The Evasive Term "Volume of Practice" 🧩 90-Day Consecutive Posting

The term "volume of practice"

While not as significant as the essence, this is another term that tends to lead in the wrong direction, and it is one I intentionally avoid using.

I have touched upon other terms I consider problematic in the past.

Students preparing for exams often immediately attribute the reason for their inability to do something to a lack of practice volume.

Is that really the case? While there are certainly times when the volume of practice is truly insufficient, in the vast majority of cases, that is not the reason.

For example, what about in sports? You lost a match. That is because you didn't practice enough.

That is not an analysis. Try checking your work: If you had practiced enough, you would win against your opponent.

That might hold true in some cases, but isn't it true that in most cases it doesn't?

It means the analysis is too shallow.

In short, it is just a way to gloss over the situation and soothe your feelings by focusing on volume, while turning a blind eye to the fundamental problem.

This will not lead to any proper improvement.

Instead, you should think: 'My opponent is exploiting this weakness, so I must train this area,' 'I don't know enough, so I can't even respond to the situation; I need to gather more information to formulate a strategy and take countermeasures,' or 'I understand my weakness, but I can't fix it on my own, so I need to go get taught.'

You should analyze things more concretely and clearly so that you can translate them into action, rather than using 'volume of practice' as an excuse.

If it is about studying, it should be: 'I got this wrong because I don't understand this content, so I will reinforce it including the surrounding material and check if I can explain it,' 'I understood the content but got it wrong because I didn't understand the standard method, so I will memorize the standard method,' 'This was a pattern, but I tried to think it through on the spot and ran out of time, so I will memorize famous problems,' or 'I haven't categorized my mistakes and kept repeating the same ones, so I will summarize them in a notebook to review right before the exam.'

There are indeed cases where the volume of practice is insufficient. (To avoid using it as an ambiguous, misleading, and evasive term—and to prevent it from becoming the same state as the essence—I will limit the meaning of 'volume of practice' to the meaning of 'volume of training'.)

However, that is quite rare and is only at the final finishing stage.

Unless you are in a situation where you already understand the material, have internalized the problem patterns, have mastered the thought processes, but still feel a hurdle in each individual operation and want to train to do them smoothly; or you think you can do it but are anxious about whether you really can and want to find flaws; or you can do it but are slow and want to speed up, then measures like 'increasing the volume of practice' are not effective.

In most cases, you are hitting a wall at a much earlier stage.
There is a more fundamental cause other than the volume of practice that needs to be addressed.

This also applies to the term 'not being used to it,' but students preparing for exams use analyses that are too sloppy to lead to any real improvement, such as 'I'm not used to it' or 'I don't have enough practice volume.'

However, this is actually more often a problem on the instructor's side than the student's fault.
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A slight digression, but I am intentionally using the word 'instructor.' They aren't such noble beings that they deserve to be called 'teachers,' after all.

I'm back.

Quite a few people, when told by students that they cannot solve a problem, will say it's because they haven't done enough practice.

They say things like, 'I explain the content in class, so you should do the problem sets yourself.'

They essentially dump the responsibility of learning how to solve problems onto the students, and there are many cases where you think, 'Well, of course they won't be able to do it.'

In reality, there is another stage between understanding the content and being able to solve problems: Content understanding → Transforming that understanding into a form that makes it easier to solve problems → The state of being able to solve the problem.

I don't like this cheap way of putting it, but this is the true nature of what is commonly called 'understanding is different from being able to do it.'

In actual practice, this intermediate stage is being largely neglected.

As I mentioned before, this is often caused by a significant percentage of instructors being unable to solve the problems themselves (especially in mathematics).

Because of that, they often look at the answer key before explaining the problem, leading to reverse-engineered explanations (explanations that feel like they are just making things fit because they already know the answer, the strategy, and the flow), and some people don't even feel the hurdle of solving problems because they haven't solved them in the first place.

There are also people who say that if you understand the essence, you can solve the problems, who fall into the type I just mentioned.

Of course, there are also cases where they are too proficient or it has become too natural for them to explain, or they were able to do it from the start and are unaware of the gap, so they cannot explain it. This is the other type of person who says that if you understand the essence, you can solve the problems.

The reason instructors give sloppy advice, besides not being able to solve the problems themselves, is that they haven't even solved past exam papers (including not being able to solve them), so their understanding of the exam is shallow, and they cannot give concrete advice.

That's why when they are told a student can't do it, they escape into vague words like 'increase your practice volume' or 'let's do more problem sets.' It's because they haven't properly grasped what skills are required or what the characteristics of the exam are. Recently, regarding preparation for the Common Test, they say things like, 'It's because you're not used to the format, let's do lots of practice! You're not used to it, let's do lots of practice! It's because you don't have enough practice volume, let's do lots of practice!' and so on.

When I see people saying things like this, I think, 'What are you talking about?' There are too many cases where I think, 'That's not the cause of why they can't do it,' or 'That advice is way too sloppy.'

Students who have solved past exam papers know this well, but solving past papers is hard, isn't it?

It's the same for the teaching side; it's hard, and quite a few people slack off. It's rare for them to even solve them, and it's even rarer for them to analyze them, which is even harder (it's the most troublesome, takes the most time, and honestly, it's the most tedious task).

That is why there are more people than students imagine who have knowledge of the subject but cannot solve the problems or are not familiar with the exam, and even if they do analyze it, the analysis is often too shallow to be useful. For example, they say things like 'thinking skills are important,' 'the ability to translate into formulas is important,' 'information processing ability is important,' 'reading comprehension is important,' 'comprehensive skills are tested,' 'the text is long,' or 'there are conversation-based problems.' I feel like, 'What is that? Are you making fun of me?' I can see that just by looking. Do you think I don't have eyes?

That's no different from saying 'reference books are square' or 'this person is a human.' If the analysis is that shallow, anyone can see it just by looking.

I want students to see these sloppy, lazy, vague excuses and superficial analyses and feel like they are being made a fool of.

It means that the person you asked because you thought they were knowledgeable is not as knowledgeable as you imagined. They often say things based only on reputation without solving the problems themselves, just like reference book reviews. In the case of the Common Test, some people are still stuck on preparation for the old Center Test, even though the trends are different (though some things from the Center Test still apply to the Common Test, and some don't).

When I see people introducing quasi-formulas that were usable in the era of the Center Test as if they were "hacks" for the Common Test, I really have to wonder: are you actually solving the problems?

For both instructors and students, "practice volume"
is just like "essence"; it is used as an evasive term, a way to dodge the issue.

I recommend avoiding the use of this term as much as possible, as doing so will deepen your understanding and improve your analytical skills.