Where money has no value

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by Gemma Lucas, for LInguapress.

    Strangely, or perhaps not very strangely, there is a place in Britain where money has no value. It's called the Royal Mint, and it's situated in South Wales. The Mint stands behind high security fences. It is not open to tourists, but as a journalist, I was able to organise a visit. Tourists can visit the recent visitor centre, next door.

    In many ways, the Mint is a very odd place! As I walked round, I could see silver coins lying on the ground! Nobody stops to pick them up, they might as well be stones! Indeed, on the road outside the main building, there were coins squashed into the surface! Here the streets really are paved with money! Coins and banknotes are worthless!
    People who go into the Royal Mint, visitors and people who work there, are not allowed to take money in with them. They cannot take it out with them either! As a visitor, I had to leave all my money in a security locker, before I could enter. Inside the buildings, people must use special plastic coins!

    The Royal Mint has been making coins for over 1,100 years, since the year 886. It's one of the oldest factories in the world! For hundreds of years, the Mint belonged to the Kings of England. Today's King has nothing to do with it, except that his head appears on all new British coins.
    Until the 1960's, the Mint was in London, close to the Tower of London; but as it developed, the London site became too small. The Mint had to move  to a bigger factory in Llantrisant, in South Wales. Today it is among the biggest coin-making factories in the world, but things are changing.

  In the age of credit cards, people use fewer banknotes and fewer coins. In the 1980s, the British Royal Mint made coins for about 60 countries, including some European countries. But the last foreign coins were made in 2024. Now the Royal Mint only makes British coins - pounds, pennies, and special coins.
 A new activity is being developed too. The Mint now extracts gold from old unwanted electronic goods - like phones and computers. It's a very specialised job.... a part of the new "circular economy".
   

WORDS Mint: to mint means to create money, a mint is a place where the money is created. - fence: barrier - odd: strange - coins: metal money, usually round pieces - squashed: pushed, compressed - locker: box that can be locked - factory: industrial building - site: group of buildings, complex - fewer: a smaller number of - foreign: of / for other countries -  extract: take out of - goods: merchandise

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Student Worksheet

Where money has no value

  Interactive exercise - use on screen or on paper: Prepositions and adverbs
. Choose the correct word from the options suggested
 

Interactive exercise  Put back the missing preposition or adverb in these extracts from the text
You'll need to use each of these words:  behind  inside   into     on  outside  round  

For teachers:

Grammar:

This is a great text for working on specific grammar points.
1.   Basic modal verbs
2.   Negation
3.   Adverbs and prepositions.
For clear presentations of all these points and lots of examples, Linguapress recommends Rossiter's Descriptive Grammar of English (available in hardback, paperback or ebook)

Modal verbs; most examples are in the first half of the text. Note how we need to use "I was able to" as the past form of "can" in the phrase "I was able to organise a visit".  Was able to has the meaning of "was in a position to";  Compare this with "I could see silver coins lying on the ground", which is a basic possibility or ability (can with a verb of perception). Do not try to explain the subtle differences to students at this level; just make sure that they see the two possible past forms of can.
    Note the expression: they might as well be, which means: it would make no difference if they were.

Negation.  Negatives can be expressed in many different ways. The most common way is to add not to a verb or adverb; but we can also add no to a noun, or add a negative prefix or suffix to a word. The key expression in this text is Money has no value.  Have students look at the text, and find a different expression that means the same, but expresses the negative in a different way. Answer: Coins and banknotes are worthless.

    The words nobody and worthless are two examples of words whose negative value is formed with a prefix or a suffix. Ask students to find other examples of words whose meaning is determined by a negative prerfix or suffix (Answers: nothing and unwanted).

Adverbs and prepositions; this is the grammar point exploited in the interactive exercises above. In particular, note the prepositions of time for, since and until. It is important that learners do not confuse for (used with a period of time), and since (used with a point in time). The difference is clearly illustrated in the fourth paragraph.

    Note the use of the word fewer. Prescriptive grammar rules say that we must use fewer as a quantifier with count nouns, and less with non-count nouns and other words.  So fewer coins, but less money.
    In practical terms, the English language is changing, and people tend to use less with all kinds of nouns, so "less banknotes and less coins" is acceptable in contemporary English.... but is not always accepted in EFL tests!



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