Guitar hero has a mode that lets you practice pieces of a song. You can practice each segment to perfection, then play the whole song. This targeted practice should be a lot more effective and still obey the idea of what he's saying.
I once had a teacher that took offense at the statement "Practice makes perfect." They always changed it to be "Perfect practice makes perfect." I think it's more in line with the article's meaning, too.
As another anecdote, I've been studying Japanese lately. Never before have I been so acutely aware that the only way to improve a skill is to use it. Reading English for me is -very- easy and enjoyable. Japanese started out extremely difficult, time-consuming and painful. A few years later, and I'm much better at it... But my listening skill (for Japanese) has hardly changed at all. Why? Because I almost never use it.
I guess maybe we understood him differently, because I thought that was the point he was getting at.
Regardless, I agree with the idea of "targeted practice" of each section. It's been awhile since I've done any serious piano playing, but my strategy for perfecting a piece was always to nail the final 4-8 bars 5x in a row. Then I would keep adding another 4-8 bars to the beginning of that and repeat the process until I could play the whole thing through.
I found working from the end to be much more effective than from the start. My guess is that it's less tedious since the new part is at the beginning, so if you're restarting after each mistake, you end up focusing on the new material instead of racing through the old boring material to get to the new stuff.
This makes it really, really awful if you're playing a recital and slip up just a tiny bit (obviously, you should practice it so you don't slip up /at all/, but let's be realistic here. Even people studying to be performance majors make mistakes in their recitals) - your first instinct would be to start the passage over, which is the /last/ thing you want to be doing.
It also makes it nearly impossible to play with a group.
But in my experience, the 4th criteria is by far the most important. Not only is it more effective, it's a hell lot more enjoyable.
The key is not making mistakes in the first place! Do slow practice on short passages. If you make a mistake then decrease the tempo (or play a shorter passage) until you can play it correctly. Repeat it until you can't do it wrong. Then increase the tempo.
That's exactly what he's saying: "a violin student trying to perfect a short, tough passage in a song". Passage, not the whole piece. To practice the whole piece, you divide it in overlapping passages and master each passage. It's "boring" but it works.
1) slow down until comfortable 2) isolate the thing that is giving you the actual trouble, and fix that before attempting the bigger challenge
The thing to avoid is practicing mistakes. These two basic principles attempt to minimize that.
Principal Skinner: Here's a whole box of unsealed envelopes for the PTA!
Bart: You're making me lick envelopes?
P.S.: Oh, licking envelopes can be fun! All you have to do is make a game of it.
Bart: What kind of game?
P.S.: Well, for example, you could see how many you could lick in an hour, then try to break that record.
Bart: Sounds like a pretty crappy game to me.
P.S.: Yes, well... Get started.
What works for one child/person may not for any other. Whilst we've seen game-ification take off for many activities, it doesn't mean it's the only way to learn things. If the core activity isn't enjoyable, building a game around it may only encourage someone temporarily.
Assigning homework actually has the same effect as the in-class quiz, since it forces each student to reach in the same way and would be another example.
Really? How many?
Out of curiosity, how do you think it would affect your motivation to practice in private if you knew you would be tested in public?
Enjoyment both motivates further practice and makes what you are trying to learn more memorable. For example, if you are memorising a phrase in a foreign language, you revel in the fruity sounds you are making and in the delicate dance your lips and teeth and tongue are performing; you marvel at the pattern of connections between the meaning of the phrase and other ideas you have learnt.
It goes against the grain because one of the legacies of schooling is the assumption that learning is difficult and painful. (Paradoxically, by continuing to believe this one makes it so.)
But yeah. The problem isn't that learning is unenjoyable, but that we don't enjoy it enough.
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1591842948/ref=as_li_tf_tl?...
(I have a friend that thinks otherwise and I tell him: "Remember when you were in first grade, try to remember your classmates, what percentage of them could have become Nobel Prize winners in Physics given the right nurturing conditions?". According to the author of this book, almost all of them)
I guess the part that confuses me is the first step - "R stands for Reaching/Repeating" - How exactly would you apply this to learning a new language, framework, algorithm?
Folks here on HN - Any words of advice?
After about 20-25 problems, I found myself reaching for the Python docs way less.
So much of programming is working with large complex systems that it isn't that amenable to small drilling techniques.
For more detail I highly recommend "The Perfect Wrong Note" by William Westney.
Coached practicing / Competitive performance evaluation / Transparent Scores / Winning opportunities / Final Awards.
