历年英语专业四级听写原文(19932013)

Package holiday s (1993) Package holidays, covering a two-weeks stay in an attractive place, are increasingly popular. Once you get to the airport, it is up to the tour operator to see that you get safely to your destination. Everything is laid on for you. There is in fact no reason for you to bother to arrange anything yourselves. You make friends and have a good time. But there is very little chance that you will get to know the local people. This is even less likely on a coach tour when you spend almost your entire time traveling. Of course, there are carefully scheduled stops for you to visit historic buildings and monuments. You may visit the beautiful, the historic, the ancient. But time is always short. There is also the added disadvantage of having to spend your holiday with a group of people you have never met before.146w The American Family (1994) The American family unit is changing. There used to be mainly two types of families, the extended and the nuclear. The former included mother, father, children, and some other relatives such as grandparents, living in the same house or nearby. Then as the economy progressed from agricultural to industrial, people began moving to different parts of the country in order to search for job opportunities. These moves split up the extended family. The nuclear family consisting of only parents and children, has therefore become far more wide spread. Today’ s family, however, can be composed of diverse combinations. With the divorce rate nearly one in two, there’s an increase in single-parent homes— a father or mother living with one or more children. Blended families occur when divorced men and women remarry and combine the childre...