Which one you think has more influence on people- the knowledge gained from experience or the knowledge gained from books. In your opinion, which source is more important? Why?
Sample Response
"Experience is the best teacher" is an old cliché, and I agree with it since experiences enrich a person’s wisdom and teach him/her invaluable lessons that can never be learned from elsewhere. We can learn a lot of important things from books, and books tell us about the past, present and future, but the most important lessons in life come from our own experiences. Throughout the different stages of life, from primary school to university to adulthood, experience teaches us many skills we need for life. As children in primary school, we learn facts and information from books, but that is not all we learn in school. On the playground, we learn how to make friends. In our class work, we learn how it feels to succeed and what we do when we fail. We start to learn about the things we like to do and the things we don't. We don't learn these things from books, but from our experiences with our friends and classmates. In our university classes, we learn a lot of information and skills we will need for our future careers, but we also learn a lot that is not in our textbooks. In our daily lives both in the class and out of the class, we learn to make decisions for ourselves. We learn to take on responsibilities. We learn to get along with our classmates, our roommates, and our workmates. Our successes and failures help us develop skills we will need in our adult lives. They are skills that no book can teach us. Throughout our adulthood, the experience remains a constant teacher. We may continue to read or take classes for professional development. However, our experiences at work, at home, and with our friends teach us more. The triumphs and disasters of our lives teach us how to improve our careers and also how to improve our relationships and how to be the person each one of us wants to be. Books teach us a lot, but there is a limit to what they teach. They can give us information or show us another person's experiences. These are valuable things, but the lessons we learn from our own experiences, from childhood through adulthood, are the most important ones we learn.
IELTS Writing Correction
- 1. Use singular experience Original: experiences enrich Suggested revision: experience enriches Why it matters: Use the uncountable singular noun when referring to experience in general, with matching verb agreement.
- 2. Use singular they Original: him/her Suggested revision: them Why it matters: The singular pronoun “them” refers smoothly and inclusively to “a person.”
- 3. Clarify the comparison Original: learned from elsewhere Suggested revision: learned in any other way Why it matters: This wording more clearly contrasts experiential learning with other sources of knowledge.
- 4. Remove redundancy Original: different stages of life Suggested revision: stages of life Why it matters: The noun “stages” already conveys that the periods are different.
- 5. Use concise phrasing Original: many skills we need for life Suggested revision: many essential life skills Why it matters: This concise collocation expresses the same idea more naturally.
- 6. Tighten the phrase Original: both in the class and out of the class Suggested revision: both inside and outside class Why it matters: This revision removes repetition while preserving the contrast.
- 7. Remove the article Original: the experience remains Suggested revision: experience remains Why it matters: The general uncountable noun “experience” does not take “the” here.
- 8. State the comparison Original: teach us more Suggested revision: teach us more than books do Why it matters: Making the comparison explicit prevents the reader from having to infer its second term.
- 9. Use natural collocation Original: improve Suggested revision: advance Why it matters: “Advance our careers” is the more natural collocation for professional progress.
- 10. Sentence rewrite Original: In our class work, we learn how it feels to succeed and what we do when we fail. Suggested revision: In our class work, we learn how success feels and how to respond to failure. Why it matters: The rewrite makes the two coordinated ideas grammatically parallel.
- 11. Divide the life stages Suggested revision: Separate the school, university, and adulthood stages into distinct body paragraphs. Why it matters: The current single paragraph obscures the otherwise clear chronological progression.
Suggested Rewrites
- experiences enrich experience enriches
- him/her them
- learned from elsewhere learned in any other way
- different stages of life stages of life
- many skills we need for life many essential life skills
- both in the class and out of the class both inside and outside class
Why this response received Band 7.5
The response’s strongest feature is its clear, consistently maintained preference for experiential learning, supported by a logical journey from childhood to adulthood and relevant illustrations. Its main limitation is presentation as one uninterrupted paragraph, which weakens the visibility of the otherwise sound progression; divide the argument into purposeful paragraphs and sharpen a few repetitive or absolute claims with more specific explanation.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response directly answers both questions with a clear preference for experience and develops it through relevant life-stage examples.
Qualify broad claims that books can never teach certain skills and explain the comparison with book learning more precisely.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically from childhood through university to adulthood, but the entire response is presented as one long paragraph.
Separate the introduction, each main life-stage argument, and the conclusion into purposeful paragraphs with clear internal focus.
Lexical Resource
A broad and generally precise vocabulary supports the argument, with only occasional awkward choices such as ‘enrich a person’s wisdom’.
Refine collocations and reduce repetition of words such as ‘learn’, ‘experiences’, and ‘teach’ through more exact alternatives.
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of sentence structures is used with strong control, although a few article, agreement, and phrasing errors remain.
Proofread complex sentences for article use and natural noun forms, particularly references to experience as a general concept.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
Which one you think has more influence on people- the knowledge gained from experience or the knowledge gained from books. In your opinion, which source is more important? Why?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.