English, baby!

Billionaires

Date: Apr 07 2006

Intro

1. Learn Vocabulary - Learn some new vocabulary before you start the lesson.

2. Read and Prepare - Read the introduction and prepare to hear the audio.

It used to be that everyone wanted to be a millionaire. If you made a million dollars ($1,000,000), you were rich and would never have to work again. But these days a million dollars doesn’t mean a lot. Sure, it’s quite a bit of money, but could you retire off of it?

Listen to John and I talk about billionaires.

Dialog

1. Listen and Read - Listen to the audio and read the dialog at the same time.

2. Study - Read the dialog again to see how the vocab words are used.

John

Dave

John: Are you a billionaire, Dave?

Dave: I’m working on it.

John: Are you? Are you pretty close?

Dave: I’m not.

John: Well, I guess there are a ton of billionaires in the world today.

Dave: Yeah, the lastest study showed 140 billionaires, now.

John: So, it’s not really saying much anymore to be a millionaire.

Dave: No, I think a millionaire is small potatoes nowadays.

John: Yeah.

Dave: Bill Gates is still the richest man in the world, though.

John: Is he?

Dave: Yeah. What’s interesting though is that new billionaires are showing up in less developed countries. India has got, like, ten billionaires now. China, I think, has six or eight. You’ve got a bunch showing up in Russia.

John: Oh, nice.

Dave: But the U.S. still has the most.

John: I can’t even fathom a billion dollars.

Dave: No!

John: How many zeros is that? I think it’s twelve. Twelve zeros.

Dave: That’s a lot of money.

John: What would you buy if you had a billion dollars?

Dave: A comfortable pair of shoes.

John: Yeah, shoes would be really good. I think I’d buy a nice suit.

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Discussion

In the conversation, Dave says that there are 140 billionaires in the world. Actually, there were 140 billionaires 20 years ago. Now, there are 793 billionaires in the world. Their total net worth is $2.8 trillion ($2,800,000,000,000). That’s a heckuva lot of cash!

Here’s a list of the richest people in the world, according to Forbes:

1. Bill Gates, U.S., $50,000,000,000.

2. Warren Buffet, U.S., $42,000,000,000.

3. Carlos Slim Helu, Mexico, $30,000,000,000.

4. Ingvar Kamprad, Switzerland, $28,000,000,000.

5. Lakshmi Mittal, India, $23,500,000,000.

To learn more about the world’s richest people, check out this site:

Forbes’ Billionaires

Comments

mickee85

Philippines

First of all, Billion has nine zeros, twelve is for trillion. Anyways, everyone wants to be a billionaire, who doesn’t like? but still money is not our happiness. There are lots of milliionaires and billionaires out there that are not happy. Everything in this world is temporary, we can be happy without having billions of dollars.