TOEFL Writing
Writing Sample
Question:
It has been said, "Not everything that is learnded 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.
My Answer.
Though I conclude that knowledge gained from experince is excellent, it is better to discuss possible advantages of the both sides, knowledge gained from experience and knowledge gained from books. I will discuss my position as follows.
First, experience is the good way to get information and skills. There are many advantages for this. Experience gives us information which can not be obtained from books. For example, we can not understand and imagine the taste of food which is written in a cooking book. After we cook and eat the food, we can know adequate quantity of seasonings needed to cook the dish and exactly how its taste is like. If we cook the same food, we can adjust quantity of seasonings and make more delicious food than before.
On the other hand, the main one of the advantages of knowledge gained from book is that we can get general and sophisticated knowledge quickly. For instance, we can learn marketing methods such as 3C, which is a method for analyzing market, from books. That is basic and powerful knowledge of marketing and can lead us to analyze market correctly. However, if we are going to acquire this knowledge from experience, it would need much more time. Therefore, knowledge gained from books allows us some spare time. This newly created free time would enrich my life since I can d more reading not for my profession but for pure fun.
Considering these factors, I still think that knowledge gained from experience is the better way than the other. This is because it gives us another advantage. It makes us more competitive and stronger than others. In the field of the manufacturing industry, there is a lot of know-hows of creating products, which can not be gained from books because they are not written in books. The knowledge gives a company competitive power of making their products more efficienly and better than other companies. From these knowledge the company can produce high-valued goods and high profit can be gained. For all these reasons, I mention that experience is ore important source of knowledge than books.