Practice Makes Perfect--
But Only If You Practice Beyond the Point of Perfection

By Daniel T. Willingham. Abridged and edited by K.H.

It is difficult to overstate the value of practice. For a new skill to become automatic or for new knowledge to become long-lasting, sustained practice, beyond the point of mastery, is necessary. This column summarizes why practice is so important and reviews the different effects of intense short-term practice versus sustained, long-term practice. That students would benefit from practice might be deemed unsurprising. After all, doesn't practice make perfect? The unexpected finding from cognitive science is that practice does not make perfect. Practice until you are perfect and you will be perfect only briefly. What is necessary is sustained practice.

Acquiring Knowledge
Intuition tells us that more practice leads to better memory. Research tells us something more precise: Memory in either the short- or long-term requires ongoing practice.

Let us first consider memory in the short-term, meaning days or weeks. Because memory is prone to forgetting, one cannot learn material to a criterion and then expect the memory to stay at that level very long. Studying material that one already knows is called overlearning. Overlearning has been studied (although not extensively) for many years, but most of the experiments deal with short-term retention.

It may seem that the emphasis on short-term knowledge is peripheral to education. As teachers, we want long-lasting knowledge, not just knowledge for a few days. But, in fact, teachers may have goals that entail short-term knowledge. Without certain facts well-lodged in memory for at least a short time, harm would be done to a student’s ability to grasp a larger concept.

Although practice takes on a different character for the longer-term, it is no less important. Studies show that

• if material is studied for one semester or one year, it will be retained adequately for perhaps a year after the last practice, but most of it will be forgotten by the end of three or four years in the absence of further practice;
• If material is studied for three or four years, however, the learning may be retained for as long as 50 years after the last practice. There is some forgetting over the first five years, but after that, forgetting stops and the remainder will not be forgotten even if it is not practiced again.

Learning Skills
Acquiring factual knowledge is only part of what we want our students to gain from their schooling. We also want them to be skilled problem solvers, effective written and oral communicators, and creative thinkers. These skills--and indeed, all skills that involve thinking--rely on working memory capacity. Working memory is the place where thought happens. It is often called the bottleneck of the mind because there is a limited amount of space in working memory. That is why it is difficult to divide 34,516 by 87 in mental arithmetic, for instance.

• Our ability to think is limited by the space constraint of working memory.
• One of the ways of overcoming it is the development of automaticity.

When cognitive processes become automatic, they demand very little space in working memory, they occur rapidly, and they often occur without conscious effort. For example, if you are reading this article, the process of reading is very likely automatic for you. You do not need to laboriously piece together the letters of each word to puzzle out its identity.

Automaticity is vital in education because it allows us to become more skillful in mental tasks. An effective writer knows the rules of grammar and usage to the point of automaticity--and knows automatically to begin a paragraph with a topic sentence, include relevant detail, etc. The development of automaticity for generalized skills depends on high levels of practice. There is no substitute.

Becoming an Expert
What does it take to become an expert in a field? Descriptive studies of eminent scientists indicate that the most important factor predicting their success is not innate talent or intelligence, but the willingness to work hard for extended periods of time. This was corroborated by a large-scale study (1985) in which experts in athletics, science, and the arts were interviewed, along with their parents and teachers. It suggests that the training of an expert typically involved four stages.

• The future expert was usually introduced to the domain under playful conditions as a child.
• His or her promise was noted, lessons were provided, usually with a skillful pedagogue, and regular practice habits were established.
• An internationally recognized teacher was engaged, often requiring a significant commitment of resources from the parents, as well as dedicated study by the child, largely to the exclusion of other activities.
• In the final stage, the student had absorbed all that he or she could from teachers and began to develop his or her personal contribution.

Some evidence that a great deal of practice, and not just talent, is a prerequisite for expertise is the "ten year rule," which states that individuals must practice intensively for at least 10 years before they are ready to make a substantive contribution to their field.

What about prodigies like Mozart, who began composing at the age of six? Prodigies are very advanced for their age, but their contributions to their respective fields as children are widely considered to be ordinary. It is not until they are older (and have practiced more) that they achieve the works for which they are known.

How are such studies relevant to the average student? Few students will become a Mozart, Shakespeare, or Einstein, but if we want children to understand and appreciate excellence, we would do well to send the message that excellence requires sustained practice. The athletes and artists revered by many students excel not solely by virtue of their talent, but because of their hard work.

What Material Merits Practice?
When we refer to "practice," it is important to be clear that it differs from

• play (which is done purely for one’s own pleasure),
• performance (which is done for the pleasure of others), and
• work (which is done for compensation).

It was noted above that sustained practice over time is especially useful for developing automaticity in specific skills (which enables higher-level thinking) and in ensuring that a memory lasts as long as needed. Thus, the following types of material are worthy of practice:

1. The core skills and knowledge that will be used again and again. In this case, we give practice in order to ensure automaticity. The student who struggles to remember the rules of punctuation and usage (or must stop to look them up in a reference book) cannot devote sufficient working memory resources to building a compelling argument in his or her writing.

2. The type of knowledge that students need to know well in the short term to enable long-term retention of key concepts. In this case, short-term overlearning is merited. For example, a science teacher may want students to know a set of facts about certain species so that she can introduce an important abstract concept concerning evolution.

3. The type of knowledge we believe is important enough that students should remember it later in life. In this case, one might consider certain material so vital to an education that it is worthy of sustained practice over many years to assure that students remember it all of their life. Do we expect that a 40-year-old will have retained everything learned through the 12th grade? No, but do we expect that she will retain anything? Should she be able to grasp the basics of evolution or describe the different responsibilities of the three branches of the federal government or calculate the area of a circle? Exactly what sorts of knowledge merit the focus required to create long-lasting memory will be controversial, but that practice is required to create such memories is not.