20180506托福写作真题&范例

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Some people think that some lessons include video games as a way to make children’s interest in study. Other people think it is distracting and waste time. Which one do you prefer?

Nowadays, video games are becoming so popular among children that some lessons employ video games to help children learn. While some people take the attitude that this teaching method is distracting and a waste of time, I think it is quite effective in sparking children’s interest in study.  

To begin with, video games can greatly help children to visualize abstract learning materials, thus making studying much more interesting. For example, when studying chemistry, it is always hard for children to understand how chemical reactions happen due to the fact that most of the reactions on textbooks are merely dull equations. But with the help of video games, children will be allowed to freely explore the wonderland of chemistry in an image-rich and animation-empowered manner. And this is much convenient and less costly than doing actual experiments.

What’s more, video games can add satisfactions of finishing short-term tasks to study and make the whole process of acquiring new knowledge much more interesting. We all know that studying is good for us in a long-term; however, lots of us fail to persist just because we are not getting enough positive feedbacks and satisfactions during the hard and boring period of plowing through studying materials or lectures. This also applies to children, and building an instant feedback system is even more important for them due to the fact that they are less self-disciplined than adults. Video games are designed to provide people instant and quick positive feedbacks. For example, in video games, you get experience or coins after finishing a task and these rewards play an important role of  efforts and short-term rewards. With the help of video games, studying will become more reward-oriented and satisfying for children.

I’m not saying that letting children to play video games is flawless and free of risks. We absolutely face the problem that children may spend all of their times on playing rather than studying. Luckily, with some control protocols, we will be able to mitigate this kind of risks to the minimum level. For example, we can cooperate with third-party game producers to make in-class games more studying-oriented and less addicting. And we can also cap the minutes students are allowed to play in class, or assign special-trained teachers to guide students to prevent them from devoting too much time in games.

In conclusion, videos games are a good way to make study more interesting for children because it enables them to visualize dull materials and have short-term positive feedbacks. And we are also prepared for the possible risks brought by it.