Band 6+: The graph below shows a typical American and a Japanese office. Summarise the information by selecting and reporting the main features and comparisons where relevant.

The two maps compare the layout of a typical Japanese and American office.

Overall, the Japanese and American workplace are significantly different. While the Japanese office encourages collaboration among staff, the American ones emphasize individual working styles.

Regarding the arrangement of seating, in Japan, the employees are placed together in a spacious regular table, which allows effective group discussion. Besides, in Japanese offices, each group of 6 employees are supervised by a section manager and a department manager is positioned on the top of the layout to monitor all the offices. By contrast, in America, each employee has a separated L-shaped table in order to minimize distractions from other workers. Additionally, the working spaces of the management team including two section managers and one department manager are located separately with partitions on the right-hand side of the office.

Coming to the utilities and amenities of the two typical offices. It can be easily seen that there is only a window behind the position of the department manager in the Japanese office. Meanwhile, in American workplace, two windows are set up on two sides of the office. While the office in America is equipped with a printer copier, a storage and two conference rooms, no such facilities are provided to Japanese officers.