Part 1) Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Students can learn as much by watching movies as they can learn by reading books.
There is no shortage of opinions on ways of learning. Traditionally, students learn mainly from reading, but nowadays some of them think it’s a better and funnier way to learn by watching movies. Personally, I believe that watching films can’t compare to reading books in terms of learning efficiency. There are two main reasons that caused me to come to this point of view. I shall elaborate on them in this essay.
First of all, reading is a sort of active way of learning, while watching videos passive. Reading itself requires lots of efforts from readers, like recognizing and comprehending words, writing notes, interpreting deep meanings, and reflecting on one’s own life. Therefore, we actively absorb the knowledge from the book and integrate it into our cognitions. It’s very different from just relaxingly sitting in front of the screen and passively take in what we see or hear from the movie, which doesn’t entail much of thinking. My personal experience is a compelling example. As a student majored in Journalism when I was in the college, I spent most of my time reading books and discussing with teachers and classmates based on our reading. Although sometimes I learned about inspiring journalists in biographical movies, I built my profession foundation mainly by taking lessons and reading. For this reason, I suggest students focus on books in their study and only occasionally go to the cinema to enjoy themselves and gain some complementary knowledge from movies.( to be continued)