Prompt: People who often read for pleasure can develop better imagination and language skill than those often entertain themselves with television and internet. Do you agree or disagree?

It is said that reading books is more advantageous than watching TV or surfing the internet for amusement, since reading can enhance our imagination and language abilities. Basically, I am in favor of this view with some clarifications. Ċ To begin with, reading can help us more in developing our imagination ability. Specifically, reading is a process that the reader receives the information from the writerand then synthesises with his/her own knowledge, experiences and imagination to produce an individual understanding of the content. That is why "There are a thousand Hamlets in a thousand people's eyes". On the contrary, the information we obtain form TV programs and internet is far more detailed and specific. In other words, it is processed without much room for the viewer's recreation. That is a major reason that many films adapted by best-sellers are not as popular as the original books. Ċ Another fact is that reading is more beneficial for those language learners. By reading the printed text, the learners can enlarge their vocabularies and concentrate on the use of words, grammers and structures. I agree that television and information highway is also helpful in developing other language skill like listening and speaking. However, they are more capable as a way for entertaining, thus sometimes may distract the students form the learning purpose. Ċ To sum up, I tend to believe that people can benefit more from reading than TV or internet in terms of imagination developing and language learning, and I suggest parents and schools need to encourage young students to read more interesting books instead of excessive use of TV and computer.