专业英语四级听力讲座在线练习三
时间：2021-01-07 练习：次
Test Three
In this section you will hear a talk.
You will hear the talk ONCE ONLY.
While listening,
you may look at the task
on ANSWER SHEET ONE and write
NO MORE THAN THREE WORDS
for each gap.
Make sure what you fill in
is both grammatically and
semantically acceptable.
You may use the blank sheet
for note-taking.
You have THIRTY seconds
to preview the gap-filling task.
Now listen to the talk.
When it is over,
you will be given TWO minutes
to check your work.
American Families
Good morning,
everyone! Today's lecture
is about American families.
The traditional American family
used to have a working father,
a housewife mother,
and two or three children.
But since the last twenty
or twenty-five years,
the picture has changed.
Now we have many different kinds of
families and living situations
besides this traditional one.
For example,
there are many single mothers
and single fathers
who are raising children by themselves.
There are married couples who decide
that they don't want any children.
Sometimes adult children
who have been living alone
for a long time come back
and live with their parents again.
Why has the traditional family
changed so much? Well,
the reasons are both social and economic.
First, as you know,
the divorce rate is high
in our culture; as a result,
we have many single-parent families.
Second,
there is unemployment
among young adults.
If they can't find a job,
many times they return home
and live with their parents again.
But of course,
the most important reason
for the changes in American families
is that most American women
now work outside the home.
This means that more than
half of all American homes
do not have
a full-time homemaker anymore.
However,
with so many women working,
our society has some difficult,
new problems.
For example,
who will take care of children
and old people?
Who will do the housework?
Who will do the volunteer work?
Some people might say
that these are "women's problems",
so women should be the ones
to solve them.
But more and more people understand
that everybody in our society
is responsible for trying to find answers
to these problems.
In fact,
many companies are trying to
help modern working parents
by creating flexible new policies.
Here are a few examples.
One example is
that many companies
now allow a woman
to leave her job temporarily
in order to have a baby.
This is called maternity leave.
The woman may receive
part of her salary
while she is not working.
And of course her job
will be waiting for her
when she is ready
to return to work.
Another example is
that many companies
now have something
called "flextime".
Flextime means
that instead of working
from 8:00 a.m.
to 5:00 p.m.
as most people do in this country,
a worker can work from,
say, 6:00 a.m.
to 3:00 p.m.,
or from 10:00 a.m.
to 7:00 p.m., etc.
As you can imagine,
flextime is very useful
for people with children.
Third, some companies
allow their employees
to work at home instead of
coming into the office every day.
Working at home is easy for people
in professions like
computer programming
and telephone sales.
OK,
I've given you three examples
of new company policies
that are supposed to make life
a little easier
for working mothers and fathers.
However,
it's important for you to understand
that there are only
a few large companies
that can afford
to help their employees
with these kinds of programs.
For most people,
trying to work
and take care of a family is still very,
very difficult.
OK.
That's all for today's lecture.
Thank you for your attention.
Now, you have TWO minutes
to check your work.
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