Economics news & vocabulary

A Wordle I created from the text

As part of my university's business English curriculum, there is content related to economics and current economics news.

For a recent lesson with my robotics engineering students, I used a text from the opinion section of The New York Times, titled "China's Troubling Robot Revolution."

Link to article: http://www.nytimes.com/2015/06/11/opinion/chinas-troubling-robot-revolution.html?_r=0

The text was not only useful for a discussion of the impact that robotic manufacturing is having on China's economy (in comparison to other countries), but also for the valuable vocabulary it had for business, describing statistics and numbers, and for presentations.

Here are the examples my students identified:

Vocabulary for describing statistics/numbers:

• accounted for about a quarter of ...
• a 54 percent increase over ...
• it will have more ... than ... by (date)
• replace 6,000 workers with ... by (time)
• about a fifth of the work force
• automate about 70 percent of ... within (time)
• at an even faster pace than ...
• has made up nearly half of ...
• represents only about a third of ...
• roughly have the level in (country)
• have too little income relative to the size of ...
• as much as 40 percent of ...
• Between 1995 and 2002 about 16 million factory jobs disappeared.
• roughly 15 percent of total ...
• only about half of ...
• while more than 20 percent of ...
• According to one analysis, fully 43 percent of ...

Business vocabulary (as chosen by students):

• low-wage workers
• work force
• automation
• a leading manufacturer
• domestic consumption
• economic growth
• fixed investment
• gross domestic product
• domestic consumer spending
• return on investments
• generating returns
• service sector
• wage increases
• capitalistic economy
• social safety net
• rebalance economic growth
• saving rate
• service economy
• generating jobs
• blue-collar workers
• white-collar jobs
• software automation
• artificial intelligence
• unemployment insurance

Useful vocabulary for presentations (my choices):

• But the reality is ... / The reality, however, is that ...
• X will have significant consequences for ...
• That may make it significantly more difficult to/for ...
• One problem is ... / Another problem is ...
• By some estimates ...
• The bottom line is ...
• The solution, then, would be to ...
• According to one analysis, ...
• However, it seems likely that ...

Those who have read my blog posts know that I particularly like calling students' attention to useful collocations. In the lists above, there are certainly collocations often used in writing and discussing business topics.

Since the article was from the opinion section of the newspaper, I had students identify those parts of the text that expressed opinion, and contrast those with information that was clearly factual. This, in turn, generated discussion about which aspects of the article students agreed and disagreed with, as well as ideas for further impact of increased robotic manufacturing on the global economy.