Economics
Matching Exercise
Match each utterance with its conversational function.
- Asking someone for their opinion about a topic
- Delaying strategies
- Presenting a number of arguments
- Giving your opinion about a topic
- Agreeing
- Disagreeing
- Countering
- Logical argument
- Clarification
- Expressing solutions and alternatives
1. What do you think governments should do when the economy is struggling?
2. That's a difficult one. There are arguments on both sides.
3. Governments can increase spending, reduce taxes, raise taxes, cut public spending or encourage private investment.
4. I think reducing inequality should be an important economic objective.
5. Yes, I agree that economic growth isn't the only measure of a successful society.
6. I'm not convinced that increasing government spending is always the answer.
7. But if people have less money to spend, wouldn't cutting public spending make the economic situation even worse?
8. If demand falls, businesses sell less, so unemployment may rise; therefore governments sometimes need to stimulate demand.
9. When you say "economic growth", what exactly do you mean?
10. One alternative would be to concentrate investment on infrastructure, education and new industries.
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