TOEFL® essay: Is it more important to understand ideas and concepts than facts?

[Glorning]

It is not rare to see many college graduates nowadays only being able to operate but unable to know the reasons. If the conditions change a little, they fail to deal with the new situation. Some people insist that this phenomenon results from learning facts regardless of the ideas and concepts at school and suggest that we should pay more attention to the idea understanding of students. This viewpoint is intensely opposed by those people who declare that those students not only fail to realize reasons for what they do but also have a poor performance on their particular kinds of operation. To my knowledge, grasping the way to operate is just enough, for the social specification require some people to operate and the others to research the principles and concepts.

The main reason for my propensity to facts is that facts are better related with the real world. Paragon, such as the courses in my university, come immediately to my mind. Professors taught us to be good mannered in the interview and to dress suitably in the dinner party, but I still didn't know how to dress and behave. In fact, it would be easier to understand if she told us directly to stare at the interviewer's eyes while talking, to speak loudly and to wear formal dress in the reception.
According to a well known philosopher, and I paraphrase, only concepts without facts a society may thrive but can never survive, which is to say that we may prosper our culture by thinking over profound questions but eventually we'll lose basic material to live. Naturally, it is significant to learn facts. Meanwhile a survey conducted by sina.com will make this point valid and convincible. Over 92% human resource managers believe that if the newly employed students know more factual knowledge they will better adapt to the new job.

Each coin, however, has its two sides. Rare as the drawbacks of learning facts are, they do exist. In other words, understanding ideas and concepts can avoid these shortcomings to some extent. No one can deny that concepts are abstracted from abundant facts, consequently they are compact and precise. Among the cases is the question about when to turn off the computer. My friend, Cindy, asked me when to turn off her computer. I prefer to tell her that she had better turn it off when the CPU becomes hot rather than just tell her to turn it off right now, since in the former way she will be able to determine when to turn it off by herself the next time. Sometimes I even consider that the effect of ideas and concepts should be valued more by students.

To sum up, when we scan the whole picture, the merits of learning facts far outweigh that of grasping the ideas and concepts. Thus I strongly advocate that we ought to impel students to learn more definite facts.

When I read this piece of writing myself, I can tell that it's not native at all, would you please help me correct the defects? Thank you!

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[Blackswallow]

Hi Glorning !

I think your English is great. You rarely make grammatical mistake and the way you right is amazing. I guess you have had to worked so hard.

Just one problem ( in my opinion) that I think you have a little trouble in making it cohesive

In the introduction paragraph, you said that learning the facts is enough, so why did you give the example about telling Cindy about when she should turn off her computer, this example definitely does not support your statement.

The second paragraph, to tell you the truth, I can not follow its main thread. Sound like some sentences have nothing to do with the others. Maybe because I just skim through it, but keep in mind that our Toefl judge also have just a few minutes to read your essay. So, try to make it easy to understand

Good luck, my friend. :-)

[Glorning]