issue38 两篇范文

leaf99UID: 2174003

38"In the age of television, reading books is not as important as it once was. People can learn as much by watching television as they can by reading books."

一篇是ETS的6分范文，另一片选自老外范文，借鉴一下吧

This is an era filled with various scientific achievements, and television is one of the most flamboyant among them, influencing several generations’ behavior by molding them into the same shape regardless of their race, gender, and background. Intoxicated by the superficial success of TV culture, some throw at us an irresponsible statement that reading books is not as important as it once was for people can learn as much by watching television as they can by reading books. Yet this is far from the truth. Though television had become an intergral part of our daily lives, the role that books played is still irreplaceable and should be further advocated.

Admittedly, television gives us an option to traditional ways of education—reading and classroom teaching. Indeed the vivid images it produces did succeed in helping us in the teaching of children, who are much more inclined to accept picturesque images than abstract letters or characters. Also it raises our consciousness by bringing to us the latest news and discoveries and extends our horizon by such documentary programs as “National Geographic” and “Discovery”, whose contents are probably otherwise unapproachable in our entire lifetime.

Despite all these advantages, the shortcomings of televisions are equally, if not more, apparent. As is widely known, TV stations operate as profit enterprises, consequently television programs are nowadays becoming more and more profit-based, and their commercial orientation drives them to be entertaining rather than educational, for the latter are obviously less profitable. The accompanying result of this is that TV programs are liable to lower our taste to welcome the meaningless entertainments, de-sophisticate our thinking by giving one-line sound bites instead of advanced intellectual thinking which would occupy the time for commercials, ignore our differentiated demands by producing knock-offs of popular programs… Thereby TV proves itself an unreliable source of learning and unfortunately this trend seems to be only at the beginning and we haven’t seen the light at the end of the tunnel.

More importantly, another defect roots from the essence of visual programs and therefore is incurable for television as a tool of education. As was mentioned above, picturesque images are easily accepted at the beginning of the learning process, yet when we are climbing up the educational ladder, the problem of the approach emerges. Watching television can neither provoke abstract thinking which is the most crucial texture in advanced scientific research, nor can it teach us the effective management and adequate control of the written language while written language carry the utmost importance in the inheritance and dissemination of knowledge for all human kind. These qualities can be acquired only through the reading, digesting, and ruminating of books. Books contain the collective human knowledge and wisdom accumulated for ages, even since pre-history. The shallow, short-sighted TV programs are incomparable to the riches in books.

Besides, watching television tends to overemphasize machinery instead of humanity. Among the most severe problems encountered by our age are the lack of humanitarian spirit and the fast-food culture. TV turns out to be the chief contributor to these faults. Think of opening a age-old book in a library and reading the footnotes by people living centuries ago, thousands of miles away. The book itself connects one with another across time and space and gives one the sense of belonging to the large human family. Lying on sofa watching televisions with popcorns in mouth can only cause sense of depression, isolation and alienation.

Borrowing the saying that John Keats inscribes on his tombstone, we can describe television programs as “written on water”. They are easily perishable when time passes, while books can claim that, as William Shakespeare wisely wrote, “nothing of them doth fade/ but doth suffer a seachange/ into something rich and strange”.


Issue 38
"In the age of television, reading books is not as important as it once was. People can learn as much by watching television as they can by reading books."
The speaker contends that people learn just as much from watching television as by reading books, and therefore that reading books is not as important for learning as it once was. I strongly disagree. I concede that in a few respects television, including video, can be a more efficient and effective means of learning. In most respects, however, these newer media serve as poor substitutes for books when it comes to learning.
Admittedly, television holds certain advantages over books for imparting certain types of knowledge. For the purpose of documenting and conveying temporal, spatial events and experiences, film and video generally provide a more accurate and convincing record than a book or other written account. For example, it is impossible for anyone, no matter how keen an observer and skilled a journalist, to recount in complete and objective detail such events as a Ballanchine ballet, or the scene at the intersection of Florence and Normandy streets during the 1992 Los Angeles riots. Besides, since the world is becoming an increasingly eventful place, with each passing day it becomes a more onerous task for journalists, authors, and book publishers to recount these events, and disseminate them in printed form. Producers of
televised broadcasts and videos have an inherent advantagein this respect. Thus the speaker's claim has some merit when it comes to arts education and to learning about modern and current events.
However, the speaker overlooks several respects m which books are inherently superior to television as a medium for learning. Watching television or a video is no indication that any significant learning is taking place; the comparatively passive nature of these media can render them ineffectual in the learning process. Also, books are far more portable than
television sets. Moreover, books do not break, and they do not depend on electricity, batteries, or access to airwaves or cable connections, which may or may not be available in a given place. Finally, the effort required to read actively imparts a certain discipline which serves any person well hroughout a lifetime of learning.
The speaker also ignores the decided tendency on the part of owners and managers of television media to fit information in order to appeal to the widest viewing audience, and thereby maximize profit. And casting the widest possible net seems to involve focusing on the sensational---that is, an appeal to our emotions and baser instincts rather than our intellect and
reasonableness. The end result is that viewers do not receive complete, unfiltered, and balanced information, and therefore cannot rely on television to develop informed and intelligent opinions about important social and political issues.
Another compelling argument against the speaker's claim has to do with how well books and television serve their respective archival functions. Books readily enable readers to review and cross-reference material, while televised broadcasts do not. Even the selective review of videotape is far more trouble than it is worth, especially if a printed resource is also available. Moreover, the speaker's claim carries the implication that all printed works, fiction and non-fiction alike, not transferred to a medium capable of being televised, are less significance as a result. This implication serves to discredit the invaluable contributions of all the philosophers, scientists, poets, and others of the past, upon whose immense shoulders society stands today.
A final argument that books are made no less useful by television has to do with the experience of perusing the stacks in a library, or even a bookstore. Switching television channels, or even scanning a video library, simply cannot duplicate this experience. Why not?
Browsing among books allows for serendipity--unexpectedly coming across an interesting and informative book while searching for something else, or for nothing in particular. Moreover, browsing through a library or bookstore is a pleasurable sensory experience for many people--an experience that the speaker would have us forego forever.
In sum, television and video can be more efficient than books as a means of staying abreast of current affairs, and for education in the arts that involve moving imagery. However, books facilitate learning in certain ways that television does not and cannot. In the final analysis, the optimal approach is to use both media side by side--television to keep us informed and to
provide moving imagery, along with books to provide perspective and insight on that information and imagery.

[ 本帖最后由 leaf99 于 2006-6-11 11:46 编辑 ]

boyangUID: 189545

谢谢叶子，这篇写的惨不忍睹，学习学习！

ytlgUID: 2230408

范文给我一个很大的启发哦，谢谢