A sample lesson plan

Exchange Office Transactions - 1 of 2

Transitional Lead-In:

For China only: "I suppose that if you were travelling to the West from China, before leaving China, you would go to your bank and arrange to have enough dollars for your trip, and this is excellent because American dollars are recognised by banks all over the world. If you were going to Europe, or to other big countries like Japan or Australia, however, nobody on the streets, or in normal shops, would know what a Dollar was worth and so they wouldn't accept them. They would expect you to go to a bank or an exchange office and get the local currency. In fact, that's probably the first thing a tourist would do whenever arriving in a foreign country.

For Western Countries: "Well, as you know, perhaps the first thing you do when you get to a foreign country is to exchange money in order to be able to buy things, take taxis or busses, buy newspapers, etc. And if you don't change enough when you arrive, you may have to return there later on.

Continue with (both China and the West): And, in fact, poor Alan Black seems to have to return to an exchange office in London - often called Bureau de Change in Britain - which is of course French - because he has already spent all the pounds he had. So he's back to change more Canadian dollars into pounds - or 'sterling' as they say inside Britain.

Now, when you change money, the first thing you want to know is the rate, because the values change every day - and sometimes even several times a day. And, of course, there are always big differences between one exchange office and another. But the first thing a customer might say is:

I'd like to change $150 (Canadian Dollars).

What's today's rate?

And another very good question might be:

And what's the commission on that?

Now, these are the rates that one exchange office is giving today for different foreign currencies:

And here we have (laminated) cards (which must be made up in advance) with different amounts of money on them that you want to exchange:

Suggested amounts to appear, one each, on different cards:

(Long term, the thing to do would be to get a low denomination note of each currency, e.g. 1 USD, 10 CAD, 10 Euro, 100 Kroner, etc. and laminate it with a white card that gives the amounts to be exchanged. I'll try to provide these.)

USD $375 CAD $ 750 AUD $ 1000 HKD $ 8750

Euro € 525 CHF F. 900 NZD $ 1600 CAD $ 925

Yen $ 22,000 DKK Kr. 1800 Euro € 1150 CHF. F. 430

HKD $ 3500 SEK Kr. 5500 USD $ 640 SEK Kr. 14,000

Have the students exchange these using the usual phrases cited above.