Is knowing facts as important as understanding ideas and concepts?

Test Preparation
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Please grade my essay and tell me what I need to improve :slight_smile: Thank you so much for taking your time to grade this!

 Understanding ideas and concepts is more important that just knowing the facts. In order for us to succeed, we must have a good understanding of what we do know rather than just memorizing useless facts. Examples of people who show that understanding ideas and concepts is more important than knowing facts is Timothy Wells from "The High School Life" by Marty Crowder and Charles Darwin.

Timothy Wells is a high school student who is trying to study for his chemistry exam. His friends are studying for the test by memorizing all of the formulas and facts from their textbooks. Timothy realizes that memorizing the facts will not benefit him because he needs to develop a thorough understanding of the concepts of chemistry in order to ace the exam. So Timothy uses a different method to study for the exam. He receives an A on test, unlike his friend named Penny, who memorized the facts from the textbook but failed the test. So we need to focus on understanding the ideas and concepts of something instead of only knowing the facts because it helps us succeed.

Charles Darwin thought of the theory called Social Darwinism. Social Darwinism is the idea that people are subject to the same Darwinian laws of natural selection of plants and animals. Darwin did not develop his theory from just knowing the facts. He developed a good understanding of natural selection and wrote a book about the concepts. So his theory was eventually approved by many people and it was used to justify imperialism, racism, and political conservatism. Darwin understood the ideas and concepts of natural selection and he gained recognition for developing a theory. So it is more important to understand the ideas and concepts because knowing the facts alone does not help us succeed in what we do.

Timothy Wells decided that understanding the concept of chemistry was more essential than knowing the facts from the textbook, so he did not memorize facts like his friend did and he aced the test, while his friend failed. Charles Darwin developed the theory of Social Darwinism by learning more about the ideas and concepts of natural selection instead of just knowing the facts, and that led him to success. So having a thorough understanding of the ideas and concepts of something is more important than only knowing the facts because it helps us succeed in our studies.

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Your examples are great! I would probably say this would get either an 7/8.

To improve, you should try and elaborate a bit more on your reasoning on why you feel ideas and concepts is more important than facts. Throughout your essay, it seemed a bit repetitive since after your examples, you just reiterated the fact that understanding the ideas is more important.

To fix this, you should try to edit your final sentences for each of your body paragraphs. Instead of starting with “So” for the final sentence, try to switch it up a bit. Your first paragraph already proved that understanding ideas is essential for success. For your second paragraph, focus more on how Darwin used his understanding to eventually come up with this widely recognized theory. You could bring up how he did not rush and made sure he fully understood what he was talking about before proposing his theory. This will help bring more depth in to your essay so it isn’t too repetitive.

Lastly, you don’t need to repeat what you just talked about in your body paragraph in your conclusion. It is okay to mention it in maybe one or two sentences, but in order to have a strong conclusion, you should focus on further explaining your reasoning on why you feel this way on the topic. :slight_smile:

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Thanks for the feedback! It was very helpful!