Part One     Words, Phrases and Sentences

obscure    (adj.)  not clearly understood or expressed  晦涩难懂的

 e.g. The idea for the study had come from an obscure paper I had discovered while searching through old scientific studies.

Imitation:  It is such an obscure paper that I can hardly catch the main idea of it.

intrigue    (vt.)  cause to be interested or curious  激起……的好奇心

e.g. Martin and Fernberger had offered no details about how the students had improved their digit memory, but that was the sort of question that must intrigue me.

Imitation:  I was intrigued by the plots of Alice in Wonderland, which could not be more than intriguing and interesting.

hone    (vt.)  sharpen with a hone; refine or make more perfect or effective  磨练

e.g. For my dissertation I had honed a psychological research tool called " the think-aloud protocol" that was designed specifically to study such mental processes.

Imitation:  That all of us are supposed to hone our skills of critical thinking is an issue of primary importance.

audacity    (n.) aggressive boldness or unmitigated effrontery  鲁莽，大胆无畏

e.g.  My guess is that they would have dismissed it as laughably impossible----assuming, that is, that someone would have had the imagination and audacity to suggest it in the first place. 

Imitation:  He has showed an unexpected steak of audacity, which reveals that he is not as cowardly as we thought.

vantage    (n.)  the quality of having a superior or more favorable position  优势，有利地位

e.g. We live in a world full of people with extraordinary abilities----abilities that from the vantage point of almost any other time in human history would have been deemed impossible.

Imitation:  From his vantage point, he could take advantage of the advanced device to finish his dissertation.

Part Two     Summary

In the Chapter One, the author cited several instance, especially the one of an undergraduate named Steve, who magically improved his ability of short-term memory of strings of digits session by session and finally reached eighty-two digits. Next, the author cited some similar examples in different areas such as music and sports, by which he illustrated that "deliberate practice" is "the gold standard" to improve steadily and finally achieve the goal. What we need to pay additional attention to is that we tend to misunderstand that " if they keep doing it they bound to get better at it", which is actually not accurate. To solve this problem, we should push ourselves to get better.

Part Three     What I Have Learned

在这一部分的阅读中，我对后半部分提出的内容颇有感触。这和平时背书的道理是一样的，诚然持续的重复练习可以加深我们对所背内容的印象，但是如果在记忆的过程中出现了一些小的错漏，在不断地机械重复中， 错误印象也会越来越深。因此我们应当在反复记忆的过程中及时检查并纠正我们背诵过程中的错误。背诵如此，其他的事情也是如此，坚持反复练习确实必要，但是盲目坚持不见得就能有成效。但事实上，最可惜的应该是，在现实中，极少有人能够真正做到“deliberate practice”，“坚持”二字，说起来容易，做起来难，那么在坚持中查漏补缺自然也无从谈起了。

此外，我对本章开头提到的Steve的例子有一点想法：如果这个实验是在中文的语言环境下，也许实验的结果就会好很多，因为据作者所说，他做这个实验是基于读出数字的基础，而中文里，单个数字的读音音节较少，明显比英文更加容易记忆；同样，如果这个实验换成没有声音，而是直接写出一串随意的数字来记忆，可能结果也会更好一点。