{"id":1217,"date":"2012-03-04T21:38:23","date_gmt":"2012-03-04T20:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/molndrake.nyvald.se\/?p=1191"},"modified":"2019-09-17T19:23:51","modified_gmt":"2019-09-17T17:23:51","slug":"the-10000-hour-rule-blood-sweat-and-tears","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.hackingchinese.com\/the-10000-hour-rule-blood-sweat-and-tears\/","title":{"rendered":"The 10,000 hour rule \u2013 Blood, sweat and tears"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"\"

The traditional (or fraud-proof) character for 10,000.<\/em><\/p><\/div>\n

Is mastering a subject mainly about innate gifts or about hard work? If it is about hard work, how long does it take? The first of these questions has of course been attracting people\u2019s attention for a long time, but it\u2019s not the people who ask this question who are in trouble, but those who don\u2019t even think it is question in the first place.<\/p>\n

Too many seem to assume that learning anything (especially languages) is about being talented and having a gift for learning (again, very common for language learning). Although it\u2019s arguably true that some people seem to learn languages more easily than others, this is far from the whole truth.<\/p>\n

In this article, I\u2019m going to argue that learning Chinese is mainly about blood, sweat and tears, not talent. Of course, if you\u2019re wise, you\u2019ll find ways to bleed, sweat and cry that you actually enjoy<\/a> or at least think is worthwhile, but hard work is still what will propel you forward, not some inner ability you were (or weren\u2019t) born with. Similarly, saying that you can\u2019t learn because you don\u2019t have the gift is equally invalid. If other people can work hard to master Chinese, so can you.<\/p>\n

The talent myth<\/h3>\n

I think what people usually call \u201ctalent\u201d starts from early childhood, meaning that it\u2019s something grown or learnt rather than something being genuinely innate\u00a0 In school, pupils are very quickly sorted into categories: those who are smart and those who aren\u2019t. If you\u2019re the smart type, you\u2019ll get lots of encouragement from your environment, but if you\u2019re unfortunate enough to be placed in the other category, then you\u2019ll have a more difficult time.<\/p>\n

The problem is that people base their ability to learn something on what they did in school, perhaps ten or twenty years ago. I\u2019ve read about and heard innumerable people state that they can\u2019t learn a language and then follow it up with \u201cI took French evening classes and it was really hard\u201d or \u201cI studied German for six years in school and I still can\u2019t speak the language\u201d.<\/p>\n

This is nonsense. These people aren\u2019t assessing their own ability to learn, they\u2019re simply saying that under that kind of circumstances, they weren\u2019t able to learn the languages to a satisfactory level. Then they go on and read about the polyglots who travel the world to learn many languages, usually very quickly. Even though I have argued that learning Chinese in just a few months<\/a> is, depending on definitions, impossible, that\u2019s not saying you can\u2019t learn an awful lot. Let\u2019s take French as an example, simply because I have studied French for more than six years in school and still can\u2019t speak very well (in other words, I was once one of the people I criticise above).<\/p>\n

Practice is counted in hours, not in years<\/h3>\n

If someone claims to have learnt French in just a few months, most people would either say that it\u2019s a lie or that the person is extremely talented. Neither is necessarily true (although both might be, of course). The mistake people make is that they count practice in years and not in hours. Let me illustrate with a short dialogue:<\/p>\n

A: Have you studied any foreign language?
\nB: Yes, I\u2019ve studied French.
\nA: For how long?
\nB: Six years.
\nA: Wow! You must be very good then.
\nB: No, I can hardly communicate with natives.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

This dialogue is weird only if you think that six years means six years of serious studying, because then you really should be very good at French. But if B in this dialogue only took one hour of evening classes every second week for six years and did no homework, I don\u2019t think he\u2019d be able to communicate very well, even after six years.<\/p>\n

Don\u2019t compare with your high-school French class<\/h3>\n

Let\u2019s look at the numbers of a more realistic example. Let\u2019s say that I study French in school for six years. That means roughly 40 weeks\/year because of holidays and so on. Most people don\u2019t have class everyday, let\u2019s say we have three hours of French each week and do two hours of homework, then this adds up to 200 hours in one year or 1200 in six years.<\/p>\n

Compare this with the serious language learner, immersed in the language and doing nothing but studying. Realistically, it\u2019s very hard to maintain a lifestyle where you do nothing but learning languages, but for a short period of time, I know it\u2019s possible to study non-stop, but let\u2019s say 14 hours\/day, which gives plenty of time to sleep, eat and so on. If you do that for three months, you\u2019ll end up with 1260 hours.<\/p>\n

As we can see, the avid language learner totals more hours in three months than an average high-school student does in six years.<\/p>\n

The 10,000 hour rule<\/h3>\n

What can we learn from this? Mainly, we learn that what seems to be impossible feats of talent is in reality the result of hard work (counted in hours), although concentrated in a short duration of time (counted in years). We also learn that by erroneously comparing someone else\u2019s learning process to our own experience, we draw incorrect conclusions about how others achieve success. We tend to dismiss expertise simply as the result of innate ability, which is wrong. Some subjects are more prone to this than others. For instance, would you attribute a surgeons skill to innate ability? What about a musician? Do you realise how many hours an Olympic gymnast has practised when you watch him or her on TV?<\/p>\n

Let\u2019s see what Malcolm Gladwell (the guy who is usually attributed with popularising the 10,000 hour rule) has to say about this:<\/p>\n