Please help evaluate my second essay, thank you very much in advance.
Topic:The purpose of television should be all educative, not entertaining.
Here is my essay:
Television is one of the most common appliances in every household nowadays. However, along with its increasing popularity, television is also put under a lot of debates. One of them is whether or not the purpose of television should be all educative. In my opinion, television should be considered as a mean of entertainment rather than a mean of education.
First and foremost, television is used as a source of entertainment since its very first days and it is difficult to break this tradition. Over a long period of time, many people have watched news and movies on television, not to mention many game shows, talk shows and contests which are also very popular. Therefore, television has become and indispensable part of the recreation life of a large numbers of people, who will feel extremely disappointed when all programs on television are broadcasted with educative purpose.
Secondly, television has a wide range of audiences and not many of them are interested in educational programs except for students or teachers. Therefore, if TV channels focus on education, they may loose a large number of audiences, which will in turn hurt their profits. I believe that most broadcast companies do not want to bet their profits with educational programs.
Last but not least, television is not the best way to convey knowledge. In other to be well educated, we should search for information in books which are more detail and organized. Moreover, class environment is important because it provide us real interactions with teachers and friends. We can get feedbacks from our teachers and expose to different viewpoints during discussions with friends, which will improve our way of thinking to a greater extent than just sitting passively in front of the television. All of these make me think that television is not an effective mean of education as it may seem.
In conclusion, if all television programs are for educational purpose, one popular and important mean of relaxation of many people will be lost. Also, most broadcast companies will not willing to lose their audiences by changing to educational programs. Moreover, television is not a very efficient way of education. Therefore, I believe that the main purpose of television should be entertaining but not educative.
TOEFL listening discussions: A conversation between a student and a campus patrolman