Learning from experience or from book, TOEFL

"How can a person know such things if he has never stepped away from his home?, " that is said by the elderly in my home town. My answer is simple. " Well, he must have learned from books." Even if books cannot teach me everything, I believe that learning from books is better than learning from experience. My examples to support my stand are given in the following.

First of all, while learn from experience is limited by the conditions such as time, place, and the life of the learners, books gives a person more opportunity to learn. For instance, one can travel through time and study the records of the important situations when reading books of history. Similarly, he/she can go beyond the earth by reading books such as books in astrology. Even if the person is not an astronaut, he/she can imagine how the galaxy should looks like.

Secondly, reading books can be the fastest and cheapest way to access the information. On the other hands, one take a longer time to acquire experiences which may also be paid at the higher cost. For example, in school, reading textbooks also save my time because I can select the specific topics related to the topics of interest, instead of following the course syllabus which will make me spend a lot of time to complete every chapter. In addition, because I can learn from books, I can save my money by skipping some fundamental courses.

Thirdly, while it is true that learning from experience gives a person the remarkable memory, I contend that some experiences do not worth risking for. For example, the guidance from tourist books helped me as a traveler avoid making myself in danger. Following the tourist guide books, I found the best location to rest a night, the night market to do shopping without being thieved, and the roads to walk without having to be worried about criminals.

In conclusion, learning from books is economic in terms of time and money. It also sets us free from most of the conditions; we can learn the life of others people, the exotic kind of knowledge, or the stories in the past. The stories of people in books give us consciousness and lessons. For these reasons, learning from books is the better way to horizon one's knowledge and hone one's perception.

You should have included the prompt so that we could have understood what it really expects form you.


.... doing what?

Your overall essay structure too needs improvement. It looks pretty bulky and I am sure you would have run out of time. I strongly suggest you to follow the four para structure for this task (this is what dumi suggests ).

You have not given much consideration to the structure I suggested you above for your introduction. I think you need to be concerned about the features that help you earn a good score as well as the time too. The structure I suggested above would help you with both of them. I don't say your introduction is written badly, however, it lacks the most essential features that it should contain. For instance, you have not adequately introduced the background of this issue to the reader. Then you have not firmly stated your opinion in the intro. The reader needs to know these things more than the reasons that you use to justify your opinion and the place for justifications is your body paras.

I would like to apologize for my misconception and the way I wrote. I admitted that it might be my lack of understanding about the style of the toefl essay.

Could you please describe more about the background that I should have given in the essay.
Should I give the definition, for example, what is learning from experience and what kinds of knowledge learned from each method.

By the ways, I always feel thankful to your help.

Sntin

Sure :)


This is what I would do for this intro;
"Intellectual growth should commence at birth and cease only at death" , said Albert Einstein. (Hook - it does not have to be a quote always, but can be some thing catchy )

We learn from experiences as well as from books. (Background - this is what your prompt suggests)
However, in my view, I believe that learning from books is more effective than learning through experience. (thesis statement)