Writing for Academic Discussion Reading Fiction or Watching Movies？ - revised -

Do you think reading fiction offers more advantages than watching movies? (the arts)

 

 

☆Let’s Think

If you have some time to read fiction or watch a movie, which would you choose to do? Why?

 

 

 ☆Hints for Points

Reading fiction

1.     Novels show what is going on inside humans: thoughts and feelings of a human mind.

2.     Reading develops your imagination.

3.     You will experience and assimilate the author’s mind, often reprograming your mind. In other words, you learn one of the best languages, or best minds, through reading a good novel.

 

Watching movies

1.     Movies inspire you with picture and sound, and this makes the experience more real and special than books do.

2.     Movies will show you what you cannot see in the world you live in.

3.     Going to a theater to see a movie is a special experience.

 

 

☆Sample Answer for Ideas and Expressions

Sample A

【Thesis】I believe reading novels is more advantageous than watching movies because books show what is going on inside the character’s mind more meticulously than movies. It makes you feel as if you were the character, and this is a precious experience that nurture your emotion and power of imagination.

【Supporting Details】For example, in the suicide scene of “The Heart of the Matter”, the page is filled with the mental agony of a good-natured individual who is depressed from his life as an official in the colonial India and an affair he got involved in there and the description of his gradually dimming conscience and the last moment of its disappearance into the void of death. It is impossible for a movie to have its audience experience this inner drama as precisely as the book does. The book of “The Third Man”, for another instance, describes the decisive moment when the leading character realizes the real face of his old mate, and makes the reader understand the nature of an utter evil, by making the leading character say to himself that the man had never grown since he was a bad boy in their grade school. In the namesake on the screen, the realization of the man’s evilness is shared with the audience through common plots like the absence of the sense of guilt, tragedies of the victims, and the attempt to even shoot the best friend who was trying to help. Although a great movie, it is not so enlightening as the original story.

 【Conclusion】Showing the internal world of a character is the exclusive territory of novels. If learning about humans and society is the purpose of both fiction books and movies, I think reading fiction beats watching movies exactly for this reason.  (292 words)

 

Sample B

【Thesis】While it is true that reading fiction strengthens imagination as Sam says, the total experience of a movie often overwhelms that of a novel. Therefore, I think watching movies is more advantageous than reading novels.

【Supporting Details】The power of visuals and sounds of movies easily beats what an individual’s imagination can produce. It has almost the same effect of going abroad or meeting new people in that it takes you to the world that you have never known or imagined. It leaves a new experience in your mind more effectively than reading a story. For example, it is almost impossible for a reader of a foreign novel to construct accurate images of the characters and the setting like landscape or architecture depicted in the novel if the reader has never seen the country and the people. A movie based on the same story shows the closest representations of the characters and the real pictures or authentically recreated environment of the story, and this lets the audience have simulated experiences. The audience go through the narrative witnessing how the characters look in what kind of backgrounds by watching a movie. These experiences from movies are free from poor imaginations produced by an individual’s world, which is relatively smaller than that of a movie. Therefore, the world movies show us are more accurate, more universal, and richer in quality.

【Conclusion】Movies expose you to the world outside of yourselves more directly and help you grow, so watching movies is more beneficial than reading books in total. (252 words)

Write your response in 10 minutes. Show each other your responses. Write down questions or suggestions to each other’s response.

 

 

                                                   DRAFT