TOEFL® essay: From-books knowledge and experiential knowledge.

[MonkeyDDragon]

It has been said, "Not everything that is learned is contained in books." Compare and contrast
knowledge gained from experience with knowledge gained from books. In your opinion, which
source is more important? Why?

----- Thank you for correcting me. ------------------

There are two main channels that people acquire knowledge from: experience and books. Although experience brings us pragmatic knowledge that is more suitable for own us, I still believe that "books are the best teacher", an old cliche, just because containing knowledge networks of all humanity would bring much more serial benefits.

Knowledge that's from books is more abundant than our own experiential knowledge. It's obivious because knowledge that we gain through experience is limited to our position, our ability, and our opinions. In contrast, books can tell you so many thing about this world-even where you've never seen, about the history-when is impossible for you to spend. In other words, from-books knowledge is very helpful for what you can't experient by yourseft.

Nevertheless, abundance does not mean everything. There is something we can only learn from experience, no book can tell exactly about it. For example, before, I read a psychological book, it tells me about how to make friend. However, I really couldn't have made friend if I had followed the steps in the book. In reality, the steps are just general theory; they need to be adjusted to suit with the context at the time. And what I know to adjust was just what I learned when I was trying to make friend.

In conclusion, both from-books knowledge and experiential knowledge have their own benefits. However, I put more appreciation toward from-books knowledge. This source is not only voluminous but also having many fundamental things which are the core to build our own experiential knowledge on.