Issue38 [大杀四方 yotta 作业贴] [第 三回]

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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."

1. 电视在一定程度上取代了书籍，同时弥补了书籍的不足。内容上，表现形式上
2. 电视无法完全取代书籍：看电视无法获得和阅读一样的知识量和感受。

With the rapid development of communication technology, modern society now leans heavily on television to transmit knowledge and information, which used to be stored only by books. Though television has been playing a vital role in the area of education, people can never give up books and lean totally on watching television to get the same information, no mater in quality or in quantity, as we get form books.

The first reason we must keep reading books as the major way to get information and be educated is based on the fact that not all of the knowledge in books can be represented by television programs. For example, television industry has neither sufficient money nor time to produce enough programs to represent every event happened in human history which has been wrought down in books by people who live in the past. Therefore, a college student majoring in history, assuming that he reads no history books at all, can hardly expect to finish his study by watching TV programs. In addition, there is gigantic amount of knowledge, taking philosophy for example, which is always so abstract that the only tool that can keep them is words, that can never be represented by TV programs.

The second reason that supports my view point is that people can easily find television incapable of representing the same information passed to human beings through reading. Some splendid essays, for example, can describe nature scenery so vividly that even the pictures of the real scenery taken by television camera can hardly evoke the same feeling as what people get in reading. And, for another example, some writers can depict the role in his novel so successful with words that even the most skillful actors can not recreate them exactly on the television screen. Therefore, we can easily get the conclusion that watching television can hardly take the place of reading.

Admittedly, to some extent, television has successfully replaced, even overcame, some functions that books used to serve. For one thing, television programs can represent some knowledge in books in a way of more interests. For example, some historic stories have been adopted into television plays. People are induced by these programs with beautiful pictures and dulcet music, and maybe none of them would like to read history books which are always so boring to ordinary people. For another thing, television programs can provide people with knowledge that has never been represented in books. One apt illustration of this point involves geography programs produced by Discovery Channel. In these pictures, the television camera leads us into a wonderful world filled with all kinds of nature phenomenon which are recreated in a magic way that people can never experience just by reading books.

In sum, if we take consideration about the distinctions between reading books and watching television programs form some different perspectives, we can easily find that television, as a new kind of education tool of much use, can never replace books, which is determined by not only the quality but also the quantity of knowledge stored by books.