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　　英语四级听力美文第84篇:Work and Play

　　Our everyday existence is divided into two phases, as distinct as day and night.

　　We call them work and play.

　　We work so many hours a day, and when we have allowed the necessary minimum for suchactivities as eating and shopping, the rest we spend in various activities which are known asrecreations, an elegant word which disguises the fact that we usually do not even play in ourhours of leisure, but spend them in various forms of passive enjoyment or entertainment — not playing football but watching football matches; not acting, but theatre-going; not walking, but riding in a motor coach.

　　Therefore we need to define clearly the difference not only between work and play but, equally, between active play and passive entertainment.

　　It is, I suppose, the decline of active play — of amateur sport — and the enormous growth ofpurely receptive entertainment which has given rise to a sociological interest in theproblem.

　　If the greater part of the population, instead of indulging in sport, spend their hours of leisure “viewing” television programmes, there will inevitably be a decline in health and physique.

　　And in addition, there will be a psychological problem, for we have yet to trace the mentaland moral consequences of a prolonged diet of sentimental or sensational spectacles on thescreen.

　　There is, if we are optimistic, the possibility that the diet is too thin and not nourishingenough to have much permanent effect on anybody.

　　Nine films out of ten seem to leave absolutely no impression on the mind or imagination ofthose who see them: few people can give a coherent account of the film they saw the weekbefore last, and at longer intervals they must rely on the management to see that they do notsit through the same film twice.