05284 experience
TOEFL-IELTS: 经验为师
Experience is the best teacher.
猫头鹰 Online Writing Lab.
Jeenn Lee Hsieh 谢振礼
Essay Prompt: 考试真题
>To what extent do you agree or disagree to the following statement? "Experience is the best teacher." Use specific reasons for your answer and include any relevant examples from your knowledge or experience.
Sample Writing: Jeenn Lee Hsieh 实验范文
Knowledge from books is the second best teacher, next only to knowledge from experience. Reading books can help us obtain useful information, to be sure; but it is actually through experience that we are able to perfect vital skills. That is to say: learning to do would be good, but learning in doing would be better.
To begin with, nothing ever becomes real until it is experienced. Further, nothing has entered into our experience and has become our knowledge is ever lost. It may be assumed that an enormous part of mature experience cannot be expressed in words, written or spoken. Likewise, it may be argued that, while we can increase knowledge by reading, we cannot really create experience unless we undergo it. Obviously, unlike knowledge from books that can be taught, knowledge from experience is largely non-transferable. To illustrate this view, these are true examples--cooking, swimming, driving, riding a bicycle, etc.
Nevertheless, reading books so as to expand our knowledge is no doubt a great advantage because without such knowledge we might learn each experience the hard way. Even though experience is a good school, sometimes the fees are high. There is no denying that knowledge from books reflecting writers' thoughts can reduce our follies to some extent. For instance, it is not advisable for us to experience the evitable risks in life. Otherwise, we might be suffering like "a burnt child who dreads the fire," or like "one once bitten by a snake fears a piece of string." This means that bad experience, if not avoided, would turn into a nightmare.
Recognizing that reading is a guiding light that teaches us knowledge, that knowledge must be put to use for our benefits of gaining valuable experience. Books may provide knowledge for us about how to do a certain thing, but in most cases nothing can teach better than experience--knowledge from doing it ourselves. To borrow words from Albert Einstein: "The only source of knowledge is experience." (Essay created by 谢振礼 Jeenn Lee Hsieh ielts360toefl@hotmail.com pigai zuowen )
