We gain our knowledge about the world and our life from two sources: from
experience and from books. These two resources are both important, but which
of them is more important?
Knowledge from books forms a very important part of our knowledge structure.
In schools and colleges, we learn knowledge that is fundamental to our future
career. We learn knowledge from books in order to make our contributions to
this society in the future. A student learns mathematic equations and other
scientific knowledge and become a scientist or engineer. We will be illiterate
and ignorant without learning knowledge from books. Moreover, we acquire
knowledge about life and the world by reading books, magazines and
newspapers. This is also very important, as we cannot experience everything all
by ourselves. Therefore books are a very important source of knowledge.
On the other hand, we cannot learn everything from books. "Experience is the
best teacher" is an old cliche but I agree with it. The most important, and
sometimes the hardest lessons we learn in life come from our participation in
situations. We learn how to get along with others or how to gain self-respect
from our experience, not from books. We cannot learn emotional feelings, such
as love and care, through books; they come from our real life experience.
Knowledge from experience is also a very important supplement to knowledge
from books.
Needless to say both learning sources, books and experience, are very
important to us. But in my opinion knowledge from experience is more
important, because without knowledge from experience, it is impossible to get
a real understanding of knowledge from books, and how to apply this
knowledge to real world situations.
TOEFL