Toefl Essay

Are books more important than experience?

Although books are very important as the source of knowledge and information for the people around the world, one can learn a lot and retains the knowledge from the real experience. In my opinion, experience seems to be more important than the knowledge from books for several reasons.

First of all, although books summarize the theory and knowledge from many experience, they do not prepare us for unexpected situations or some conditions that previous theory or experience could not explain. And when you live in the real world, sometimes you can just use the thing that you read in the book as the solution of the problem. For example, the economics theory can teach the economist the market mechanism, the demand and supply curve, and the price equilibrium. However, when it comes to reality, there are many factors that can account for the change in price, such as the political situation, the trend and the people prospective and preference. The real experience, rather than the theory from the books, is the most significant thing that can help the economists prepare and deal with these unexpected situation.

In addition, we are able to better memorize the real experience than remember the message from the books. What you have learned in the books sometimes easily to be forgotten and does not stuck in your head like the experience does. For example, the books may give you the detail about Thailand and tell you how beautiful the country is. But it does not mean a thing if you have not discover or visit it yourself. Furthermore, you may forget what the book told you in a short period of time, but if you have a chance to experience Thailand yourself, you may remember it for the rest of your life.

To sum up, although I believe that books will continue providing people the knowledge and theory and will be important intellectual source for the human generations for a long time, the real experience is far more important if you have to...