by using electromyographic biofeedback (which involves electrodes attached to a forearm and to a visual display dial); the second was given relaxation training; and the third had remedial teaching based on phonics and comprehension. In addition, one of two control groups had daily reading tests (as did the three experimental groups) and the other did not.

The children's accuracy, speed and comprehension in reading were measured for two weeks, then the different treatments were given for five weeks. The results showed that only the group which had received remedial teaching improved in reading accuracy. No group improved in reading speed—and this even decreased for the group which experienced biofeedback.

All the experimental groups showed gains in comprehension, as did the first control group, suggesting that this was an effect of increased reading practice.

The authors suggest that reducing stress may have worked against any improvement in reading (an optimum level of stress being necessary for successful learning), or that teaching the children to relax reduced the attention they gave to their reading.

So while relaxation may be of general benefit, reducing the symptoms of stress seems to be less helpful then reducing its cause— failure.

Task II. Translate the letter from English into Russian without a dictionary. Your time is 5-7 minutes

February 25, 2000

Mr. Alexander

President

MICEX

Moscow RUSSIA

Dear Mr. Zakharov:

Please find enclosed the draft Joint Statement on Technical Assistance which I received yesterday from the U.S. Trading Commission.

We understand that your office will undertake to forward this document to Chairman Parmenkov.

If the Russian Party finds the proposal acceptable, we should notify Ms. Corcoran of that fact.

We look forward to your future communications on this matter. Best regards.

Sincerely,

Jeffrey A. Burt

аспирантура (канд. экз.)

Экзаменационный билет (на 2 листах) по дисциплине

английский язык

(специальность: экономика и управление н/х)

Task I. Translate from English into Russian in writing using a dictionary. Your time is 45 minutes

WHAT ECONOMICS IS

As a scholarly discipline, economics is only two centuries old. Adam Smith published his pathbreaking book The Wealth of Nations in 1776, a year notable also for the Declaration of Indepen­dence. It is no coincidence that both documents appeared the same year: Political freedom from the tyranny of monarchy was closely related to emanci­pation of prices and wages from the interfering hand of state regulation.

Adam Smith, of course, represented only a beginning. In more than a century and a half that elapsed between the appearance of The Wealth of Nations and the publication of John Maynard Keynes' The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money (1936), economics went through many stages of development. Almost at the halfway point, there appeared the massive critique of capi­talism by Karl Marx: Das Kapital (1867. followed by two posthumous volumes). More than a billion people, one-third of the world's population, live in countries where Das Kapital is economic gospel.

Definitions

On first encountering economics, people often want a short definition, in response to this demand, there is no shortage of supply. Here are a few popular definitions:

Economics is the study of those activities that involve production and exchange among people.

Economics analyzes movements in the overall economy—trends in prices, output, and unemployment. Once such phenomena are under­stood, economics helps develop the policies by which governments can affect the overall economy.

Economics is the science of choice. It studies how people choose to use scarce or limited productive resources (land, labor, equipment, technical knowledge) to produce various commodi­ties (such as wheat, beef, overcoats, concerts. roads, missiles and distribute these goods to vari­ous members of society for their consumption.

Economics is the study of how human be­ings go about the business of organizing consump­tion and production activities.

Economics is the study of money, interest rates, capital and wealth.

Task II. Translate the letter from English into Russian without a dictionary. Your time is 5-7 minutes

To: Ms Rodoula Ath. ZICCI

Deputy Minister

of National Economy