托福作文T69：你最想学习什么知识

〔托福参看范文之三〕
If I could study a subject that I have never had the opportunity to study, I would choose computer programming, because computer programming is so vital to today’s society.

Firstly, computer programming is important to our daily life. With the advance of technology, we are practically facing an information age; every piece of information today is stored in the information highway, which consists of computers and networks as hardware, operating systems and software. Without software installed in these systems, the computers are like bodies without soul, and will not be able to function at all. Only with programming languages, information can be retrieved and stored into the information highway. Whether we hook up a phone line or television cable, book a ticket, travel to a foreign country, apply for a passport, an operator will immediately check our information from the computer network. If the computer systems are down, we cannot go anywhere or do anything. We can safely say that computer programming languages are ubiquitous in our daily life.

Secondly, computer programming is important to technological success. With the skill of computer programming, scientists can write programs to monitor their scientific research and experiments, to analyze the trend of technological development, and to forecast the future.

Computer programs can simulate a scientific experiment in a much cost-effective and timely manner, thus can save scientists a lot of time and money, therefore it can greatly faster the pace of the development of technology. For example, a civil engineer can use a modeling program to simulate the water flow of an urban area; when there is a storm, he can quickly know which parts of the city have the danger of being under the water and dispatch his crew to that area to prevent the disaster.

Last but not least, computer programming techniques can help us earn higher salaries in our future jobs. Since computer programming is important to our society and daily life, programmers can usually have a higher salary than other professionals. Many people have shifted to computer programming from other careers during the economic boom, and even when the economy is going low at the moment, programmers and computer engineers can still live a better life than others.

From all above, I can safely draw a conclusion that if I have a chance to study, I would not hesitate to choose computer programming.