TOEFL® Sample Essay: Some people believe that the best way of learning

[Sevenfold]

Some people believe that the best way of learning about life is by listening to the advice of family and friends. Other people believe that the best way of learning is through personal experience. Compare the advantages of these two different ways of learning about life. Which do you think is preferable? Use specific examples to support your preference.

Life is a process of learning and exploring new things. Some people prefer to learn about life by taking patter by the advice of their family and friends, while others think it is better to learn from personal experience. Both ways have their advantages because you learn a lot.

On one hand, learning from your family and friends is good because you get advices from experienced people. They have made mistakes and they want to prepare us for the surprises that life sometimes has for us. If we listen to them, we would protect ourselves from getting hurt and we would be able to make the right choices. For example, parents can teach their children that education is important and they have to study if they want to succeed later on in life. Because they have already been to school and probably did not realize at the time how important it is. If a child listens to them, he or she is most likely to succeed.

On the other hand, learning from your own personal experience can be more effective. It is important to learn from our own actions and mistakes because the consequences of them will teach us more effectively. For example, a child who wants to touch the stove while it is hot because it seems interesting and exciting would not be completely satisfied with knowing from his or her parents that it is dangerous. This way the lesson would not be considered very meaningful by the child. However, if the child touches the stove and burns his or her hand, that will have a significant effect. The child would have experience the pain and would know not to touch it in order to prevent getting hurt. This example represents the importance of learning through your personal experiences.

However, I personally believe that listening to close people and learning from the advices they give us is better. Learning based on personal experiences holds a risk of getting hurt and facing failures in order to get knowledge. In contrast to that, listening to people who have already experienced failures and learned a lot about life is a safe way to acquire new lessons and to be prepared for life.

In conclusion, both ways are important and teach us a lot about life. Personal experiences teach us lessons by instigating our feelings. We face disappointments and failures and we learn from them what the right way to do something is. Whereas advices from already experienced people is safer and easier for us to learn about life because we do not have to make mistakes in order to succeed at something.

Can you please tell me if the construction of my essay is correct and is there anything I have to change or improve about my writing? (I'm sure there is) Thank you in advance

TOEFL listening lectures: A lecture from a life sciences class (3)