I came across an interesting article. The author theorizies that mastery of a subject has little to do with one's own innate ability, but rather the amount of time and effort put in. His theory is that to master something it takes ten thousand hours.

It would largely support Khatzumoto's theory that it's a matter of patience, effort, and endurance, not ability. Here's an excerpt from the article:

Quote:In the early 90s, the psychologist K Anders Ericsson and two colleagues set up shop at Berlin's elite Academy of Music. With the help of the academy's professors, they divided the school's violinists into three groups. The first group were the stars, the students with the potential to become world-class soloists. The second were those judged to be merely "good". The third were students who were unlikely ever to play professionally, and intended to be music teachers in the school system. All the violinists were then asked the same question. Over the course of your career, ever since you first picked up the violin, how many hours have you practised?

Everyone, from all three groups, started playing at roughly the same time - around the age of five. In those first few years, everyone practised roughly the same amount - about two or three hours a week. But around the age of eight real differences started to emerge. The students who would end up as the best in their class began to practise more than everyone else: six hours a week by age nine, eight by age 12, 16 a week by age 14, and up and up, until by the age of 20 they were practising well over 30 hours a week. By the age of 20, the elite performers had all totalled 10,000 hours of practice over the course of their lives. The merely good students had totalled, by contrast, 8,000 hours, and the future music teachers just over 4,000 hours.

The curious thing about Ericsson's study is that he and his colleagues couldn't find any "naturals" - musicians who could float effortlessly to the top while practising a fraction of the time that their peers did. Nor could they find "grinds", people who worked harder than everyone else and yet just didn't have what it takes to break into the top ranks. Their research suggested that once you have enough ability to get into a top music school, the thing that distinguishes one performer from another is how hard he or she works. That's it. What's more, the people at the very top don't just work much harder than everyone else. They work much, much harder.

So what the hell are you doing reading this post? Get studyin'!

source

I don't really see this as 10 000 sentences vs 10 000 hours, I see it as being born talented vs 10 000 hours.

If one person does 10 000 sentences in 200 hours and another one does the same amount in 10 000 hours, they will be equally good. The time it took is irrelevant, the important part is the amount of effort and the quantity of the studies.

Studying more is important, not studying for longer periods of time.

This study, along with others, was also cited in this http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/f.../index.htm article, which I just linked in another thread and that has also been linked on the AJATT website. You might be interested.

This may not be the case, but it seems there's an assumption that ALL you're doing is 10,000 sentences when someone complains about AJATT.

The sentence thing is just a manner to get words into your head. It makes the other things you're doing such as reading manga, listening to music and watching movies more efficient.

In addition, I think each "sentence" probably represents 10 minutes of effort over the year or two you'll look at it (spared repetition and all). So that mere 10,000 sentences (should you get there) can be 1500 to 2000 hours of actual study/reviewing.

PS: no one is born talented. You're trained at being good. The super talented just were more dedicated to their training.

I feel that the term talent is an inadequately overused one to describe someone with 'superior skills' in something. This in turn gives them some super-human aura which makes others think they will never attain their goal, this is absolute bullshit. Anyone can play the violin, anyone can learn 10 000 kanji, you just have to have the will to do so. Now, how one obtains this will is a whole new story in itself. This, is my definition of talent.

Talent is essentially nothing more and nothing less than motivation, dedication, and effort.
This is what I have always thought and this article would seem to support it.

Tobberoth Wrote:I don't really see this as 10 000 sentences vs 10 000 hours, I see it as being born talented vs 10 000 hours.

If one person does 10 000 sentences in 200 hours and another one does the same amount in 10 000 hours, they will be equally good. The time it took is irrelevant, the important part is the amount of effort and the quantity of the studies.

Studying more is important, not studying for longer periods of time.

I don't think 10,000 sentences alone is the key here - it's the quality of the sentences. For example, you could study 10,000 sentences like これは魚です、これは犬です、これは車です、and still never become fluent. For a beginning student, this kind of sentence is essential. But once the pattern is absorbed, more advanced sentences need to be learned to really master the subtleties of the language. This IS simply a matter of time. During the learning process, changes occur in the brain's neural connections. It takes time to feel comfortable with what you have learned and prepare yourself for the next step. It's the same reason why practicing any activity for two hours every day is better than studying it for 14 hours one day a week. You have to give time for those connections to form.

I've been adding sentences at an average of just over 10 a day, which is my target. This way it will take me a bit under three years to hit 10,000 sentences. I'm not worried. Whichever sentences I add next year are likely far too difficult for me to add now. As I get more advanced, the kinds of sentences I add become more advanced. It's not simply getting any 10,000 sentences. It's getting good quality sentences that push your understanding a bit at a time.

Anyway, though learning by sentences is a powerful tool, it's not the only one I use. (there's manga, movies, converstations, etc.) So the 10,000 number is just a nice target, it's not a magic number that you hit and suddenly, bingo, you're as fluent as a native speaker. As an interesting aside, if you read deeper into the Antimoon site, where Khatzu found the sentence method, the guys who pioneered what we call the 10,000 method were already advanced English students when they started it - but it was through the sentence method that they were able to polish their English and bring it to the level of native fluency. I don't think that changes anything for the way we have been using it, just throwing it in as an interesting sidebar.

timcampbell Wrote:if you read deeper into the Antimoon site, where Khatzu found the sentence method, the guys who pioneered what we call the 10,000 method were already advanced English students when they started it - but it was through the sentence method that they were able to polish their English and bring it to the level of native fluency. I don't think that changes anything for the way we have been using it, just throwing it in as an interesting sidebar.

I wouldn't really give them credit for pioneering the method though, a lot of people have used sentences for learning for a long time. The main new thing they did was combine it with modern SRS software.

Talent is discovering what your strengths are and playing to them.

It determines how quickly you can acquire a new language.

liosama Wrote:I feel that the term talent is an inadequately overused one to describe someone with 'superior skills' in something. This in turn gives them some super-human aura which makes others think they will never attain their goal, this is absolute bullshit. Anyone can play the violin, anyone can learn 10 000 kanji, you just have to have the will to do so. Now, how one obtains this will is a whole new story in itself. This, is my definition of talent.

Now explain that to the millions, no billions, of people raised around similar assumptions. Could you imagine what the world would be like without such limiting belief?

I don't think this really proves that 'talent' doesn't exist though. Some people will still take to things better than other people. What it really shows in the end, is that it really becomes insignificant after everybody puts in the time to become really good at something.

It's not that talent doesn't exist. Talent just doesn't matter as much a people emphasize. There are a few exception to this, of course, but they are few enough to be called anomalies.

I like the statement in the Fortune article that mentions clearly inherited traits and states "those influence what a person doesn't do more than what he does."

Do anything 10 thousand times and you'll probably be good at it.

Careful with that one. You could get good at being bad at something.

Great, kazelee, you just made me spill my coffee. You should warn people before telling this kind of joke.

mentat_kgs Wrote:Great, kazelee, you just made me spill my coffee. You should warn people before telling this kind of joke.

One could also say that you should know to never browse the RTK forums with a beverage :p

kazelee Wrote:Careful with that one. You could get good at being bad at something.

Actually, I have a good example of this. After church yesterday, there was a lady practicing her scales on the piano. I thought nothing of it at the time...until I came back for a function about 4 hours later....she was playing the same scale, same key, as messy as ever, terrible hand position among other things -- she was doing nothing more than compounding and reinforcing her mistakes and bad habits.

There was great wisdom in it anyway..