2012年2月18日 星期六

The Myth of ‘Practice Makes Perfect’

這篇似乎變成勵志的文章
我提出一些看法給讀者參考

事實上 這篇有著"學習"的定義的問題
還有許多相關的重要觀念的釐清
一是學習過程到達穩定系統
另外是大量的關於"天才/專家"的學習與"記憶"的研究




The Myth of ‘Practice Makes Perfect’

It's not how much you practice but whether you're quick to fix your errors that leads to mastery
Ryan McVay / Getty Images
Ryan McVay / Getty Images

Paul's latest book is Origins: How the Nine Months Before Birth Shape the Rest of Our Lives.

How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Practice, practice. In a groundbreaking paper published in 1993, cognitive psychologist Anders Ericsson added a crucial tweak to that old joke. How do you get to Carnegie Hall? Deliberate practice.

It’s not a minor change. The difference between ineffective and effective practice means the difference between mediocrity and mastery. If you’re not practicing deliberately — whether it’s a foreign language, a musical instrument or any other new skill — you might as well not practice at all.

(MORE: Paul: How Your Dreams Can Make You Smarter)

I was reminded of the importance of deliberate practice by a fascinating new book, Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning. Its author is Gary Marcus, a cognitive psychologist at New York University who studies how the brain acquires language. Marcus is also a wannabe guitarist who set out on a quest to learn to play at age 38. In Guitar Zero he takes us along for the ride, exploring the relevant research from neuroscience, cognitive science and psychology along the way. One of his main themes is the importance of doing practice right.

“Hundreds of thousands of people took music lessons when they were young and remember little or nothing,” he points out, giving lie to the notion that learning an instrument is easiest when you’re a kid. The important thing is not just practice but deliberate practice, “a constant sense of self-evaluation, of focusing on one’s weaknesses, rather than simply fooling around and playing to one’s strengths. Studies show that practice aimed at remedying weaknesses is a better predictor of expertise than raw number of hours; playing for fun and repeating what you already know is not necessarily the same as efficiently reaching a new level. Most of the practice that most people do, most of the time, be it in the pursuit of learning the guitar or improving their golf game, yields almost no effect.”

So how does deliberate practice work? Anders Ericsson’s 1993 paper makes for bracing reading. He makes it clear that a dutiful daily commitment to practice is not enough. Long hours of practice are not enough. And noodling around on the piano or idly taking some swings with a golf club is definitely not enough. “Deliberate practice,” Ericsson declares sternly, “requires effort and is not inherently enjoyable.” Having given us fair warning, he reveals the secret of deliberate practice: relentlessly focusing on our weaknesses and inventing new ways to root them out. Results are carefully monitored, ideally with the help of a coach or teacher, and become grist for the next round of ruthless self-evaluation.

(MORE: Paul: The Power of Smart Listening)

It sounds simple, even obvious, but it’s something most of us avoid. If we play the piano — or, like Marcus, the guitar — or we play golf or speak French, it’s because we like it. We’ve often achieved a level of competency that makes us feel good about ourselves. But what we don’t do is intentionally look for ways that we’re failing and hammer away at those flaws until they’re gone, then search for more ways we’re messing up. But almost two decades of research shows that’s exactly what distinguishes the merely good from the great.

In an article titled “It’s Not How Much; It’s How,” published in the Journal of Research in Music Education in 2009, University of Texas-Austin professor Robert Duke and his colleagues videotaped advanced piano students as they practiced a difficult passage from a Shostakovich concerto, then ranked the participants by the quality of their ultimate performance. The researchers found no relationship between excellence of performance and how many times the students had practiced the piece or how long they spent practicing. Rather, “the most notable differences between the practice sessions of the top-ranked pianists and the remaining participants,” Duke and his coauthors wrote, “are related to their handling of errors.”

The best pianists, they determined, addressed their mistakes immediately. They identified the precise location and source of each error, then rehearsed that part again and again until it was corrected. Only then would the best students proceed to the rest of the piece. “It was not the case that the top-ranked pianists made fewer errors at the beginning of their practice sessions than did the other pianists,” Duke notes. “But, when errors occurred, the top-ranked pianists seemed much better able to correct them in ways that precluded their recurrence.”

Without deliberate practice, even the most talented individuals will reach a plateau and stay there. For most of us, that’s just fine. But don’t delude yourself that you’ll see much improvement unless you’re ready to tackle your mistakes as well as your successes.

Paul, the author of Origins, is at work on a book about the science of learning. The views expressed are solely her own.

Read more: http://ideas.time.com/2012/01/25/the-myth-of-practice-makes-perfect/?iid=op-main-mostpop1#ixzz1michRzqQ

編譯│高英哲

你要怎麼登上卡內基廳的大舞台?練習、練習、練個沒完就對了。但是認知心理學家艾利克森 (Anders Ericsson) 在一九九三年,發表的一篇開創性論文中,卻給這個老笑話做了一個很重大的補充。所以你要怎麼登上卡內基廳的大舞台?「用心」練習。

這可不是稍加修飾而已。有用的練習跟沒用的練習,箇中差別就決定了你是大師還是泛泛之輩。無論是學習外語、樂器、或是任何其他類型的新技能,如果你沒有用心練習,結果可能跟完全沒有練習差不了多少。

有一本很棒的新書《吉他的起點:新式音樂家與學習科學》 (Guitar Zero: The New Musician and the Science of Learning) ,提醒大家用心練習的重要性。這本書的作者馬可仕 (Gary Marcus) 是紐約大學的認知心理學家,專門研究大腦如何學習語言。馬可仕同時也很想成為吉他手,在三十八歲那年開始學習彈奏吉他。他在這本新書裡,帶著讀者一同體驗 這段過程,探索相關的神經科學、認知科學與心理學研究。他的其中一個主要的主題,就是「正確」練習的重要性。

「有成千上萬的人在年輕時上過音樂課,卻幾乎什麼也記不得了。」馬可仕指出這一點,這跟人們說當你還小的時候,最容易學會一項樂器的說 法不符。重要的不只是練習而已,還要用心練習。「要經常保持自我評估的念頭,專注在弱點上,而不僅只是東遊西走,只玩你拿手的。研究指出針對弱點進行改善 的練習,比起單純的練習時數,更能預測一個人的技藝是否能夠精進;只是玩玩而已,重複去做已經會的事情,跟有效率地更上一層樓,並不一定是同一回事。大多 數的人,在大多數的時候,所做的大多數的練習,無論是學習彈吉他或增進高爾夫球技都好,幾乎都產生不了什麼效果。」

那麼用心練習是怎麼達到效果的呢?艾利克森在一九九三年發表的那篇論文,讀來讓人耳目一新。他說得很清楚,每天行禮如儀地去練習還不 夠,練習時間很長也不夠,隨意彈一彈鋼琴,或是呆呆地去俱樂部揮個幾桿,當然更是不夠。他很斬釘截鐵地宣布,用心練習是需要努力的,而且本身並不一定能讓 人樂在其中。在給讀者應有的警告之後,他才揭露了用心練習的奧祕:無情地專心致志於我們的弱點上,然後發現一些新方法根絕這些弱點。練習結果要經過精心監 控,最好是有教練或老師協助,然後練習結果就會在下一輪殘忍的自我評估中,成為你的優勢。

聽起來很簡單,甚至有點理所當然,但我們大多數的人卻避而不為。我們會去彈鋼琴,像馬可仕那樣學吉他,打高爾夫或學法語,那是因為我們 喜歡。我們經常達到某種程度之後,就自我感覺良好,卻不會刻意去看那些我們搞砸的地方,再努力改掉那些瑕疵,直到它們全都不見為止,然後再去找出更多我們 做不好的地方。然而近二十年的研究卻指出,這正是「還不錯」跟「了不起」的區別所在。

美國德州大學奧斯汀分校教授杜克 (Robert Duke) 等人,在二〇〇九年發表於《音樂教育研究期刊》,一篇叫做《不在於練了多少,而在於怎麼練》 (It’s Not How Much; It’s How) 的文章中,錄下了高級鋼琴學生練習一段非常困難的蕭士塔高維契協奏曲的情況,然後以他們最終上台演奏的質感給個排名,結果發現一場優秀的演奏,跟學生練習 這個作品多少次,或是他們花了多少時間練習,沒有什麼關聯性。杜克等人寫道:「排名最高的那幾位鋼琴手,跟其他人在練習時最顯著的差別,反而是在他們應付 錯誤的功夫上。」

他們認為表現最好的鋼琴手,馬上就會發現他們的錯誤,找到每個錯誤的確實位置與源頭,然後反覆排練那個部份,直到錯誤修正為止,在這之 後這些表現最好的學生,才會繼續去練習作品的剩餘部份。「排名最高的鋼琴手,在他們剛開始練習時所犯的錯誤,並沒有比其他鋼琴手來得少,」杜克指出,「但 是一有錯誤產生時,那些排名最高的鋼琴手,似乎頗能加以修正,不會重蹈覆轍。」

沒有用心練習的話,即使是最有天份的人,也會到了某個程度就不過爾爾了。對我們大多數的人來說,這樣也沒啥不好的,但就別自欺欺人地覺得你會有多大長進,除非你像是準備好要迎接成功一樣,也已經準備好了要應付你的錯誤。

 研究出處:The Myth of ‘Practice Makes Perfect’

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