درسنامه تعاملی اول

Standards and Practice – Interactive Lesson A

Hello and welcome to this months’ VIP lesson, our interactive A lesson. Now in part A I’m going to teach you the basic vocabulary and then in part B I’ll ask questions, and you will answer the questions for fluency. And then I’m giving you part C this month, an extra one to practice pronunciation a little bit.

So we’re going to do a lot with this short essay. Let’s begin.

Excellent performers judge themselves differently from the way other people do. They’re more specific, just as they are when they set goals and strategies. Average performers are content to tell themselves that they did great or poorly or okay. The best performers judge themselves against a standard that’s relevant for what they’re trying to achieve.

Sometimes they compare their performance with their own personal best. Sometimes they compare with the performance of competitors they’re facing or expect to face. Sometimes they compare with the best known performance by anyone in the field. Any of those can make sense, the key, as in all deliberate practice is to choose a comparison that stretches you just beyond your current limits.

Research confirms what common sense tells us. That too high a standard is discouraging and not very instructive, while too low a standard produces no advancement. If you’re pushing yourself appropriately and have evaluated yourself rigorously, then you will have identified errors that you made. A critical part of self-evaluation is deciding what caused the errors.

Average performers believe their errors were caused by factors outside their control. My opponent got lucky. The task was too hard. I just don’t have any natural ability for this.

Top performers, by contrast, believe they are responsible for their errors. Note that this is not just a difference of personality or attitude. Recall that the best performers have set highly specific technique-based goals and strategies for themselves. They have thought through exactly how they intend to achieve what they want. So, when something doesn’t work they can relate the failure to specific elements of their performance that may have misfired.

Research on champion golfers, for example, has uncovered precisely this pattern. They’re much less likely than average golfers to blame their problems on the weather, the course or chance factors. Instead, they focus relentlessly on their own performance.

Okay that’s all, let’s go back to the beginning and I’ll teach you some of the vocabulary, the phrases. This month’s vocabulary, I think, is a little bit easier, fairly easy, but that’s good because we’re going to focus more on pronunciation this month. Let’s go back, back to the beginning.

Vocabulary

Excellent performers judge themselves differently from the way other people do.

So normal people judge themselves, usually by some almost random standard. They’re not specific enough, but excellent performers have very specific goals, and we’ll talk more about that in a minute.

They’re more specific, just as they are when they set goals and strategies. Average performers are content to tell themselves that they did great or poorly or okay.

So they’re content. They’re happy.

Content – means satisfied or happy.

This is interesting for pronunciation because this word can be pronounced slightly differently. There’s content and con-tent. Can you hear the difference? Very close. It’s just the stress. Content, I’m stressing the beginning of the word, content, content. Content is like material, something that is inside something. You need to listen to a lot of English content, content… the stress is at the beginning. Con-tent, now I’m putting the stress at the end of the word con-tent that means satisfied or happy. That’s the one we want this time.

Average performers are content or satisfied to tell themselves that they did great or poorly or okay. In other words, they’re content, they’re happy to be very general, they’re too general. Average performers are too general they just say, oh, I did a good job or I did a great job or I did a bad job. That’s too, too general; doesn’t help you improve very much.

The best performers judge themselves against a standard that’s relevant for what they’re trying to achieve.

Against a standard, against a measurement, against a goal… that’s relevant…

Relevant – means appropriate. Relevant for… we can say relevant for and sometimes we say relevant to; here it’s relevant for.

Relevant for – mean appropriate for, correct for, what they’re trying to achieve.

Sometimes they compare their performance with their own personal best.

Personal best – means their own individual best performance from the past.

Sometimes we’ll say a PR, personal best, personal record.

PR – means personal record. It’s the same idea.

Runners will say this a lot, what’s your PR? What’s your PR in the marathon? It means what’s your best time, your best performance in a marathon. Oh, my PR is three hours and fifty minutes. That’s their personal record or personal best.

So sometimes great performers, they’re focused on themselves, what they did in the past and try to improve a little bit. Sometimes they compare with the performance of competitors that they’re facing or expect to face; to face, to go against.

Sometimes they compare with the best known performance by anyone in the field. In the field – means in the area. The area in the subject, in the topic.

Any of those can make sense…

Make sense – means to be understandable, to be appropriate.

… the key, as in all deliberate practice is to choose a comparison that stretches you just beyond your current limits.

Deliberate – this also can be pronounced in different ways with different stress. So we can say deliber-ate, to deliber-ate. That’s actually a verb and it means to think about something, think about it carefully for a long time, to deliber-ate.

But here the stress is different, it’s not deliber-ate, it’s de-liberate. De-liberate practice means focused, organized, conscious practice. It means planned practice, it’s not just random you have a plan for your practice, it’s de-liberate practice. That’s what you need to get better, de-liberate practice.

You can choose a comparison that stretches you beyond your limits.

Stretches you – it pushes you beyond your limits.

Research confirms what common sense tells us.

Common sense – what’s common sense? Common sense is sort of like, something that’s obvious. It’s an obvious though, an obvious belief or the popular; popular and obvious idea. Popular and obvious belief. It means something that most people believe.

So research confirms – means research shows that it’s true, that common sense, what most people believe is also correct. That too high a standard is discouraging and not very instructive, not good for learning. While too low a standard produces no advancement, no improvement.

If you’re pushing yourself appropriately and have evaluated yourself rigorously, then you will have identified errors that you made.

So pushing yourself right, just means motivating yourself, making yourself do more. Rigorously – (a little difficult to pronounce) – evaluated yourself rigorously, rigorously.

Rigorously means with a lot of energy, with a lot of effort and with a lot of energy. It’s the opposite of lazily right, not in a lazy way; the opposite of that.

A critical part of self-evaluation is deciding what caused the errors.

Critical – this has a few different meanings, but here it means important, important, very important. Very similar to the word vital. So a critical part of self-evaluation, a vital, a very important part of self-evaluation is deciding what caused the errors.

Average performers believe their errors were caused by factors outside their control.

Factors – just means things really, it’s very general.

So average people when they’re trying to get better, if they have an error, a problem, they don’t do well, they blame things outside. Oh, the weather was bad. Oh, I’m not very good at this. That’s kind of blaming yourself but it’s too general, so they tend to focus too much on outside or on being lucky.

For example they’ll say, my opponent got lucky or the task was too difficult or, I just don’t have any natural ability for this. That’s what average performers think.

Top performers, by contrast, believe they are responsible for their errors. Note that this is not just a difference of personality or attitude. Recall that the best performers have set highly specific technique-based goals and strategies for themselves.

Here’s another word that has two different pronunciations, it changes the meaning with just the stress. We have recall and re-call; recall and re-call.

To recall – means to remember. To recall we put the stress on the second part, that’s the correct for the verb here.

Re-call – makes it a noun, which means kind of like memory. Re-call, if we stress the beginning of the word re-call, then it’s a noun and it means memory.

But if we want to make it a verb we have to change the stress, we stress the second part of the word, recall, to recall, remember. Recall that the best performers have set highly specific technique-based goals.

It means their goals are focused on the specific techniques or specific strategies, very, very specific. So, for example, a top performer let’s say in golf, will say okay, I want to use the correct grip… I want to grab and hold the club correctly when I swing. That’s very, very specific. It’s specific and is based on a very specific technique of golf. So then you can see that they can judge their performance very specifically. So they swing and they have a good swing or a bad swing and they can decide, was my grip good or was my grip bad? If it was bad what was wrong.

Average performers have very general goals. They’re too big and too general. For example, an average golfer might say, I want to improve my score by five. It’s too general, too difficult to judge that and to make specific improvements because it’s such a big general goal.

So the best performers have thought through exactly how they intend to achieve what they want. To think through – when we add the word through and we put them together… you know, you know think right, to think, the past is thought… to think is just to think about something you know that word. But, to think through something means to think about it carefully, to think about it for a while. So the past would be thought through. They have thought through. They have thought carefully about how they intend, how they plan to achieve what they want. So, when something doesn’t work they can relate the failure to specific elements of their performance that may have misfired.

Relate something to – relate the failure to means connect it too. Connect the failure to their performance. Relate the failure to their specific performance that may have misfired.

Misfired – just means gone wrong, made a mistake, didn’t work. It comes from guns. You can shoot a gun, but if you shoot a gun you pull, you try to shoot the gun you pulled the trigger and nothing happens, it just goes click and the bullet does not shoot. That’s called a misfire. That means there was some break or some mistake in the gun, it did not fire correctly. This is the same idea. If your performance misfires it means there was a mistake in your performance, something wrong.

Research on champion golfers, for example, has uncovered (has shown, has found) precisely this pattern.

Precisely – means exactly, precisely. Precisely this pattern…

So champion golfers are much less likely than average golfers to blame their problems on the weather, the course or chance factors.

Here chance – means luck. Random factors or lucky factors, so it’s good luck or bad luck; chance.

Instead, they focus relentlessly on their own performance.

Relentlessly – means without stopping, similar to persistently. It means you just keep going and going and going and going and you don’t stop, you don’t change. So they focus relentlessly on themselves, on their own performance. They don’t change their focus they’re relentless, they never stop.

Okay, that is the end of part A. I will see you in part B.