NYTimes.com: I started playing the French horn in sixth grade. I was a rule follower, and so I practiced regularly, in addition to performing at concerts and parades and all the other glamorous events to which a teenage French horn player is routinely invited. And yet, six years later, I was only marginally less terrible than when I began.
4 comments:
In my life time I have never met something that was passionate about one thing and knowing that was what they would practice many time and try to get better every time at it. With the studies they conducted is showed most of the time that no twin nor regular person was any better than the other person if they practiced more. By practicing more yes you are training you brain more, but say you are practicing 3 hours and the other practicing 1 hour all you are doing is training your brain more through the movements. Every brain is different it just depends on how you do things that are different. Everyone is going to be good at something and not going at something and have to do more work with that one subject to get better. Everything happens for a reason and everyone’s brains are different and function differently.
Lyla Bartman
Seeing this article is interesting since I have had many teachers who stress the idea that it is all about practice. This article leaves me wondering the importance of innate talent is bigger in fields such as music and sports than it would be for math or writing. “Professions” were mentioned, but I am not entirely sure what “professions” means. Is that any job, or specific jobs? Also, I feel like the kind of practice would matter a lot. If you are learning to play an instrument and you are playing incorrectly, if you keep practicing but you are playing incorrectly, you won’t get better and you might get worse. I wonder how the studies take the quality of practice into account. Overall I feel like people tend to either stress how it is all about work or how it is all about talent, but there will always be a combination of both.
This article just focuses on the never ending nature vs. nurture. In my opinion, based on my limited experience, the skills must be in place for practice to really help. Even if you ingrain an action into your muscle memory with tons of practice you will fail when you try to build on the action, because your body just doesn’t fully understand what the basics are, it can just repeat it-like a memory. However, once you do discover something your brain and body does fully understand, meaning you have an inclination towards it, practice can only help. At that point it isn’t programming your brain to repeat, it’s exploring a concept and figuring out how you alter it. If you are musically inclined once you learn the notes practice will allow you to dissect song. If you are not inclined, practice is just pounding the same practice into your brain. No room for expansion, just one process. But hey-sometime’s that’s all you need!
The article brings up interesting points on both opinions towards the topic, and I’m afraid that I can’t take a side either way. Throughout my life, I have cycled through an impressive amount of hobbies. Skateboarding, baseball, guitar, harmonica, snowboarding, surfing, running, rock climbing, photography, piano, writing, and singing are just a few of the most time consuming of my repertoire, and I can rightfully say that my skill has varied quite erratically throughout all of them. For instance, I have skateboarded for almost seven years now, and there are some days where I wonder if I’ve really gained a day’s worth of improvement the entire time. To contrast that, my freshman year I moved to a school that offered a snowboarding team as a sport. Being a native Texan who has never seen snow, let alone snowboarded, I quickly signed up. By the end of the season I had qualified for the national championship in Colorado. Although I believe that anyone can become good at something with enough practice, I believe through experience that certain skills are simply inherent, and allow the person who is practicing to progress faster than most.
Post a Comment