这是我在Coursera上提交的一篇English Composition I: Achieving Expertise的作业。如需使用我的文章，请至少在文末注明出处。本文为草稿性质的文章可能存在少许错误，最终成型的final版还在写作中，视情况公布。
This is a project essay of mine in English Composition I: Achieving Expertise. Anyone who uses my work please at least cite this webpage at the end of your work. The text in this post is only a draft which may contain few syntax errors.
Project One: Critical Review of Coyle’s “The Sweet Spot”
Coyle’s inspiring Sweet Spot
The word “talent” can be seen through Coyle’s passage, but according to the author, the word is more or less linked with practice and mistakes. It’s obviously an inspiring and self-helping book, and this chapter gives a strong idea that greatness isn’t born. It’s grown, especially through mistakes.
In this chapter Coyle discusses a variety of ideas via different examples. He has visited different people from several countries. So he demonstrates his view with their personal experience. Brunio is an eleven-year-old Brazilian football player who is trying to learn the elastic, which is a ball-handling maneuver. Although he failed to finish the move at the first time, he stopped and thought with his taut face and focused eyes, practicing it slowly but progressively (P.13). Another girl Jennie kept working on the pop song, singing every note slowly, and finally sang the measure perfectly (P.13). Those two example presents the idea that practice deeply leads the way to success.
Coyle isn’t totally agree with the traditional explanation that such kind of concentrated talent is to attribute it to a combination of genes and environment (P.14). He offers his “deep practice” theory and reinforces it with a word list memorization exercise (P.16). The words in column B with fragments can be remembered more easily than column A because it evokes our deeper practice. The following life vest example (P.16) also proves his theory.
To further illustrate his idea, Coyle cites a UCLA professor Bjork. Bjork said “there’s an optimal gap between what you know and what you’re trying to do”, and that’s what the Sweet Spot is. In Coyle’s theory practice and making mistakes is a way to find the sweet spot, then one can turn mistakes into skills. And people use time more efficiently when they practice deeply (P.19).
According to Coyle’s theory, deep practice is a strange concept for two reasons. Firstly, it cuts against our intuition about talent. Secondly it turns mistakes into skills (which is mentioned above). His second reason provokes a question that what if the mistake has a decent chance of killing you (P.20). Then Edwin Link’s pilot simulation device is cited to deal with that question. As is described in the text that Edwin’s trainer allows a pilot to perform “take off” and “land” a dozen times on his instruments during a few hours (P.24). His invention successfully extended the deep practice idea onto dangerous jobs.
In order to assure his theory could take effect on other field, the author applies his idea to Brazil’s soccer players. In short, the special indoor football, futsal, helps local players gain more practice opportunities. Futsal is the lever through which those other factors transfer their force (P.28). However, I personally have some doubts that whether this magical ball is overestimated. In my opinion, other factors such as environment (e.g. poverty, popularity), passion of the kids might be taken into consideration as well. Though futsal does help improve their football skills, it isn’t quite clear that whether the mini-sized heavy ball is the key factor to such talent.
“As Coyle reports, deep practice actually changes the physical makeup of the brain. … However, mere repetition is not enough. To create myelin, the repetition requires powerful attention” said by Jade and Barbara (Eckard, et al. 2013). Coyle gives us hope and inspiration via a variety of stories, but it simply isn’t objective. He relates success (or talent) to deep practice regardless of innate capabilities and environments.
In summary, despite of Coyle’s little subjective, I have learned a lot from the first chapter of his book. Perhaps Coyle doesn’t need to be objective because the text itself is about making you feel good, energetic and ambitious, at least it inspired me well. I also admire his way of elaborating the concepts.
References
1. Eckard, Bonnie J. “Embodying Deep Practice: A Pedagogical Approach to Actor Training.” Embodied Consciousness: Performance Technologies (2013): 46.
Works of others that indirectly helps me with my critical review
1. Critical Review on “The Sweet Spot” by Daniel Coyle. http://criticalreviewthesweetspot.blogspot.com/
2. Critical Review of Coyle’s The Sweet Spot http://book.douban.com/review/5866658/
3. Critical Review of Daniel Coyle’s “The Sweet Spot”http://www.researchgate.net/publication/252930427_Critical_Review_of_Daniel_Coyle’s_The_Sweet_Spot
以下是peer review的结果：
The following texts are results of peer review:
