[TOEFL 2009上半年-Dark_Tournament写作组 beyondarchi 第15次作业]）

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Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? In today’s world, to speak well is more important than to write well. Use specific reasons and examples to support your answer.

Concerning the issue whether speaking well of writing well is more important in modern society, different people might have different opinions. As to me, I generally agree with the idea that the importance of oral communication is increasing while I believe written communication still plays a crucial part in our daily lives.

To begin with, in my perspective, it is true that modern society places more and more emphasizes on the oral communication. In fact, such a phenomenon does not come out of nowhere but is actually the direct consequence of the rapid information exchange in the modern world. Nowadays, we are so used to relying on the first-hand information to make our decisions, for example, in buying a certain stock. In such case, we definitely will not be patient to wait for the latest news about the stock in the newspaper, we will simply pick up a phone and ask the stock agency. In a sense, in today’s world, time is money, therefore oral communications is naturally more and more important because it is obvious a faster mean to transmit ideas and information.

In fact, the development of oral communication technology, has in fact boosted the booming importance of oral communication. If we still live in an era when there were no telephones, much less cell phones, how could we image that most people could possibly depend on oral communication to exchange their ideas. Nowadays, with more and more intelligent cell phone at hand, we could contact anyone in anywhere in the world whenever we want to. These technologies enable us to seek the benefit of oral communication, its speed, in such a rapidly changing world.

Nevertheless, we need to still point out that despite the increasing importance of oral communication, written communication still influences us in almost every aspect of our lives. Currently, we still regard the written information, the things written down in a newspaper, or in published books, as more formal information than the news, sometimes rumors we heard from some where; we still relay on text books, research papers, so on and so forth to record our knowledge and teach our future generations. In this sense, we simply could not over throw written communication in today’s world for exchanging ideas and transmitting information.

To conclude, I generally agree that oral communication is more and more important is such fast changing world because it is more direct and time-saving mean compared to written communication. However, the written communication, would continue to serve its part in transmitting information, and is therefore still of great importance for us.