Chapter 2 has been a challenge.
There has just been far too many words. Page 77 uses the phrase "is exactly equivalent to", what does this mean ? Why is the phrase "is equivalent to" not sufficient, and in what way is "exactly equivalent" different in meaning to "equivalent". I have deliberated over the use of this word and can see no obvious benefit or difference in meaning that it imparts, so that's one word they didn't need to use.
Also they vary the definitions of commonly used words. The constant use of the word 'saving' to mean what I would refer to as 'savings' is just off-putting.
If you have a 'saving', then this is the difference between a higher price you may have paid, and the lower price you actually paid and this difference represents your 'saving' on that product. As in the phrase "I waited until it was on offer and made a saving of £1".
'Savings' is surplus of income and sometimes this surplus ends up in my 'savings account', at least until I need it to bail out a deficit in my current account. So when I'm reading the text every time I hit the word 'saving' my train of though stalls while I question the meaning and wonder why they use loads more words than they need to, but far fewer of the letter 's' than they should.
And the 'current account' I allude to above, is not the same as the nation's current account as understood in this book, for it also seems to have a variety of definitions, and nailing down just one is a bit like nailing jelly to the ceiling.
In amongst this struggle for understanding, there is what appears to be a mandatory Tutorial Group Discussion centering around Activity 4. After answering the question we are instructed to post this on the tutorial group. There seems little appetite so far from our group to actually post an answer and in doing so publicly demonstrate our lack of understanding for the material so far. This is unusual as we are most of the way through this week and with the TMA on the study planner for next week I'd have thought somebody would ave posted by now. I'll refine my answer and post tomorrow, but I hope I'm not the first.
1 comment:
Way way back in the mists of time when I did my Economics A-level (took it in June 1982) our teacher warned us right at the beginning of the course that economics makes use of Jargon. And what she meant by that was that ordinary words that we might use daily, are given very specific meanings within the context of economics.
And basically, her advice was to find out the definitions (economics) and learn them like foreign language vocab.
It all came back to me when I encountered the macroeconomic accounting "identity". :)
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