UNIDAD 3 MÓDULOS 1-3

¿QUÉ HACER CON LAS PALABRAS DESCONOCIDAS?

¿QUÉ HACER CON LAS PALABRAS DESCONOCIDAS?

Objetivos:
Que el alumno 1. Logre fluidez en su lectura, deduciendo el significado de palabras desconocidas por
medio de los cognados, del uso del contexto y de la omisión de ciertas palabras. 2 Cuando sea
necesario, busque en el diccionario el significado de una palabra desconocida de manera rápida y
efectiva.

ACTIVIDAD 1
A. Lee la siguiente información que está escrita ‘telegráficamente’ y da tu versión en español
incluyendo lo que se omitió.

1776, ….. Declaration of Independence, also........ .the publication........., The Wealth of Nations......by
Adam Smith, ..... “The Father of Economics.”

As you can see, you can extract a lot of information although it is no written. Hence, you must not stop
reading when you find an unknown word. However, this does not mean vocabulary is completely
unimportant. As you read, it will improve.

B. Para esta actividad, lee rápidamente una parte del texto para que tengas una muy buena
idea del contexto. Luego, escribe una palabra -en inglés o español- en cada uno de los
espacios blancos.

TEXTO 1

1776 is the 1) __________ that Americans associate with the 2) __________ of the declaration
of Independence. This year also marked the publication in England of one of the 3) __________
influential books in our time, The Wealth of Nations, 4) __________ by Adam Smith. It 5) __________
the author the title “The Father of Economics.” Smith objected to the principal economic 6) __________
of his day. He differed with the physiocrats who 7) __________ that land was the only source of
wealth. He also 8) __________ with the mercantilists who 9) __________ the wealth of a nation is given
by its money supply, and who called for government regulation of the economy in order to 10)
__________ a “favorable balance of trade.” In Smith’s 11) __________ , a nation’s wealth was
dependent upon production, not agriculture alone. How much it produced, he believed, depended
upon how well it combined labor and the other 12) __________ of production, the most effective
the combination, the greater the output, and the greater the nation’s 13) __________.The heart of
Smith’s economic philosophy was his belief that the economy would 14) __________ best if left
to function on its own without government 15) __________ . In those circumstances, self-interest
would lead business firms to 16) __________ only those products that consumers wanted, and to
produce them at the 17) __________ possible cost. They would do this, not as a means of benefitting
society but in an effort to 18) __________ their competitors and gain the greatest 19) __________ . But
all this self-interest would benefit society as a whole by providing it with more and
20) __________ goods and services at the lowest 21) __________.

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TEXTO 2
INTRODUCTION TO LIFE INSURANCE

1.1 Summary
Actuaries apply scientific principles and techniques from a range of other disciplines to problems
involving risk, uncertainty and finance. In this chapter we set the context for the mathematics of later
chapters, by describing some of the background to modern actuarial practice in life insurance,
followed by a brief description of the major types of life insurance products that are sold in developed
insurance markets. Because pension liabilities are similar in many 1) __________ to life insurance
liabilities, we also describe some common pension benefits. We give examples of the actuarial
questions arising from the risk management of these contracts. How to 2) __________ such questions,
and solve the resulting problems, is the subject of the following chapters.

1.2 Background
The first actuaries were employed by life insurance 3) __________ in the early eighteenth century to
provide a scientific basis for 4) __________ the companies’ assets and liabilities. The 5) __________
depended on the number of deaths occurring among the insured lives each year. The modelling of
mortality 6) __________ a topic of both commercial and general scientific interest, and it attracted many
7) __________ scientists and mathematicians to actuarial problems, with the result that much of the
early work in the field of probability was 8) __________ solutions to actuarial problems. Connected with
the development of solutions to actuarial problems.

The earliest life insurance policies provided that the policyholder would pay an 9) , called the
premium, to the insurer. If the named life insured died during the year that the contract was in force,
the insurer would pay a predetermined lump sum, the sum insured, to the policyholder or his or
her estate. So, the first life 10) __________ contracts were annual contracts. Each year the premium
would increase as the probability of death 11) __________. If the insured life became very ill at the
renewal date, the insurance might not be 12) __________, in which case no benefit would be paid on
the life’s subsequent death. Over a large number of contracts, the premium income each year should
approximately match the claims outgo. This method of matching income and outgo annually, with no
attempt to smooth or balance the premiums over the years, is 13) __________ assessmentism.

TEXTO 3
WHY IS THE 21ST CENTURY MAKING US MISERABLE?

We've built an all-encompassing web of technology dedicated to avoiding people. We 1) __________

online so we can avoid people in the supermarket. We 2) __________ a fortune on a home theatre 3)
__________ so we can avoid the annoyance of going to the cinema. Filter from your world that chatty
person next to you in a queue by plugging in your iPod and texting your 4) __________.
The problem is that tolerating annoyance is necessary in a world 5) __________ by other people who
aren't you. As long as you have needs, you'll have to deal with 6) __________ you can't stand from time
to time. Technology is ensuring we lose that vital ability.
These days, whatever your interests, you can 7) __________ a forum and meet a dozen people just
like you. Say goodbye to the painful process of dealing with somebody who's different. That's another
Old-world 8) __________. Fifty years 9) __________ people were unable to filter their peers in this way,
but still managed to have more 10) __________ friends than we have now – people they could trust.

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ACTIVIDAD 2
De acuerdo con el texto, elige la opción que mejor complete cada reactivo.
Pon en práctica el reconocimiento de cognados, el deducir el significado de palabras desconocidas y el ignorar
palabras desconocidas (hemos rayado ejemplos de palabras que entran en este caso). Si buscas palabras en el
diccionario, te recomendamos que no sean más de 5.
Recomendamos que primero leas el reactivo, sin leer las opciones de respuesta dadas. Después ve al texto y
ubica las líneas que responden a la pregunta. Ubica palabras clave. Finalmente, elige la opción que mejor
complete o conteste cada reactivo.

In the American colonies there was little money. England did not supply the colonies with coins and
it did not allow the colonies to make their own coins, except for the Massachusetts Bay Colony, which
received permission for a short period in 1652 to make several kinds of silver coins. England wanted to
keep money out of America as a means of controlling trade: America was forced to trade only with
England if it did not have the money to buy products from other countries. The result during this
revolutionary period was that the colonists used various goods in place of money: beaver pelts, Indian
wampum, and tobacco leaves were all commonly used substitutes for money. The colonists also made
use of any foreign coins they could obtain. Dutch, Spanish, French, and English coins were all in use in
the American colonies.
During the Revolutionary War, funds were needed to finance the war, so each of the individual states
and the Continental Congress issued paper money. So much of this paper was printed that by the end
of the war it was virtually worthless. As a result, trade in goods and the use of foreign coins still flourished
during this period.
By the time the Revolutionary war had been won by the American colonists, the monetary
system was in a state of total disarray. To remedy this situation, the new Constitution of the United
States, approved in 1789, allowed only Congress to issue later, the Coinage Act of 1792 made the dollar
the official currency of the United States and put the country on a bimetallic standard. In this bimetallic
system, both gold and silver were legal money, and the rate of exchange of silver to gold was fixed by
the government at sixteen to one.

This passage mainly discusses

a) American money from past to present.
b) The English monetary policies in colonial America.
c) The effect of the Revolution on American money.
d) The American monetary system of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.

2. The passage indicates that during the colonial period, money was
a) supplied by England
b) coined freely by the colonists
c) scarce
d) used extensively for trade

3. The Massachusetts Bay Colony was allowed to make coins

a) continuously from the inception of the colony
b) throughout the whole seventeenth century
c) from 1652 to the Revolutionary War
d) for a short time during one year

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4. Which of the following is NOT mentioned in the passage as a substitute for money during the
colonial period?
a) Wampum
b) Cotton
c) Tobacco
d) Beaver furs

5. According to the passage, what happened to the American monetary system during the
Revolutionary War?
a) The Continental Congress issued gold and silver coins.
b) Individual states were not allowed to issue money.
c) So much paper money was circulated that it lost its value.
d) American money replaced trade in goods and foreign coins.

6. How was the monetary system arranged in the Constitution?

a) Only the U.S. Congress could issue money.
b) The U.S. officially went on a bimetallic monetary system.
c) Various state governments, including, Massachusetts, could issue money.
d) The dollar was made the official currency of the U.S.

7. According to the passage, which of the following is NOT true about the bimetallic monetary system?
a) Either gold or silver could be used as official money.
b) Gold could be exchanged for silver at a rate of 16 to 1.
c) The monetary system was based on two metals.
d) It was established in 1792.

ACTIVIDAD 3
Lee el siguiente texto y con la ayuda del contexto da un significado en español de las
palabras subrayadas.

Las palabras rayadas son ejemplos de aquellas que pueden omitirse. Existen muchas más. Al término del texto, se te da una
lista de vocabulario que puede ser útil para tu actividad. No uses diccionario. También, ayúdate reconociendo cognados.

THE 4,000 -YEAR-OLD MAN

Mummified remains of an ancient mountain climber give scientists a rare glimpse into life in the early
Bronze Age.
One day a long time ago, a young man bundled himself up in a weatherproof leather coat, shouldered
a crude wooden backpack, grabbed a knife, a bow, and an ax, and headed into the Tyrolean Alps, which
run between Austria and Italy. Up high in the mountains, at about 3,200 m. something happened - an
accident, a violent blow- that took his life and left him to be swallowed by the Similaun Glacier. There
he lay, locked in a crevasse, buried, frozen, and forgotten.
Now, 4,000 years later, he has turned up -virtually intact and remarkably well preserved- a
messenger from the ancient past. Stumbled upon at the glacier’s edge by a pair of German climbers,
the mummified corpse was identified last week as a rare human specimen from the early Bronze Age
possibly the oldest ever found in Europe. Although hundreds of Bronze and Iron Age bodies have been
found in the bogs of northwest Europe, the “lceman from the Similaun,” as he was dubbed by the

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Austrian press is much better preserved. It was a find of “extraordinary scientific significance,” says
Professor Konrad Spindler at the University of Innsbruck, where the Iceman was flown for detailed study.
The discovery gives a glimpse into a murky period of European history. In the Bronze Age, central
Europe was a relatively primitive place compared with the kingdoms of Egypt and the great city- states
of Mesopotamia. The land was populated largely by preliterate farmers, living in small communities, who
supported themselves with agriculture and hunting. Without any written record, scientists trying to draw
a picture of the ancient Europeans have had to rely on what they could discover from excavations, “we
have cemeteries and settlements”, says Peter Wells, director of the Center for Ancient Studies at the
University of Minnesota. “But rarely do we get a glimpse of people using their artifacts in everyday life”.
In that respect the Iceman has already yielded details. He was a 20-to-40 year-old man about 160
cm tall, with tattoos in the shape of crosses and lines. The wear on his teeth suggests a diet of meat
and stone-ground meal, (an analysis of his stomach contents may yield more information about his
eating habits). Well equipped for an Alpine trip, he wore a jacket stitched together with fine thongs. His
leather boots were lined with hay to keep out the winter chill.
What was he doing in the mountains? He was probably not a hunter since most of the animals such
as deer, badgers and wild pigs would have been found in forests at lower altitudes. He may have been
searching for gold and other precious metals. He could have been on the run, hiding from enemies in
the treacherous mountain passes. Or, says Spindler, he may simply have been on his way to visit a
friend in the next valley - a trip disastrous for him but lucky for scientists 40 centuries in the future.

PALABRAS NECESARIAS:

climber (to climb) (escalar) hunting (caza)

coat (abrigo) thongs (correa)
wooden (de madera) hay (heno)
knife (cuchillo) chill (frío)
body (cuerpo) forest ( bosque)
press (prensa)

Aquí están las definiciones del diccionario de las primeras seis palabras. Coteja tu versión con la del
diccionario y te darás cuenta que tus respuestas son tan acertadas como las del diccionario, o quizás
mejores.

1. remain: 1. v. permanecer, quedarse. 2. s. (pl) deshechos, residuos, restos, ruinas.

2. glimpse: 1. s. vislumbre, vistazo, vista momentánea, manifestación momentánea. 2. v. brillar con luz
tenue; lanzar una mirada.
3. bundle: 1. s. lío, bulto, paquete, haz. 2. v. escaparse precipitadamente, -up, arroparse.
4. shoulder: 1. s. hombro, brazuelo, saliente, hombrera. 2. v. llevar a hombros, cargar sobre los
hombros, echar sobre la espalda, cargar, hacerse responsable de, aceptar con resignación.
5. grab: 1. s. presa, (coll) robo, (mach) gancho, pala de doble concha. 2. v. asir, arrebatar, agarrar.
6. headed: 1. adj. que tiene cabeza, encabezado head: 1. s. cabeza, cabecera, título, centrado, espuma
(vaso de cerveza) 2. adj. delantero, primero. 3. v. dirigir, encaminar, acaudillar, estar a la cabeza.

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ACTIVIDAD 4
Escribe la versión en español de las siguientes palabras. Nota el uso de los afijos.

1. Profit: renta, ganancia 10. Law: ley

Profitless ____________ Lawful ____________
To profit ____________ Lawless ____________
Profitable ____________ Lawlessly ____________
Lawlessness ____________
2. Adjusted: ajustado Lawfulness ____________
Adjustable ____________ Lawyer ____________
Adjustment ____________
11. To avouch: declarer
3. Short: corto Avouchment ____________
Shorten ____________
Shortest ____________ 12. To appraise: valuar
Shortly ____________ Appraisable ____________
Shorter ____________ Appraisement ____________
Appraiser ____________
4. Price: precio
Priceless ____________ 13. Polite: educado, cortés
Politeness ____________
5. Employee: empleado Impolite ____________
To employ ____________ Politely ____________
Employer ____________
Unemployable ____________ 14. To allot: asignar
Unemployment ____________ Allotment ____________
Employment ____________ Allotted ____________
Unemployed ____________
15. Advice: consejo
To advise ____________
6. Pain: dolor Adviser ____________
Painfully ____________ Advisable ____________
Painful ____________
Painless ____________ 16. Belief: creencia
Believer ____________
7. Available: disponible Believable ____________
Availability ____________ Unbelievable ____________
Unavailable ____________ Disbeliever ____________
To believe
8. To avoid: evitar, anular
Avoidance ____________ 17. Danger: peligro
Avoidable ____________ Dangerous ____________
To endanger ____________
9. Useful: útil Dangerously ____________
Useless ____________
Usefully ____________ 18. To darken: obscurecer
Usefulness ____________ Dark ____________
To use ____________ Darkness ____________
User ____________ Darkened ____________
Uselessness ____________ Darker ____________

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