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? Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.
Write a composition of about 400 words your view of the topic.
Not Everything That Is Learned Is Contained in Books
It is true that, in our life, we learn a lot from our experience as well as books. Books give us theories that we can put into practice. In the real life we learn from our experiences. In my opinion, knowledge whether gained from experience or from books is very important and plays an important role in our life. However, knowledge gained from experience is more important than that acquired from reading.
Firstly, it is easier for us to remember when we learn something from experience. Take swimming for example, if you want to learn swimming, the best way is to jump into the water, since no one can learn swimming well just though reading a textbook without trying it himself. It is always easier to master knowledge of certain kind through real life experience. Meanwhile, to explain one thing clearly, books have to use a lot of words, so it is usually very abstract and difficult to understand. Let us consider another example, in chemistry. Instead of reading boring chemical formulae, we will carry out chemical experiments such as making laughing gas, and we can not help laughing when smelling it.Consequently, that experience will leave a strong impression on us and we are very likely to remember the knowledge learnt during that class.
Secondly, some problems will occur that can not be addressed with the knowledge learnt from books. Although, we have knowledge obtained from books about how to deal with problems happening to our work, we have never applied it to real life. Hence, even a simple problem will become a serious issue. What‟s more, we will still confront a lot of difficulties which are not contained in books. For instance, compare the man who has read the guiding book for driving a thousand times without actually practicing it with the one who has been driving the car by himself several times. What will we have then? The difference is quite evident. The one with more practice will be more at ease with the driving.
In short, I appreciate knowledge gained from experience more than that gained from boring books. However, both are indispensable to us Moreover, when learning things from books, we should examine it carefully instead of uncritically accepting everything.