字词与表达
hone
For my dissertation I had honed a psychological research tool called "the think-aloud protocol" that was designed ...
hone是动词，表示磨炼、训练等。to develop and improve something, especially a skill, over a period of time
这与单词原本的含义，“磨刀”有着相似含义。
- 仿句练习： I honed my teaching skills when I was doing my second master in UK.
- 仿句练习：Kirr's body was honed to perfection when she stepped on the stage of the Victoria's Secret Show.
hitch
— and this time he repeated the whole thing back to me without a hitch.
hitch若做名词使用，表示暂时的问题或者障碍。a problem or difficulty that causes a short delay.
without a hitch就是指事情进展非常顺利，没有任何磕绊。
- 仿句练习 : His old parent flew to London to attend his graduation ceremony on their own without a hitch.
hitch做动词讲，意思完全不同。首先，它可以表示“搭便车”，hitch a ride/lift； 其次表示“提起/拉起衣服”，比如伴娘提着新娘婚纱的裙摆； hitch something to smething还可以表示“拴住、套住”，例如，the wizard hitched the goat to the gate.
slowly but steadily
From this point on, Steve slowly but steadily improved his ability to remember strings of digits.
虽缓慢却稳定地，这两个副词押头韵，而且有转折关系。最近认识到副词和形容词的使用要万分小心，非到万不得已，则以用动词和名词（which add toughness and color to language）为主。若使用之，则一定要言之有物。这句话里的slowly but steadily就非常到位。
trial and error
Instead, these advances were all accomplished through trial and error, with the people...
trial and error，指的是反复试验不断摸索。the process of solving a problem by trying various methods until you find a method that is successful. 【之前总见，从没用过】
- 仿句练习：I learned to cook by trial and error.
cagey
You know this, and the cagier of your opponents have noticed this too, so it is frustrating.
cagey是我没见过的形容词，be cagey about something 表示不愿意说出来，not wanting to give somebody information。近义词包括：evasive, secretive等。
- 仿句练习： She was so cagey about her family that I knew nothing about her parents even when we were roommates.
中文感想
我对这种边讲故事边讲道理的方式感到非常自在，可以随时调整阅读速度，不用字字都看，不认识的单词或者表达会先做标记再去查阅。
本书的作者（们）非常user-friendly。讲到学打tennis的部分时，作者采用第二人称，创造了能让读者产生共鸣的故事发展过程。虽然我个人认为该部分的描述略拖沓，但不得不说，读起来异常顺畅，基本属于“带着好奇与微笑”读下去的状态。
在内容上，我注意到了作者对于短句的使用。有个比较极端/典型的例子是：
They practiced. A lot.
短句有力，力量强大，非常能够抓住读者注意力。此处讲They practiced a lot特意分成两句话去写，就是为了突出和强调多次练习的重要性。
再例如，段首句：
These are not isolated examples.
读到这句，身为读者的我自然而然就会追问——既然并不是孤立的例子，那这些在不同领域表现极为优秀突出的人们到底有什么共性呢？
除了短句之外，我还关注了作者写长句的时所采用的结构。比较突出的一点是，常用插入语，而不是一味地写从句。类似的句型极其多，在此之举两个例子。
Long term memory doesn't have the same limitations—in fact, no one has ever found the upper limits of long-term memory—but it takes much longer to deploy.
I was reading the digits at a rate of one per second —too fast for him to transfer the digits into his long-term memory—so it was no surprise that he was running into a wall at numbers that were about eight or nine digits long.
对于我们这些EFL (English as a Foreign language) learner来说，长句读起来相对费劲，写起来更容易出错。合理使用破折号等标点符号，插入语等成分是帮助减轻cognitive burden的好方式，检查时也更容易发现错误。另外一点就是，永远不要为了写长句而去写。一个句子应该是一个完整的意思，长是因为包含更多的细节而非将几个不同意思硬凑在一起。比如上面的第二个例子，讲的是“我以一秒一个数字的速度念出来（这个速度太快了，他没有时间将数字存储为长期记忆），导致他总是卡在八九个数字的水平上跨不过去。” 其核心意思是：速度太快，导致失败。 非常简单的一个意思，没有多余的idea，但说清需要一些细节帮助理解，这就是两个破折号中文字出现的意义。
总结来看：句子是完整表意的基本结构，长短只是结构差异。短句表意鲜明且有力，通常是truth claim或者论点。长句包含更多的细节，经常是做explanation或者narrative.
Summary
The authors conducted a longitudinal experiment on the effect of purposeful practice. In the experiment, the "subject" was able to get way more digit strings right in the end than at the beginning. The authors have proved that the power of deliberate purpose is strong enough to facilitate extraordinary progress, way beyond people's imagination.
This section told us that we have already made some dramatic progress in various fields and these achievements seemed to be impossible just a few decades ago. Increase in the amount and sophistication of practice will result in steady improvement in ability.
We should not be over-optimistic, because once you reach some satisfactory skill level and stop "deliberate" practicing, and then no further improvement will ever take place. As a teacher, years of working experience won't make me an expert teacher— I can only be more experienced. Moreover, these automated abilities will finally deteriorate without purposeful practice. So, you are not only making no practice; you are getting worse. [SAD]
Get rid of the "just-enough" method. There is no ceiling for you, so, just go and see where we can get.
