Peak Chap.1 1/2

Chapter 1 The Power of Purposeful Practice 1/2

Vocabulary

nail

Then I read out a ten-digit number -- 5718866610 -- and he nailed that one as well.

nail (informal) to do something successfully
造句：He nailed to practice swimming this summer.

rapid-fire; handful

Five years later, after a rapid-fire series of new records set by a handful of people competing to claim the memorization title.

rapid-fire 接二连三的，一个接一个的
handful 少量，少数
造句：The rapid-fire questions really disturb my thoughts.
Only a handful of students attended the last lecture.

deem; vantage point

We live in a world full of people with extraordinary abilities -- abilities that from the vantage point of almost any other time in human history would have been deemed impossible.

deem 认为，视为，觉得 to think of something in a particular way or as having a particular quality
[syn] consider
造句：It is deemed impolite to make noise in public area.

vantage point 观点，看法 a particular personal way of thinking or set of opinions；（尤指较高的）有利地势
e.g. The document contains a first-hand description of political life in Havana from the vantage point of a senior bureaucrat. 这部纪录片从一个高级官员的视角来描述其亲身体验过的哈瓦那政治生活。
造句：This street is the best vantage point to watch the Queen's birthday parade.

hone

For my dissertation I had honed a psychological research tool called "the think-aloud protocol"

hone 使...变得锋利，把...磨快；磨炼，磨砺 to develop and improve something, especially a skill, over a period of time

hone something to something
e.g. His physique was honed to perfection. 他的体形锻炼得很完美。
造句：She honed the programming skills at the university.

感想

在记数字的实验里，Steve一开始只能记住大概7个，经过训练竟然能达到82个，这样的开头非常吸引我往下看。一句“They practiced. A lot.”似乎有点灵魂拷问......确实也没有什么特殊的，就是不断的训练，以及有目的性的训练，普通的训练只能达到熟悉，让一切都变得程序化起来，如果不进行进一步的训练，就不会有前进。英语学了很多年，自己也在国外上学，英语水平大概连acceptable level都达不到，这次参加读书群也是希望自己能有进步。

Summary

The author did an experiment on memorizing strings of numbers with the participant Steve. With 200 training sessions, Steve gradually improved to remember the eighty-two digit string.

With lots of practice and hard work, human accomplish the impossible. The records of sports, music and memory have been improved a lot. Generally, people practice and have training sessions to learn new things. They could reach the acceptable level and automated their performance, but tend to stop improving. People are supposed to have purposeful practice to gain more improvement, which is a step to "deliberate practice".