TOEFL® essay: Not everything that is learned is contained in books

[KirstenJ]

Q: 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?

Do you know what dose knowledge means? According to the dictionary, knowledge means that anything one can learn from. Generally, there exist adequate sources can people get knowledge, such as teachers, parents, library, internet, etc, they can be divided into two categories – books and experience. Some argue that the knowledge gained from books is more important than that gained from experience, while others hold the totally different perspective. As far as I am concerned, I absolutely accede to the second opinion.

Accurately speaking, it is theory that we learn from books, and experience let people improve the ability. Deeply saying, books contain academic information helping people understand how things happen, why they happen and how to solve them, and the personal experience accentuates the skills the individual need to hand with different situation in the real society.

Undoubtedly, it is indispensable that people should get that kind of information. However, only having the academic theory is far less than enough, we should learn something from the personal experience, or even from the others’. In my view of point, the theory told in the books is based on the consumption that the environment is fixed and unchanged. While the real life is a flexible system, in which the change varies every second. If people apply every situation said in books to the real case, he will be upset in the end. That is to say, no one can survive merely with the academic theory.

While, from another perspective, let me take an extreme opposite point as an example, what about the person who only have the skills? Let me suppose that a boy without any education, will he become a successful man? Actually, there still exist some cases in real life. For instance, in ancient China, many emperors are farmers, who don't have access to the education, for them, the key to success is their experience, which is more suitable for living than theory.

To sum up, even though both of the sources are indispensable, skill is more important than theory.

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