Essay. Experience, gained from reading, compared with other. I have written this essay a part of my IELTS preparation. I would be very grateful to anyone, who will check my grammar. Thank you. Question: 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? Answer: The books and literature became integral part of human education from ancient times. The ability to read and write is very important step on the ladder of evolution. However, I personally believe that some other sources of knowledge are more important in human life, and there are a number of arguments to support that claim. At first, our ability to read is not natural. If we compare reading with speaking, we will see that saying (and facility to understand speech) is inborn facility. There is some part in our brain, which is responsible for speaking and listening. Any normal human baby is going to speak from 2 years or about that age. In contrast, reading is a skill. It can be learned, but it wasn't designed by nature. Secondly, in my opinion, our own experience, which we gain during our lives, has much more weight compared to reading. In fact, books only can provide theoretical knowledge. But theory is useless without practice. From our history we know that there were times, when we hadn't books, or access to books was limited only to special groups of people. As an example we can remember times of feudalism in Europe. Although common people couldn't receive books (only priests and nobility had opportunities for reading), they were able to live and develop ourselves. On the other hand, despite the fact, that reading is not the most crucial source of knowledge in our life, it allows to extend our understanding and imagination beyond the normal limits. Actually, in my view, literature is the next step, it is the easy and safe way (compared to stories and myths, for example) to store information. In conclusion I would like to summarize that in my believe the most important knowledge we receive from our own interactions with surrounding world. However, the value of books shouldn't be underestimated. Nowadays literacy is the fundamental part of education and without it humanity wouldn't have achieved all things we can see around.