Comprehension

Ex. 1. Say if the sentences are true or false. Correct the false ones.

1. Electronic communications and computers are allowing many people to use their homes as offices.

2. Professor Becker’s advice: companies need to cheat places where employees can work harder.

3. Appearing on time and looking busy will soon become irrelevant.

4. Digital Equipment Corp’s subsidiary has equipped offices with copying machines.

5. Steelcase is one of the firms keenest to experiment with new office layouts.

6. Top managers occupy the usual suite of top-floor offices.

Ex. 2. Answer the following questions.

1. Will offices disappear entirely?

2. How will the office change in future?

3. What does professor Becker advise?

4. What does Mr. Becker predict?

5. What will become the heart of an office?

6. What will soon become irrelevant?

7. What has been done to make offices more comfortable?

8. What is said about Steel case?

Ex. 3. Interview your group mates on his/her opinion on some of the author’s ideas. You can start your questions with ‘Do you agree that …?’, ‘What do you think about … ?’, Do you share the idea … ?’.

Ex. 4. Read one more text about the future of offices. Compare the ideas of offices in future with those in Text 3. Answer the following questions.

1. How do you understand the title of the article?

2. How can communication be improved?

3. Why should office walls and conference room walls be moveable?

4. How would it be possible for an office to get rid of file clerks?

5. What is necessary to do in an office to achieve such changes?

Factory Models Work In The Office

In the near future, many of us will work at home – or even out of our cars.

But companies with large operations too complex to move into homes quickly can still gain quantum improvements in operating costs and capital investment today. By reengineering operations and creating new office layouts, firms can utilize space 50 percent better.

In Japan, few managers have their own offices.

Japanese firms also spend much less on telephones and computers. Since most people aren’t on the phone or computer all day, you don’t need one for each employee. Fewer phones, of course, also means fewer lines, less switching equipment, etc.

It’s unlikely that the West will switch over to a Japanese model. We don’t like living in fish bowls. But there’s much room for improvement.

First, communications can be greatly improved by creating businesses within a business and putting these teams together. Divide them along service or product lines, or customer groups. Then divide them again by process.

As in the Japanese model, teams can share files, equipment, and conference rooms.

Office walls, if any, should be moveable to accommodate changes in the size of groups. Conference room walls should also be moveable to handle meetings of any size.

But the need for most meetings might disappear – workers who can simply lean over short walls to discuss matters with colleagues to get information they need quickly.

The end of paper is near – perhaps in a decade or two if not sooner. This should prove a welcome event: File cabinets often occupy as much as 30 percent of an office’s entire space. In addition, the end of paper spells doom for the armies of file clerks who toil daily retrieving documents and refiling them.

Ex. 5. Find key words, phrases and the topic sentences which best express the general meaning of the two texts.

Ex. 6. Write an essay “An Ideal Office of The 21^st Century” using the information from the two texts above.

T e x t 4