The rise and fall of vacations The riseTop vacation time: Augus

In this section, you will hear a short passage. For questions 21—30, complete the notes using three words or fewer for each blank. The passage will be read twice. Remember to write the answers on the answer sheet.
    August is now established as top vacation time, but few people realize that their paid vacation is a fairly recent phenomenon. The word "vacation" was not even in the dictionary until the middle of the nineteenth century. According to historians, vacation is a reflection of what is happening in society in terms of work and resources available. That did not really happen until the first half of the twentieth century.
    The popular vacation owes its birth to such factors as the changing nature of work and the rise of railroad. In the nineteenth century, most people in North America were farmers, artisans, or self-employed in some way. Wealthy people went off to play while others went away primarily for their health. But as the industrial revolution took place, North America was transformed from an agricultural into an urban-industrial society. People started separating work from life. Vacation places started to take shape, therefore, as there developed a new middle class that had money in its pockets , some free time, and a taste for amusement.
    Interestingly enough, however, this division between work and life is now becoming blurred a-gain. The technological revolution that we are living in at present has brought with it cell telephones , e-mail, and the Internet. Combine this with the America anxiety to work harder in order to do more, and be better, and what happens very often is that people continue to work while on vacation. Indeed, the trend now seems to be that, although North Americans are getting more and more paid leave than they did ten years ago, they are taking shorter but more frequent vacations. And sure enough the computer and the cell go along too.