Reading Notes of Aug.2nd

Part One           Words, Phrases and Sentences

in a nutshell      in essence; briefly  简而言之

e.g.  This is naive practice in a nutshell: I just played it.

Imitation: In  a nutshell, getting out of one's comfort zone is of vital importance in the course of practicing purposefully.

fall short    to fail to reach or measure up to a standard  不符合标准

e.g.  Generally speaking, no matter what you are trying to do, you need feedback to identify exactly where and how you are falling short.

Imitation:  His teacher made a conment on his paper,  saying that he had fell short on the supporting materials.

desultory    (adj.)  passing or jumping from one thing to another, esp in a fitful way;

unmethodical; disconnected; occurring in a random or incidental way; haphazard  散乱的；东拉西扯的；没有条理的

e.g.  Instead, the student's words seem to imply a rather desultory attempt at practice,with no effort to do more than what was already easy for him.

Imitation:  He made a desultory conversation with his ex-girlfriend, showing that he was overwhelmed by tension.

picture from bing.com

make it a point    对……特别注意；努力做到……

e.g. Later, after finishing the memory work with steve and a couple of other students, I made it a point to recruit only subjects who had trainedn extensively as athletes, dancers, musicians, or singers.

Imitation:  That every international community should make it a point to facilitate mutually beneficial cooperation has been  the consensus among the countries.

on the fly    <美口> 匆忙地；百忙之中地；立即

e.g.  Renee, by contrast, devised her mnemonics on the fly, deciding according to the digits she heard what mnemonic she would use to remember them.

Imitation: You'd better note down some details of the lecture or you would forget it in no time.

Part Two           Summary

In the second half of Chapter One, the author firstly focused on several characteristics of "purposeful practice" :

1.Purposeful practice is focused.

2.Purposeful practice involves feedback.

3.Purposeful practice requires getting out of one's comfort zone.

According to the three characteristics above, some other aspects like clear goals, a practical plan, etc. are also of great importance.

Secondly, he illustrated the limits of "purposeful practice" with the experiment he did as expansion of the experiment made on Steve, who improved his ability of remembering digits dramatically by establishing his own mnemonic which can be referred to as "retrieval structure" . And we can make a conclusion from the experiment that consistency and effective means are as crucial as trying hard. 

Part Three     What I Have Learned

今天读的第一部分，对于“ 有目的性的练习包括反馈” 这一点，我在学习的过程中有切身的体会，这句话更确切地说应该是“有目的性的练习包括及时且有效的反馈”，比如以前做一张数学练习，我就习惯于做完立刻校对答案，批一个分数，整理错题，消化吸收，偶尔作业太多把一份卷子拖到几天以后，其实练习的内容是什么也已经忘了，没能够进行及时到位的反馈，这就是一种低效率且缺乏目的性的练习。再比如这个月的读书任务，每天记录读书心得也是一种"purposeful practice" ，每天大家及时对我的笔记进行反馈，我因此能够更有效率地完善笔记（感谢各位~）

如果要说自觉主动进行“purposeful practice” 的motivation, 我觉得是正面积极的反馈，也就是文中提到的“the satisfaction of seeing yourself improve at something”, 我学习英语的动力就是一直能在学习的过程中获得“internal feedback” 和" external feedback", 在学习的过程中能够得到成就感，这样的学习才是令人愉悦的。