【英语语言学习】通往成功的钥匙

When I was 27 years old, I left a very demanding job in management consulting for a job that was even more demanding: teaching. I went to teach seventh graders math in the New York City public schools. And like any teacher, I made quizzes and tests. I gave out homework assignments. When the work came back, I calculated grades.

 

What struck me was that I.Q. was not the only difference between my best and my worst students. Some of my strongest performers did not have stratospheric I.Q. scores. Some of my smartest kids weren't doing so well.

 

And that got me thinking. The kinds of things you need to learn in seventh grade math, sure, they're hard: ratios, decimals, the area of a parallelogram. But these concepts are not impossible, and I was firmly convinced that every one of my students could learn the material if they worked hard and long enough.

 

After several more years of teaching, I came to the conclusion that what we need in education is a much better understanding of students and learning from a motivational perspective, from a psychological perspective. In education, the one thing we know how to measure best is I.Q., but what if doing well in school and in life depends on much more than your ability to learn quickly and easily?

 

So I left the classroom, and I went to graduate school to become a psychologist. I started studying kids and adults in all kinds of super challenging settings, and in every study my question was, who is successful here and why? My research team and I went to West Point Military Academy. We tried to predict which cadets would stay in military training and which would drop out. We went to the National Spelling Bee and tried to predict which children would advance farthest in competition. We studied rookie teachers working in really tough neighborhoods, asking which teachers are still going to be here in teaching by the end of the school year, and of those, who will be the most effective at improving learning outcomes for their students? We partnered with private companies, asking, which of these salespeople¹ is going to keep their jobs? And who's going to earn the most money? In all those very different contexts, one characteristic emerged as a significant predictor of success. And it wasn't social intelligence. It wasn't good looks, physical health, and it wasn't I.Q. It was grit².

 

Grit is passion and perseverance³ for very long-term goals. Grit is having stamina⁴. Grit is sticking with your future, day in, day out, not just for the week, not just for the month, but for years, and working really hard to make that future a reality. Grit is living life like it's a marathon, not a sprint⁵.

 

A few years ago, I started studying grit in the Chicago public schools. I asked thousands of high school juniors to take grit questionnaires, and then waited around more than a year to see who would graduate. Turns out that grittier kids were significantly more likely to graduate, even when I matched them on every characteristic I could measure, things like family income, standardized⁶ achievement test scores, even how safe kids felt when they were at school. So it's not just at West Point or the National Spelling Bee that grit matters. It's also in school, especially for kids at risk for dropping out. To me, the most shocking thing about grit is how little we know, how little science knows, about building it. Every day, parents and teachers ask me, "How do I build grit in kids? What do I do to teach kids a solid work ethic⁷? How do I keep them motivated for the long run?" The honest answer is, I don't know. (Laughter) What I do know is that talent doesn't make you gritty. Our data show very clearly that there are many talented individuals who simply do not follow through on their commitments. In fact, in our data, grit is usually unrelated or even inversely⁸ related to measures of talent.

 

So far, the best idea I've heard about building grit in kids is something called "growth mindset." This is an idea developed at Stanford University by Carol Dweck, and it is the belief that the ability to learn is not fixed⁹, that it can change with your effort. Dr. Dweck has shown that when kids read and learn about the brain and how it changes and grows in response to challenge, they're much more likely to persevere¹⁰ when they fail, because they don't believe that failure is a permanent condition.

 

So growth mindset is a great idea for building grit. But we need more. And that's where I'm going to end my remarks, because that's where we are. That's the work that stands before us. We need to take our best ideas, our strongest intuitions, and we need to test them. We need to measure whether we've been successful, and we have to be willing to fail, to be wrong, to start over again with lessons learned.

 

In other words, we need to be gritty about getting our kids grittier.

 

Thank you.

1 salespeople   

n.售货员，店员；售货员( salesperson的名词复数 )

参考例句：

• The shop usually employs additional salespeople for the Christmas toy trade. 这家商店通常雇一些临时售货员来做圣诞节玩具生意。 来自《现代汉英综合大词典》
• Under our new system, salespeople sit down with each of our dealers. 根据新的制度，销售人员应逐个地同承销商洽商。 来自辞典例句

2 grit   

n.沙粒，决心，勇气；v.下定决心，咬紧牙关

参考例句：

• The soldiers showed that they had plenty of grit. 士兵们表现得很有勇气。
• I've got some grit in my shoe.我的鞋子里弄进了一些砂子。

3 perseverance   

n.坚持不懈，不屈不挠

参考例句：

• It may take some perseverance to find the right people.要找到合适的人也许需要有点锲而不舍的精神。
• Perseverance leads to success.有恒心就能胜利。

4 stamina   

n.体力；精力；耐力

参考例句：

• I lacked the stamina to run the whole length of the race.我没有跑完全程的耐力。
• Giving up smoking had a magical effect on his stamina.戒烟神奇地增强了他的体力。

5 sprint   

n.短距离赛跑；vi. 奋力而跑，冲刺；vt.全速跑过

参考例句：

• He put on a sprint to catch the bus.他全速奔跑以赶上公共汽车。
• The runner seemed to be rallied for a final sprint.这名赛跑者似乎在振作精神作最后的冲刺。

6 standardized   

adj.标准化的

参考例句：

• We use standardized tests to measure scholastic achievement. 我们用标准化考试来衡量学生的学业成绩。
• The parts of an automobile are standardized. 汽车零件是标准化了的。

7 ethic   

n.道德标准，行为准则

参考例句：

• They instilled the work ethic into their children.他们在孩子们的心中注入了职业道德的理念。
• The connotation of education ethic is rooted in human nature's mobility.教育伦理的内涵根源于人本性的变动性。

8 inversely   

adj.相反的

参考例句：

• Pressure varies directly with temperature and inversely with volume. 压力随温度成正比例变化，与容积成反比例变化。 来自《简明英汉词典》
• The amount of force needed is inversely proportional to the rigidity of the material. 需要的力度与材料的硬度成反比。 来自《简明英汉词典》

9 fixed   

adj.固定的，不变的，准备好的；(计算机)固定的

参考例句：

• Have you two fixed on a date for the wedding yet?你们俩选定婚期了吗？
• Once the aim is fixed,we should not change it arbitrarily.目标一旦确定，我们就不应该随意改变。

10 persevere   

v.坚持，坚忍，不屈不挠

参考例句：

• They are determined to persevere in the fight.他们决心坚持战斗。
• It is strength of character enabled him to persevere.他那坚强的性格使他能够坚持不懈。