IELTS Reading Forecast 2022 #Test2

READING PASSAGE 2

You should spend about 20 minutes on Questions 15-27, which are based on Reading Passage 2 below.

Expertise is commitment coupled with creativity. Specifically, it is the commitment of time, energy, and resources to a relatively narrow field of study and the creative energy necessary to generate new knowledge in that field. [Crack IELTS with Rob] It takes a considerable amount of time and regular exposure to a large number of cases to become an expert.

An individual enters a field of study as a novice. The novice needs to learn the guiding principles and rules- the heuristics and constraints- of a given task in order to perform that task. Concurrently, the novice needs to be exposed to specific cases, or instances, that test the boundaries of such heuristics. [Crack IELTS with Rob] Generally, a novice will find a mentor to guide her through the process of acquiring new knowledge. A fairly simple example would be someone learning to play chess. The novice chess player seeks a mentor to teach her the object of the game, the number of spaces, the names of the pieces, the function of each piece, how each piece is moved, and the necessary conditions for winning or losing the game.

In time, and with much practice, the novice begins to recognize patterns of behavior within cases and, thus, becomes a journeyman. With more practice and exposure to increasingly complex cases, the journeyman finds patterns not only within cases but also between cases. More importantly, the journeyman learns that these patterns often repeat themselves over time. [Crack IELTS with Rob] The journeyman still maintains regular contact with a mentor to solve specific problems and learn more complex strategies. Returning to the example of the chess player, the individual begins to learn patterns of opening moves, offensive and defensive game-playing strategies, and patterns of victory and defeat.

When a journeyman starts to make and test hypotheses about future behavior based on past experiences, she begins the next transition. Once she creatively generates knowledge, rather than simply matching superficial patterns, she becomes an expert. At this point, she is confident in her knowledge and no longer needs a mentor as a guide- she becomes responsible for her own knowledge. [Crack IELTS with Rob] In the chess example, once a journeyman begins competing against experts, makes predictions based on patterns, and tests those predictions against actual behavior, she is generating new knowledge and a deeper understanding of the game. She is creating her own cases rather than relying on the cases of others.

The chess example is a rather short description of an apprenticeship model. Apprenticeship may seem like a restrictive 18th-century mode of education, but it is still a standard method of training for many complex tasks. Academic doctoral programs are based on an apprenticeship model, as are fields like law, music, engineering, and medicine. [Crack IELTS with Rob] Graduate students enter fields of study, find mentors, and begin the long process of becoming independent experts and generating new knowledge in their respective domains. To some, playing chess may appear rather trivial when compared, for example, with making medical diagnoses, but both are highly complex tasks. Chess has a well-defined set of heuristics, whereas medical diagnoses seem more open-ended and variable. In both instances, however, there are tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of potential patterns. A research study discovered that chess masters had spent between 10,000 and 20,000 hours, or more than ten years, studying and playing chess. On average, a chess master stores, 50,000 different chess patterns in long-term memory.

Similarly, a diagnostic radiologist spends eight years in full-time medical training – four years of medical school and four years of residency- before she is qualified to take a national board exam and begin independent practice. According to a 1988 study, the average diagnostic radiology resident sees forty cases per day, or around 12,000 cases per year. At the end of a residency, a diagnostic radiologist has stored, on average, 48,000 cases in long-term memory. [Crack IELTS with Rob] Psychologists and cognitive scientists agree that the time it takes to become an expert depends on the complexity of the task and the number of cases, or patterns, to which an individual is exposed. The more complex the task, the longer it takes to build expertise, or, more accurately, the longer it takes to experience and store a large number of cases or patterns.

Experts are individuals with specialized knowledge suited to perform the specific tasks for which they are trained, but that expertise does not necessarily transfer to other domains.5 A master chess player cannot apply chess expertise in a game of poker-although both chess and poker are games, a chess master who has never played poker is a novice poker player. Similarly, a biochemist is not qualified to perform neurosurgery, even though both biochemists and neurosurgeons study human physiology. [Crack IELTS with Rob] In other words, the more complex a task is, the more specialized and exclusive is the knowledge required to perform that task.

An expert perceives meaningful patterns in her domain better than non-experts. Where a novice perceives random or disconnected data points, an expert connects regular patterns within and between cases. This ability to identify patterns is not an innate perceptual skill; rather it reflects the organization of knowledge after exposure to and experience with thousands of cases. Experts have a deeper understanding of their domains than novices do, and utilize higher-order principles to solve problems. [Crack IELTS with Rob] A novice, for example, might group objects together by color or size, whereas an expert would group the same objects according to their function or utility. Experts comprehend the meaning of data and weigh variables with different criteria within their domains better than novices. Experts recognize variables that have the largest influence on a particular problem and focus their attention on those variables.

Experts have better domain-specific short-term and long-term memory than novices do. Moreover, experts perform tasks in their domains faster than novices and commit fewer errors while problem-solving. Interestingly, experts go about solving problems differently than novices. [Crack IELTS with Rob] Experts spend more time thinking about a problem to fully understand it at the beginning of a task than novices, who immediately seek to find a solution. Experts use their knowledge of previous cases as context for creating mental models to solve given problems.

Better at self-monitoring than novices, experts are more aware of instances where they have committed errors or failed to understand a problem. Experts check their solutions more often than novices and recognize when they are missing information necessary for solving a problem. Experts are aware of the limits of their domain knowledge and apply their domain’s heuristics to solve problems that fall outside of their experience base.