Independent TOEFL essay - TPO 7: Agree or disagree? It is more important for students to understand ideas and concepts than it is for them to learn facts.

There is no doubt that students are going to be proficient at a specific field and using knowledge in different situations will play a decisive role in their profession. This often brings up a controversial question: Should students pay more attention to understanding ideas and concepts or learning facts? In this regard, some people are inclined toward the opinion that understanding ideas and concepts is principal for students' knowledge whereas others believe that it is more important for students to learn facts. I firmly agree with the statement since although both concepts and facts improve student's knowledge, ideas and concepts give breadth of vision as well, which will result in creativity in different situations and priority in competition.

One of the reasons that immediately comes to mind is that understanding of ideas and concepts brings students creativity. That's to say, by understanding ideas and concepts, students will use their initiative while facing different situations. Take a student who has a math exam, for instance. If he memorizes the responses for textbook exercises, he will not be able to solve the exam's problems because the questions will not be the same as the textbook exercises. He, however, can comprehend the mathematical concepts to resolve any kind of questions. Accordingly, he learns how to manage different situations and to solve the problems by absorbing the concepts in his future life. Therefore, understanding ideas and concepts by students will lead to higher creativity.

Another equally important reason is that comprehending the concepts helps the students to achieve excellence in their major. As a result, they will be offered better vocations or get promotion in their job in the future because they act flexibly about the issues they encounter. Additionally, they will win in the competition between job interview participants. For example, I attended a job interview last year. The interviewers asked a conceptual question from all interviewees that I was the only person who could answer the question because I had studied my lessons deeply. Thus, I understood why we should consider understanding the ideas and concepts as well as learning the facts.

Decisively, if one considers the merits of comprehending concepts along with learning facts, one realizes that understanding the concepts is very important since the concepts broaden the knowledge as well as vision which will lead to superiority, excellence, and creativity.