Argumentative Text Example

EXPERIENCE IS THE BEST TEACHER

by 

Puspita Wening 

            When we refer to the word “teacher”, we will deal with “teaching” that has a purpose to make people learning in form of knowledge or skill. This shows us that experience can fulfill teacher’s duty, and we think experience does better, even best in teaching someone. Here, we have some reasons why experience is the best teacher, that is, because it consists of actual knowledge, engages the five sense, and involves an independent learning from the learners.

            The first reason why experience is the best teacher is because it consists of actual knowledge. Knowledge is the most important thing we have to obtain in learning process. When we are talking about knowledge, we will think about the sources of it. Books, internet, school teacher, and parents are the things will across our mind. However, those resources only serve theoretical knowledge which is often forgotten easily by the people who are learning. That is different from experience which has the actual knowledge that can be applied directly and remembered well by the students. For the illustration, the knowledge of iron as a good conductor. When I was in elementary school, my teacher and science book told that iron was a good cunductor. I was not a clever student in the class, so I often forgot to answer the question which asked the examples of the good conductor. That changed when my mother asked me to help her to cook. At that morning Sunday, my mother was frying banana, and I was peeling the banana’s skin. Suddenly my father called my mother to help something with him, so my mother asked me to continue frying the banana. Unfortunately, I got a small accident. My hand touched the edge of the wok. It was so hot, until my skin was blister. From that accident, I know that except the iron, the allumunium was also a good conductor. So, after that event, I can always remember that iron and allumuniun are good conductor. Then from that experience, I get a new knowledge that can be applied in my real life.

            Beside consisting actual knowledge, the reason why experience is the best teacher is because it engages the five sense of our body. As a human being, we are given the great gift from God by having eyes, ears, nose, skin, and tongue, but some people often forget to using them maximally, including for teaching-learning process. Many of teaching process especially in a formal education is lack of involving students’ five sense participation. Teachers only give the speech and explaining the materi in the book, or they usually ask the students to read the book, then asking the questions that they do not understant. Whereas, engaging the five sense of the students in learning process is very good to make a meaningful learning, because students will easily remember what they see, hear, smell, touch and taste. For instance, when a teacher asked the students to describe an apple. Students who only ever see it by the picture, will be more difficult to describe it than the students who ever do it. The students who never eat the apple will be limited in describing the apple. That is different with the students who ever ate the apple who will describe not only about the color of the apple, but also the taste, the texture, or even the smell of the apple. Those happen because they use their experience of five sense when ate the apple.

            The last reason why experience is the best teacher is because it involves an independent learning from the learners. The purpose of teaching is to make the learners learn. Often the learners discourage to do self study because their teacher seldom to give the space to think and do what they are interesred at. That different to the experience which always brings and gives a wide space to the learners to think and do based on they want.  When the learners experience something, they try to observing and analysing what it is, why it happens, and how it can be like that. The learners also will think whether what they have done is beneficial or not, so they will try to avoid or even make up the wrong thing for the future. For the illustration, when I was in senior high school, I got a bad score for my English course. I was shocked and down because in my class, I was one the students who had a good capability in English. I was wondering what happened to me, why I could happen to me, and how it could happen to me. Then I thought hard, and I found that I was too careless in doing the test. I was too confident to face the test, so I did not learn maximal. It was a bad experience which turned me to be a better person because after that time, I always learn hardly when I want to hold an exam of any course. From that, know that my experience make me think before do something.

            Those are the reasons why experience is the best teacher for us, that is, because it consists of knowledge which can be applied in life, engages the five sense, and involves self-learning of the learners. From the explanations above, we can conclude that experience gives us many lessons. So, when we often feel that we always fall in the same fault in our life, it can be that we never learn from our experience wisely, means that we must value our experiences more.