Skill develops through engaging in the target activity itself, not through mechanistic drill of isolated components¶

Claim · All claims
Evidence · 1 study · theoretical r3 · q1
Currency · newest study 2010 · checked against its sources 2026-10-20 (automated, 1 of 1 entry) · not reviewed by a person

Subclaims¶

q1 i? People become skilled at an activity by engaging in that very activity or behaviors with transfer appropriateness, not by mechanistic practice of isolated pieces. → Bill VanPatten 2010

Evidence¶

Bill VanPatten 2010¶

Bill VanPatten. (2010). The Two Faces of SLA: Mental Representation and Skill. International Journal of English Studies, 10(1), 1-18. https://www.um.es/ijes doi:10.6018/ijes/2010/1/113951

q1 · i? · theoretical · r3

Theoretical argument in section II.2 drawing on the cognitive-psychological skill literature (Segalowitz 2003). The author contrasts classroom drills devoid of communicative purpose with tennis training, where players already have backhand knowledge before drilling technique. This is an interpretive argument, not a new empirical study.

"people become skilled at doing something not by mechanistic activity, but by engaging in the very activity they would like to become skilled in"

Discussion¶

Related Claims¶

• Automatization of L2 skills requires extensive practice in a consistent environment, not repetition of grammar rules as in traditional exercises — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• Pretraining learners on a system's key parts and terms before the main lesson improved knowledge and real-world transfer in one VR experiment, and is reported second-hand to improve learning in multimedia studies — the general claim this finding bears on, with the studies behind it

• Part-task practice reduces cognitive load for absolute novices during initial skill acquisition. — reports the opposite
• A training-design argument, not tested by any study recorded here, holds that practising whole complex tasks improves transfer of complex skills — related
• Purely mechanical drills are of limited use because they do not train learners to conceptualize a meaning and express it linguistically — a narrower finding that bears on this claim
• Mentored inquiry with staged mechanistic sensemaking supports the transition from intuitive to formal equation reasoning — related