IELTS Writing Task 2
Essay Topic: Education Is A Lifelong Task
Example Answer byJeenn Lee Hsieh
IELTS Essay Topic:
Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Education is a lifelong task. Give reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your own knowledge or experience to support your opinion.
Sample Essay (Jeenn Lee Hsieh):
It is generally agreed that education is a matter of learning process from cradle to grave. People had better learn all the time until kicking the bucket, the tombstones being their diplomas. In a modern sense, people must learn to live as well as live to learn.
教育实际上是指从摇篮到坟墓之间的学习过程，这一点一般人都同意。大家应该永远的学习，到死方休，可以把墓碑视为毕业文凭。就以当今而论，所有人有必要又学习中生活，又生活中学习。
Because people need knowledge to live more worthwhile lives, learning more could mean living better. Formal schooling has the purpose of kindling desires to learn so that the youth would go on the learning process as long as they live. Although obtaining knowledge remains the major fruit of education, actually the want to learn does not end at graduation ceremonies. In view of this, not only students but also teachers are supposed to learn continuously, considering that those dare to teach must not refrain from educating themselves. As they have to do teaching for a living, it follows that they can teach best what they most require to learn. And this is just one example that can also be applied to nearly all walks of life therein learning is critical.
因为人们需要知识才能过好日子，所以更多的学习，也意味着更好的生活。正规的学校教育有其目的，那就是点燃年轻人求知的欲望，而接着能够继续学习，活到老学到老。虽然教育的主要目的是获得知识，求学的心愿不应该结束于毕业典礼。不光是学生要继续学习，老师也一样要继续学习，因为敢吃教书这一行饭，就永远不能停止学习。事实上，教师既以教书为业，在专业上学习更多，也必然教得更好。此例可以引证到各行各业，因为不论从事那一行业，学习是非常要紧的事。
Living to learn makes a more positive sense of life. The more people learn, the better for them to realize how much they do not know during a lifetime. For that matter, education in many forms should always be updated because learning is like "rowing upstream--not to advance is to be back,'' as the Chinese saying goes. People are necessarily encouraged to learn everyday to the last days, never being too old to learn. Once learning is otherwise neglected in life as a journey, the traveller "walks lame" to the end of life. This concept means that learning as education must be aggressive day by day in order that one can be wiser today than yesterday.
生活中学习具有正面的意义。究人一生，越努力学习便越加体会到自己缺乏知识。由此观之，不论如何一种形式的教育都不可以停止，如同中国的一句老话说的--求学如逆水行舟，不进则退。这话是勉励大家要天天求知，坚持到最后一口气。要不然，在人生旅途上假设忽略了学习，那就会如同“跛脚”的旅人，走向人生的终点。这个概念是说，学习是教育，日日精进，如此这般，每个人的今天都比昨天更长一智。
Finally, while the world is becoming increasingly complex and competitive, it can well be said that learning to live and living to learn are one and the same attitude toward life. Life, after all, is a succession of lessons which are meant to be lived to be understood. Being inevitably associated with intellectual growth, education really begins at birth and only ends at death. (Essay by Jeenn Lee Hsieh)
总而言之，端看当今世界越来越变得复杂又是竞争，我们大可把学习生活与生活学习的两面，视为对于人生的同一态度。说穿了，人生是充满着一连串的课程，不经一事不长一智。智慧成长与个人教育既然是息息相关，那么所谓教育，果然是始于出生，终于去世。
