文档介绍：Reading for Skills and Vision
A New Textbook for
Extensive Reading
Unit Four Communication and Interpersonal Skills
Brief Introduction to the Unit:
The three articles in this unit are all concerned munication and personal skills, each focusing on a specific aspect of it and describing a special kind of relation among people. Reading them carefully, you can have a better knowledge of how to maintain good relations with different people.
Questions to Consider Survey the whole unit quickly to find out answers to the following questions:
What particular aspect of human relations does each article focus on?
What are the secrets of maintaining good relations of different kinds?
Answer to Question 1
Text A: relations between parents and adult children
Text B: relations between friends
Text C: relations between husband and wife
Answer to Question 2
Text A: treat your parents as friends
Text B: speak out the misunderstanding
Text C: spend your time with your spouse
Text A Maintain a Healthy Relation with Your Parents
Background Information
American Family: Traditionally, the American family has been a nuclear family, consisting of a husband, wife, and their children. Grandparents rarely live in the same home with their married sons and daughters. In the 1950s, 70 percent of American households were the “classic” nuclear American family. Yet, in the 1990s, only 8 percent of a working father, a stay-at-home mother, and two children under 18. An additional 18 percent consist of two working parents and one or more children under the age of 18. The remaining households consist of the following; 30 percent are married couples without children; 8 percent are single parents and their children; 11percent are unmarried couples and others living together. And, perhaps most startling, in 25 percent of the households, there is someone living alone.
Cultural Notes
psychotherapist: a person whose job is to treat mental illness, for example depression, by talking to