实用英语综合教程第一册3

8. Suppose there is a person in town who is an excellent teacher and who also is a skilled carpenter. Suppose, too, that there is another person in town who is a skilled carpenter and who is a below-average teacher. If the second person could devote full attention to carpentry and the first person full attention to teaching, then the town would be making the best use of the skills and talents it possesses. If, instead, both persons taught for half the week and did carpentry the other half, the town might not suffer from the quality of the carpentry. But the town would lose some of the benefits of better education, because the carpenter is a person of lesser teaching skills. In teaching, the carpenter does not have an advantage compared to the teacher. Towns, countries, and people are better off when they specialize in producing those things in which they have a comparative advantage.
specialize
v. 1. 使专门化2. 限定（意义、范围等）specialization n. 专门化，特殊化
enable
v. to give someone the power, methods, or right (to do sth.) 使能够，使成为可能
resource
Ghana wine （葡萄酒）
Now read the passage to check your matching.Why Nations Trade
1. International trade is the exchange of goods and services produced in one country for goods and services produced in another country. In most cases, countries do not trade the actual goods and services. Rather, they use the income, or money, from the sale of their products to buy the products of another country.
UNIT 3 Text A PRE-READING
TASKExercise
1Before reading the passage, try to match the Main Products （主要产品）on the right with the Countries on the left.COUNTRIES MAIN PRODUCTS
5. When a country specializes, it can make some goods that are of better quality than goods made elsewhere. Carpets woven in Iran and wine produced in France are examples of these special goods.
4. The second reason nations trade with one another is that it pays to specialize. Specialization makes the best use of a country's productive resources -- its natural resources, the skill of its workers, and its factories.
Belgium jet planes （喷气式飞机）
Canada nickel （镍）
France coffee
Iran rubberMalaysia cocoa （可可）
Colombia carpets （地毯）
the United States lace （花边）
9. Many countries get a large part of their income from selling one or two primary products. Primary products are the raw materials from which manufactured goods are made. They may be farm products, such as wool, cotton, beef, or wheat. They may come from beneath the surface of the earth, as do copper, iron, coal, and crude oil. Or they may come from forests, as do wood and natural rubber.
n. [常用复数]资源 mineral n. 矿物，矿石
nickel
n. 镍
import
v. to bring in (sth.), esp. from a foreign country 进口，输入n. 1. sth. brought into a country from a foreign country 进口商品2. the action of importing 进口，输入
6. Specialization also enables one country to produce some goods more cheaply than another country. For example, the United States has factories, machines, and tools for manufacturing jet planes. Belgium has artisans who are skilled at making lace. So the United States sells jet planes to Belgium. Belgium sells lace to the United States. If the Belgians built factories and trained engineers for the few jets they need, those jets would be very expensive. If the United States began to train people to make lace, that, too, would be expensive. By trading, both countries get a good product from abroad for less than it would cost if made at home.
7. It pays a country to specialize even if it can produce everything cheaply. Within each country there are some things that are produced more efficiently than other things. This is called comparative advantage.
2. Trade among countries allows people in each country to use their energies in doing what they do best. That is, it lets them specialize. Trade and specialization go hand in hand and enable each of us to have more products to use and more different kinds of products at the lowest possible cost.
3. Nations trade for many reasons. First, they trade because there are differences in natural resources in different parts of the world. The plants that can be grown are different. The mineral resources are also different. For example, Canada has nickel mines but is too cold to grow oranges. The United States has only a few small nickel mines but produces large crops of oranges. So the United States buys nickel from Canada, and Canada buys oranges from the United States. (We say that the United States exports oranges and imports nickel. Canada exports nickel and imports oranges.)