Nonfiction · Level 2 · 156 words

The Home Office

Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.

For many jobs today, the office is wherever a laptop opens. Working from home was once rare, but now millions do it. Like most changes, it brings both gains and costs.

The gains are real. There is no long drive to work, which saves time and money. A worker can start soon after waking and use the saved hours for family or rest. The home is quiet, without the noise of a busy office.

But there are costs too. At home, work and rest share the same walls, and the line between them can blur. Some people find it hard to stop working when the desk is ten steps from the bed. Others feel lonely, missing the small talk and shared lunches of an office.

The best home workers set clear limits: a fixed start, a fixed stop, and a space used only for work. Freedom, it turns out, needs a little structure to work well.

Comprehension questions

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4 questions
1. What is the main idea of the passage?

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A. Working from home has real gains and real costs, and works best with limits
The passage weighs the gains and costs of working from home and advises setting limits.

2. According to the text, what is one gain of working from home?

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B. No long drive to work, which saves time and money
The text lists "no long drive to work, which saves time and money" as a gain.

3. Why can "the line between them blur" at home?

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B. Work and rest happen in the same place, so it is hard to separate them
The text says work and rest "share the same walls," so the two are hard to keep apart.

4. In this passage, "blur" most nearly means

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B. become unclear or hard to tell apart
The border between work and rest "can blur," meaning it becomes unclear.

Source: Written for Fluency. Original passage © Studio AM, written for Fluency.