Question 2
Dan wants to improve his golf game. Every day, he practices one golf stroke for an hour, and records his practice session on video. After his practice, he watches the recording, and plans on what changes to make the next day. Assume he has no other golf instruction. Is Dan engaged in deliberate practice? Why?
Choose the option that best answers the question from the list below. Then click "Check answer" on the right.
Not exactly. To engage in deliberate practice, one must be given explicit instruction about the best method. Since Dan is simply reflecting on his own method and has never compared it with a best method given to him by an expert, this step is not met. You could perhaps argue that the second component of deliberate practice is met, he is his own teacher and diagnosis his own errors. But without the first point, this is meaningless. Finally, the third part of deliberate practice of getting informative feedback and remedial training could be argued that he's doing this for himself. But again, without being able to compare it with a best method, this is meaningless.
No, for he is not supervised and has no instruction from experts.
Dan is not receiving feedback from an external agent as such he may miss errors that he made that someone else might catch. He is also not receiving immediate feedback and both of these things are necessary for deliberate practice. In the options below, I have not selected "No, because he is not able to practice corrections immediately" as receiving immediate feedback is not the same as being able to practice corrections on that feedback immediately.Dan is not receiving feedback from an external agent as such he may miss errors that he made that someone else might catch. He is also not receiving immediate feedback and both of these things are necessary for deliberate practice. In the options below, I have not selected "No, because he is not able to practice corrections immediately" as receiving immediate feedback is not the same as being able to practice corrections on that feedback immediately.
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Dan is not engaged in deliberate practice because of the following reasons : 1. There is no external agent giving him feedback on what he is doing wrong and how to correct it. (corrective feedback). Some of the errors might not be visible to Dan and so it is important to get that feedback from an external agent like a teacher. 2. Remedial training is effective if it is taken immediately and not after some time of getting immediate feedback from an external agent.