TOEFL® essay: Knowledge gained from books and from experience. Which source is...

[Simaster]

This essay took me many days to choose which one is important. Finally I've finished it.

Here is the topic of the essay: "Not everything is contained in books. Compare and contrast knowledge gained from experience with knowledge gained from books.In your opinion, which source is more important? "

My essay (I know it has a lot of errors, someone please corrects them for me):

Knowledge and health are two most important things of a person. Knowledge is considered as a valuable treasure of human beings. Two main sources from which we can gain knowledge are books and experience.

Books contain a wide range of knowledge which is accumulated through many years by many scientists. People can get a large amount of information they may need from books. For as students, books are friends. Books well equip them with basic knowledge before they make their own ways in the world. Therefore, every country all over the world forces children to go to school where they will be taught by their teachers and books. There are some things students should not learn from experience such as knowledge gained from chemistry experiments which are too dangerous to do.

There is a saying: ”The truth comes from practices and experience”. So, we are confident that what we learn from experience is completely true. Moreover, there are some things we cannot learn from books. A good example for this is we cannot learn how to fly a plane without any practice or experience, or we can only our true friends from experience, not from books. In addition, through experience, people can discover new things and expand the current knowledge of humans.

I personally think that both knowledge gained from books and experience are important but knowledge we gain from books is more necessary. Knowledge from books is the base for broadening new knowledge by experiencing. Without the knowledge contained in books of former scientists, latter scientists could do nothing to improve humans’ knowledge and civilizations all over the world couldn’t be developed. Isaac Newton has said: ''If I saw further than other men, it was because I stood on the shoulders of giants.''

In conclusion, both knowledge gained from books and experience are essential to everyone. We must read many books to have needed basic knowledge and we also have to learn from our own experience. If we only learn from one of those two sources, we cannot be able to deal with problems in our real life.

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