Critical Review of Coyle's The Sweet Spot

　　
　　Review: Daniel Coyle(2009). The Talent Code: Greatness isn’t born. It’s Grown. Here’s how. (Extract from Chapter 1: The Sweet Spot.)
　　
　　We are in a society that everyone is looking for the secret and the shortcut to reach the highest level of some skills or knowledge, It is not uncommon that various of so called guide book are very popular in the publishing industry, in this case, we can see how eagerly is everyone pursuing the shortcut for success. Under such circumstance, Daniel Coyle is trying to explore the “talent code” and explain to the public, and now, this essay will demonstrate my understanding of the first chapter of Talent Code and analyze the uses and limits of his findings.
　　
　　In the first Chapter of Coyle’s book, He is trying to explain his idea that people will be an effective learner by “deep practice” no matter whether this person is talented or not, because the efficiency of practice is defined as “the way to forge the blade itself”(p. 19) even if they lack the solid blade of natural ability. To substantiate his statement, Coyle talks about two figures that he found during his journey around the world : An eleven years old boy, Brunio, who are trying to learn elastico, deeply focused on the practicing process; Jennie is a chorus singer and she is trying hard to hit the big finish in a song. (p. 13). In Coyle’s word, both of them are “purposely operating at the edges of their ability ... And somehow screwing up is making them better.” (p. 14), in other word, they are unconsciously burying into the deep practice process and therefore progress has been made effectively which rely not merely on the abilities such as willpower, concentration or focus. To further illustrate his assertion, the author then give more examples and assumptions with great details to support the idea that the deeper you practice the more and quicker you learn from it. “Edwin Link's pilot trainer”(p. 20) and “Brazil's futebol de salao (soccer in the room)”(p. 24) are the specific cases which are provided to prove the idea that repetitive practice and correction of mistakes will effectively improve performance.

　　Coyle’s another argument is based on the way the human brain, specially for memory, works. He previously cites a test to explain the fact that a little difference in the test will make a difference. Most of people will recall more word pairs which contain fragments. Then he quotes “Memory is not a tape recorder”, as it's explained on the text by words of Dr. Bjork, hair of psychology at UCLA (pg. 19). That is to say, Coyle is quit sure that human’s memory resembles a scaffold of nearly infinite size, we build the scaffold faster when encountering and overcoming more difficulty. Therefore, we learn more faster as a result of we have came in to the deep practice zone. What he puts in the passage “When you’re practicing deeply, the world’s usual rules are suspended ... You can capture failure and turn it into skill.”(p. 19) might accurately correspond his viewpoint.
　　
　　It is quite persuasive that Coyle used some effective methods to clarify the concept of deep practice, he set up a test for the reader to participate remembering some word pairs by unconsciously using the deep practice method. Personally speaking, I was shocked by the result of the test and I believe this method really works in this case. What’s more, two detailed story, the polit trainer and Brazil’s soccer in the room, also reasonably contribute to the conclusion that the author has previously made. Additionally, I had read the familiar concept in a small book called Mastery【1】, it says: “Mastery is not about perfection. It’s about a process, a journey. The master is the one who stays on the path day after day, year after year. The master is the one who is willing to try, and fail, and try again, for as long as he or she lives.” (George Leonard, 1992, P. 140). Leonard’s idea is developed only by reasonings and statements of facts, in Coyle’s book, those specific examples and detailed stories above have enforced the feasibility of this theory.

　　There are some problems however, without ruling out other possibilities which will affect the result, I still preserve some doubt on his idea, for example, I cannot ensure the effectiveness of the Link trainer only basing on severals successful cases described in his story, It is entirely possible that the trainer acts as a placebo for the pilot, so they are likely to be confident of themselves and therefore make fewer mistakes. In another story, there is a problem that Coyle might overestimate the influence of the Futsal, for that matter, other perspectives such as the passion of the kids, the popularity of soccer, poverty of these people etc. have been underestimated. Coyle fails to explain these possibilities in the first chapter of the book.
　　
　　Another fallacy lies on the overlook of a vital factor, the willpower, which is probably more influential than the deep practice for people to success, according to Roy F. Baumeister’s and John Tierney’s masterpiece - willpower【2】, they put that willpower is an elementary quality to success, it’s by no means unlimited, if you depleted it in one thing, you will fail to concentrate on another thing, they state that willpower remarkably relies on the energy, in his word is glucose, in our body. In this case, willpower can determine how much those figures in these stories could concentrate on their practice, the successful individuals must have had strengthen their willpower at first, or otherwise, the deep practice phrase in their struggling to mastery would not exist at all. From my perspective, Brazil witnessed a significant GDP and GDP per capita growth during 1959 to 1979【3】, with the development of Brazilian’s living standard, they have more food supply (glucose) and better training court. For that matter, Brazilian soccer rejuvenated in this period can be explained by the economy growth, consequently, this explanation diminishes the credibility of Coyle’s finding of Brazil’s soccer miracle.

　　In summary, I have learned a lot from the first chapter of Coyle’s book, I admire the way he elaborates the concept and the story or examples, besides, the deep practice method is reasonable to a certain extent. However, I’ll be much more convinced by Coyle’s novel idea, if he could rule out some other possibilities, in the passage, which can also lead to those phenomenons of the sweet spot.


References

1.George Leonard, 1992, Mastery: The Keys to Success and Long-Term Fulfillment. Plume press.

2.Roy F. Baumeister, John Tierney: 2011, Willpower: Rediscovering the Greatest Human Strength, Penguin Press.

3.Average GDP growth rate 1950-2008: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Economy_of_Brazil

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以下是网友关于这篇文章的评价
1.What overall comments do you have for the writer as he or she moves on to Project 2?

peer 1 → Watch your aortography and example would be "An 11 year old boy, Brunio who ARE trying to learn elastico" You can make shorter the paragraphs because they are too long and tedious.
peer 2 → The author has taken care of all the aspects while doing the critical analysis. The arguments are coherent and well reasoned. I like the overall writing style.
peer 3 → I really liked your essay. You definitely showed good understanding of Coyle's text, and actually spotted several things that I did not see in the text. I really liked the paragraph you wrote about the limitations of Coyle's work. I find your arguments showing the limitation of Coyle to be very strong and well built. However, at parts it was difficult to follow what you are trying to say because of punctuation errors, such as a comma instead of a dot and also because of verb/noun disagreement. I think you have great critical analysis skills and when you combine them with a well written, structured essay your arguments become hard to beat. I would only suggest to get rid of parts such as "this essay will demonstrate my understanding of the first chapter of Talent Code and analyze the uses and limits of his findings." and "In summary". You do not need to write down what you will try to prove, leave it to the reader to understand, since it is straight forward. Also you really need a title for your work. It makes the writing way more interesting and hooks the reader from the very beginning. Great job!



2.What did you learn about your own writing based on reading and evaluating this writer's project?

peer 1 → I can implement more references
peer 2 → The analysis should have strong arguments and reasoning to argue a point.
peer 3 → This reading widened my understanding of Coyle. Some of the arguments that the author used were very strong and well developed. If I had an opportunity to change my essay even a little bit I would elaborate more on the limitations of Coyle's work and mention some of the limitations mentioned by this essay's author.