My first Project while getting English classes at Duke University.

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Luciana Pereira
Professor Denise Comer
English Composition I: Achieving Expertise
Project 1 Final
April 15, 2013
Finding the sweet spot: The biggest challenge
Coyle starts his chapter talking about the journey that he did on December 2006 by visiting nine different places, “nine hotbeds” (12) as he cited, in search of talents. He sub-titles the beginning of his chapter as “Chicken-wire Harvards” (11), once that all these talents that he went to look for were in small and the most unexpected places, giving us the idea of little infra- structure. As Brunio, eleven years old boy that is trying a new soccer move in Sao Paulo, and Jennie, twenty-four years old girl that is trying the big finish of a song in Dallas. Both reach their goals, but none of them is in a hurry. They stop to think a lot of times about what was wrong in their actions, so they tried again and achieved success.
The author also talks about how these talents will get better after a sequence of repeating and screwing up. Coyle argues, “…they are purposely operating at the edges of their ability, so they will screw up. And somehow, screwing up is making them better” (13). That is an interesting point and in I agree with and I feel like an example of that. Screwing up always makes me improve because after that I always work harder than before, as improving this English essay for example.
Brazilian soccer talents are also cited in the chapter in a way to explain how the country can creates so many good players and which aspects help them to be so good on this sport. Coyle says, “Brazil is great because it possesses a unique confluence of facts: a friendly climate, a deep passion for soccer, and a genetically diverse population of 190 million people, 40 percent of whom are desperately poor and long to escape through “the beautiful game(15).” As a Brazilian I can say that the author is not wrong but the reasons of why Brazilians are good

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in this sport go further of what is stated. Soccer is a cultural factor in Brazil, a national passion, the sport that assembles groups of friends on the weekends and stops the country. Brazilians were born playing soccer just for fun, and not looking for a way to escape from that life. So the probability to have really good talents coming from there is high because is a natural practice, almost intrinsic which pushes Brazilians to get better and better.
The author also starts to explain what is different in the Brazilian training, “a particular way, with a particular tool that improves ball-handling skill faster than anywhere else in the world” (15), and the term deep practice is cited by the author. This is a good term used by the author and I completely agree with the idea that more you work hard, and repeat an action, better and smarter you are going to be. But at this point of the chapter the author stops his explanation and starts to give others examples, which makes me feel a little disconnected in the lecture. The continuation of his explanation comes later in the chapter when he talks about Brazil`s secret weapon, the Futsal (25).
Bjork, the chair of psychology at UCLA, is also mentioned and the idea that overcoming obstacles and difficulties can also make us to learn faster by building scaffolds makes the chapter interesting again. Indeed is difficult to learn more or improve a skill if you do not have any problem, because you will think that you are good enough once that anybody corrected you or complained. Nevertheless, I see this explanation about building scaffolds as a complement for the idea of screwing up, and not as a different point in the chapter. I have in mind that when we screw up, probably we had an obstacle or a difficult situation to face that basically will force us to build the so-called scaffolds, which are going to help us to learn faster.
Bjork also introduces the idea of the sweet spot. “It`s all about finding the sweet spot”, he says. “When you find that sweet spot, learning takes off” (19). For me this is the real challenge of this entire chapter because we can work hard and deep practice, we just need to feel the necessity and enthusiasm of doing that. However if the sweet spot- that most comfortable place that is inside of our minds and that will conduces us to deep focus- is not able to be find out, it

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will be still a hole to be covered, and all this mechanism of learning faster and getting better will not work efficiently.