Skill is more important than a theory, but without any experience - knowledge, it fails.

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.

I'm afraid I can't offer revisions for either of these sentences, because I cannot decipher what you are trying to say. I do see that you like to start your sentences with clauses. This just increases the confusion.

So, what I would like you to do, just for those two sentences, is tell me -- as simply as you can -- exactly what you are trying to say.

EF_Simone

I want to describe the difference between konwledge from books and experience by definition and understanding.

maybe it is better if i combine them . what about this one?

Accurately speaking, the knowledge that we learned from books is called theory, it contains academic information helping people understand how things happen, why they happen and how to solve them, while the message form experience is called ability, which accentuates the skills the individual need to handle with different situation in the real society.

thanks~~

Better, but it could still use some revision. For instance, why do you start with "accurately speaking?" Does this mean that all your other statements besides this one are inaccurate? Also, is it true that all book learning is theory while all experiential learning is ability? Cannot books also tell us how to do things, and so give us at least a partial ability to do things we could not have done at all without reading them? Can one not build up theories from experiential learning? Is this not what scientists do, in fact, in most cases?

EF_Sean
yes, you are right,

I have improved it as followed:

Deeply saying, the knowledge that we learned from books is called theory, which mostly contains academic information helping people understand how things happen, why they happen and how to solve them, while the messages form experience are, to a greater extent, called ability, which accentuates the skills the individual need to handle with different situation in the real society.

so ,what do you think of this one?

really appreciate your advise.

Deeply saying, The knowledge that we learned from books is called theory, which mostly containsconsists of academic information that helps people understand how things happen,and why things happen and how to solve them , while the messages formthe knowledge we learn from experience are , to a greater extent, called ability, which accentuates themostly consists of skills thean individual needs to handle with different situation in the real societyreal life situations .

This doesn't address the concerns I raised earlier, but is at least less painful to read.

Jin, just to be very clear: "deeply saying" is not a meaningful phrase; in other words, whatever you mean by it, it sounds nonsensical to an English speaker. "Accurately speaking" is only slightly better: It does not sound nonsensical but does sound quite awkward. So, my advice to you is to leave out such prefacing phrases until you have become more fluent in colloquial English.

EF_Sean
EF_Simone

really thanks for your advise.

what do you think of this essay? is it ok for toefl exam? or which part should i pay my attention to ?

thanks!

If you can exercise enough discipline to write very simple sentences, avoiding the awkward phrases you seem to favor, I think you can pass the TOEFL. Just keep it very simple. Do not try to be ornate or conversational.

EF_Simone
really thank you for you help