GRE AWA MODEL ESSAYS ——Issue 14_GRE写作

GRE AWA MODEL ESSAYS ——Issue 14

　　Conceding that students must learn ideas and concepts, as well as facts relating to them, in order to learning anything meaningful, I nevertheless disagree that the former should always precede the latter--for three reasons. In the first place, I see know reason why memorizing a fact cannot precede learning about its meaning and significance--as long as the student does not stop at rote memorization. Consider once again our hypothetical chemistry student. The speaker might advise this student to first learn about the historical trends leading to the discovery of the elements, or to learn about the concepts of altering chemical compounds to achieve certain reactions--before studying the periodic table. Having no familiarity with the basic vocabulary of chemistry, which includes the informarion in the periodic table, this student would come away from the first two lessons bewildered and confused in other words, having learned little.

　　In the second place, the speaker misunderstands the process by which we learn ideas and concepts, and by which we develop new ones. Consider, for example, how economics students learn about the relationship between supply and demand, and the resulting concept of market equilibrium, and of surplus and shortage. Learning about the dynamics of supply and demand involves entertaining a theory, and perhaps even formulating a new one, testing hypothetical scenarios against the theory, and examining real-world facts for the purpose of confirming, refuting, modifying, or qualifying the theory. But which step should come first? The speaker would have us follow steps 1 through 3 in that order. Yet, theories, concepts, and ideas rarely materialize out of thin air; they generally emerge from empirical observations--i.e., facts. Thus the speakers notion about how we should learn concepts and ideas gets the learning process backwards.