It has been said, "Not everything that is learned 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?
Sample Response
"Experience is the best teacher" is an old cliché, but I agree with it. We can learn a lot of important things from books, 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 class and out of 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, 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. Avoid redundant wording Original: an old cliché Suggested revision: a familiar cliché Why it matters: The adjective 'familiar' conveys conventionality without repeating the age already implied by 'cliché'.
- 2. Use article naturally Original: Throughout the different stages of life Suggested revision: Throughout different stages of life Why it matters: The general reference to life stages does not require the definite article here.
- 3. Improve collocation Original: for Suggested revision: in Why it matters: 'Need in life' is the more natural collocation for abilities used during one's life.
- 4. Use concise phrasing Original: In our class work Suggested revision: Through our classwork Why it matters: The single word 'classwork' and the preposition 'through' express the learning context more naturally.
- 5. Clarify the action Original: what we do when we fail Suggested revision: how to respond when we fail Why it matters: This wording states the learned skill more precisely than the vague phrase 'what we do'.
- 6. Strengthen parallel phrasing Original: the things we like to do and the things we don't Suggested revision: the activities we enjoy and those we dislike Why it matters: The revision makes both sides of the contrast explicit and avoids the vague repeated noun 'things'.
- 7. Remove excess possessives Original: our experiences with our friends and classmates Suggested revision: our experiences with friends and classmates Why it matters: The repeated possessive is unnecessary because the relationships are already clear.
- 8. Reduce wordiness Original: In our daily lives both in class and out of class Suggested revision: In daily life, both inside and outside class Why it matters: This shorter phrase preserves the contrast while avoiding repetition of 'class'.
- 9. Use academic register Original: workmates Suggested revision: colleagues Why it matters: 'Colleagues' is more natural in formal academic writing.
- 10. Avoid overstatement Original: The triumphs and disasters of our lives Suggested revision: Our successes and setbacks Why it matters: 'Successes and setbacks' expresses the intended contrast in a more measured academic tone.
- 11. Improve verb choice Original: show us another person's experiences Suggested revision: expose us to other people's experiences Why it matters: 'Expose us to' is the natural verb phrase for encountering experiences through books.
- 12. Vary sentence openings Suggested revision: Combine closely related points and vary the repeated 'We learn' openings to create smoother progression. Why it matters: The repeated sentence pattern makes this paragraph read as a list rather than a connected explanation.
Suggested Rewrites
- an old cliché a familiar cliché
- Throughout the different stages of life Throughout different stages of life
- for in
- In our class work Through our classwork
- what we do when we fail how to respond when we fail
- the things we like to do and the things we don't the activities we enjoy and those we dislike
Why this response received Band 8.0
The response’s strongest feature is its clear, sustained position, developed through a logical progression from childhood to adulthood and supported by relevant examples. Its main limitation is that book-based knowledge is treated rather briefly, so the comparison is less fully balanced than the argument for experience. The highest-priority improvement is to analyse the distinctive benefits and limits of books in comparable depth before reaffirming the conclusion.
IELTS Writing Criteria Scores
Task Response
The response fully addresses the question with a clear preference for experience and relevant development across life stages, although book-based knowledge receives less analysis.
Develop the benefits and limitations of learning from books in greater depth to make the comparison more comprehensive.
Coherence and Cohesion
Ideas progress logically through clearly focused paragraphs organised by life stage, with cohesive links that rarely draw attention to themselves.
Refine the progression further by varying recurring sentence openings and linking the contrasts between the two sources more explicitly.
Lexical Resource
Vocabulary is varied, accurate, and appropriate, with effective expressions such as “constant teacher” and “triumphs and disasters,” despite some repetition of key words.
Use a wider range of precise terms for different kinds of knowledge and learning to reduce repetition of “learn,” “skills,” and “experiences.”
Grammatical Range and Accuracy
A wide range of simple and complex structures is used accurately, and the response is virtually free from grammatical errors.
Vary clause patterns and sentence openings more deliberately to make the repeated subject-verb structures less noticeable.
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IELTS Writing Task 2
It has been said, "Not everything that is learned 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?
Your response
Write the task yourself, then compare your choices with the annotated response.