A recent report has shown that people in the United States have experienced a revolution．This revolution is about the people’s attitude toward the work week and the weekend．Throughout the years, people have traditionally regarded Sunday as the beginning of the week．Now, this is changing.
Although some calendars today still mark the beginning of the week Sunday, more and more people in the United States are coming to take Monday as the first day of the week．They feel that Saturday and Sunday together make the weekend, because they make up of the two-day period during which people don’t have to work.
In fact, the word “weekend’ did not even exist in the English language until about the middle of the nineteenth century．In England, at that time, Saturday afternoons had just been added to Sundays and holidays as a time set aside for workers to have time off from their jobs．From then on, people had one and a half days, Saturday afternoon and Sunday, free from work each week: this reform became common in the United States in the 1920s.
However, there came the great depression in 1930s, and there was not so much work to do throughout the country．The work week was therefore shortened, and the weekend expanded from one and a half days to two full days, Saturday and Sunday.
Some people thought that this trend （趋势） of having fewer work days would continue, They felt that the increasing use of automation （自动化） in many parts of life would finally lead to further shortening of the work week, which, they said, might one day decrease to four days, or ever fewer．However, so far this has never happened, and the work week seems to have become fixed at 40 hours made up of five 8-hour days．Yet some people are even talking about adding Monday to the weekend．Do you think this will ever happen?
1．What does the author mainly discuss in the passage?
A．Attitudes toward employment. B．Attitudes toward pleasure activities.
C．Offering job chances. D．The development of the weekend.
2．According to the passage, what is changing in the way people think about the week?
A．Which days people should work. B．How the week is divided into days.
C．Which day begins the week. D．How many weeks there are in a month.
3．What does the author imply about the work week in England in the early 1800s?
A．It was six days long. B．It didn’t include Saturday afternoon.
C．It always included at least one holiday. D．It didn’t allow the workers time off.
4．According to the passage what effect did some people think the increasing use of automation would have?
A．It would make the work day longer.
B．It would allow people to work on the weekend.
C．It would make pleasure activities expensive.
D．It would create much more free time.