文章来自于WSJ,讲的是关于疫情后人们不愿意回office 工作,希望远程办公的事情
从话题的角度来说,文章里面的一些语言点是比较适合以下的写作题目的
Imagine that you work for a company that has money in its budget to do ONE thing to help its employees improve their work: it can either improve the quality of the technology (for example, computers and printers) that employees use, OR it can redesign its offices so that employees will have more comfortable spaces to do their work and have meetings. Which idea would you prefer, and why?
但下面的部分我们要学习模仿的是文章结构 所谓结构,大体包含以下部分
# 开头 #中段落主旨句 #结尾
以下部分呈现文章,【为批注内容】,省略部分用...表示
Where are we in the office wars? I think there’s an armistice between the return-to-the-office side and the work-from-home forces. 【设问引入topic】Perhaps hostilities will resume in the fall. Bosses are hoping the old reality will snap back as the drama of 2020-22 recedes, that people will start to feel they need to come back, or can be made to. 【老板立场】The work-from-home people are dug in, believing they’re on the winning side, that the transformation of work in America, which had been going remote for years, was simply sped up and finalized by the pandemic. 【员工立场】In this tight job market they have the upper hand. Employers are fighting for talent: Fire me—I’ll get a better job tomorrow, and you’ll get 50 hours with HR onboarding my replacement. The balance of power will change if the slowing economy leads to layoffs and hiring freezes. 【作者Thesis:现在是员工强势,但是经济下行的时候,员工就弱势了】
The benefits of working from home are obvious: freedom, no commute; it’s easier to be there for family, the dog, the dentist appointment. 【从obxious 这个点,可以看出这是作者的让步态度】Less time wasted in goofy officewide meetings. I’ve wondered if there is another aspect, that office life was demystified by what began in the years before the pandemic, the rise of HR complaints and accusations of bullying, bad language and sexual misconduct. Add arguments over masks and vaccines, and maybe office life came to be seen less as a healthy culture you could be part of and more like a battlefield you wanted to avoid. 【从段落角度来说,该段是一个很好的总分结构】
Arguments against working from home are largely intangible, and I focus on these. They are less personal, more national and societal. 【这就是一个“反让步”的段落了,也是作者的态度】
I don’t want to see office life in America end. The decline in office life is going to have an impact on the general atmosphere of the country. There is something demoralizing about all the empty offices, something post-greatness about them. All the almost-empty buildings in all the downtowns—it feels too much like a metaphor for decline. 【作者开始具体展开远程办公可能会带来的弊端】
My mind goes first to the young. People starting out need offices to learn a profession, to make friends, meet colleagues, find romantic partners and mates. ...
There will be less knowledge of the workplace, of what’s going on, of the sense that you’re part of a burbling ecosystem. ...
【中间段落都是类似的“结构”,每段都是规整的先观点再细节的总分结构】
【结尾给建议】
I don’t want America to look like an Edward Hopper painting. He was the great artist of American loneliness—empty streets, tables for one, everyone at the bar drinking alone. We weren’t meant to be a Hopper painting. We were meant to be and work together.