mino206
New member
- Joined
- Sep 22, 2011
- Member Type
- Student or Learner
- Native Language
- Arabic
- Home Country
- Algeria
- Current Location
- Algeria
Hello peers, I am taking my toefl this saturday and I would really appreciate it if you could rate my essay:
Do you agree with the following:
Distance education and online computer education should replace classroom education.
This is my essay:
Learning, just like any other discipline, has been affected by the revolutionary breakthroughts in communication and information technology. Nowadays, it is possible using these advanced technologies to get an education while sitting comfortably behind your screen at home. But is online e-learning really an alternative to classical classroom learning? I personally disagree and think that classical learning is a much better option for the following reasons:
First, there is no better alternative than having a real teacher, one that you can ask any time about anything in the lecture, one that can interact with you easily and efficiently, that knows you and can direct your learning and adapt the pace of the teaching in a way that is more suitable to your capacities. Online computer classes don't generally offer this type of flexibility as you don't really have a physical person mentoring your education.What you basically have is a curriculum that you have to undertake . For example, if you have a problem with a given learning material, when you are taking online computer classes all you can do is read that material again and try to understand. You can maybe look it up on the internet but still that doesn't garantee that you will get it eventually. But when you have a teacher at your disposal, you can easily ask him and he would provide more information on the desired topic from other perspectives that would definitely help you to understand better and get the idea.
Another reason is that classroom learning, as opposed to distance learning, fosters the development and sustainability of social relationships between students. This is a very important point because learning afterall is not only be about acquiring information, but it is also about learning to interact with peers, forming social relationships, being socially apt to live in a society of different individuals. Education's role is to prepare students for an outer world, a society where having social skills and being able to form relationships is very critical. Online education contributes very little to the development of such a skill, as students will only be learning academics behind a screen in the comfort of their own house in a very limited context while such skills are acquired through the physical interaction with other peers. If we take the example of a kid that studies at school and another one that studied at home, we would clearly see differences in their personalities: The "school" boy would have a more extravert personality while the "home" boy would be more intravert. There are no doubts cast on which one of the two boys will perform better in society.
For these reasons, I believe that distance learning and online learning cannot and should not replace classroom learning. Even if the academic experience, the amount of information could be the same but classroom teaches skills that cannot be graded on a piece of paper, skills that are essential in the development of the individual later on in the society.
Do you agree with the following:
Distance education and online computer education should replace classroom education.
This is my essay:
Learning, just like any other discipline, has been affected by the revolutionary breakthroughts in communication and information technology. Nowadays, it is possible using these advanced technologies to get an education while sitting comfortably behind your screen at home. But is online e-learning really an alternative to classical classroom learning? I personally disagree and think that classical learning is a much better option for the following reasons:
First, there is no better alternative than having a real teacher, one that you can ask any time about anything in the lecture, one that can interact with you easily and efficiently, that knows you and can direct your learning and adapt the pace of the teaching in a way that is more suitable to your capacities. Online computer classes don't generally offer this type of flexibility as you don't really have a physical person mentoring your education.What you basically have is a curriculum that you have to undertake . For example, if you have a problem with a given learning material, when you are taking online computer classes all you can do is read that material again and try to understand. You can maybe look it up on the internet but still that doesn't garantee that you will get it eventually. But when you have a teacher at your disposal, you can easily ask him and he would provide more information on the desired topic from other perspectives that would definitely help you to understand better and get the idea.
Another reason is that classroom learning, as opposed to distance learning, fosters the development and sustainability of social relationships between students. This is a very important point because learning afterall is not only be about acquiring information, but it is also about learning to interact with peers, forming social relationships, being socially apt to live in a society of different individuals. Education's role is to prepare students for an outer world, a society where having social skills and being able to form relationships is very critical. Online education contributes very little to the development of such a skill, as students will only be learning academics behind a screen in the comfort of their own house in a very limited context while such skills are acquired through the physical interaction with other peers. If we take the example of a kid that studies at school and another one that studied at home, we would clearly see differences in their personalities: The "school" boy would have a more extravert personality while the "home" boy would be more intravert. There are no doubts cast on which one of the two boys will perform better in society.
For these reasons, I believe that distance learning and online learning cannot and should not replace classroom learning. Even if the academic experience, the amount of information could be the same but classroom teaches skills that cannot be graded on a piece of paper, skills that are essential in the development of the individual later on in the society.
