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Social Psychological and Personality Science
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The online version of this article can be found at:
DOI: 10.1177/1948550610385872
2011 2: 174 originally published online 4 October 2010Social Psychological and Personality Science
Angela Lee Duckworth, Teri A. Kirby, Eli Tsukayama, Heather Berstein and K. Anders Ericsson
Deliberate Practice Spells Success : Why Grittier Competitors Triumph at the National Spelling Bee
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Deliberate Practice Spells Success:
Why Grittier Competitors Triumph at the
National Spelling Bee
Angela Lee Duckworth
1
, Teri A. Kirby
1
, Eli Tsukayama
1
, Heather Berstein
1
, and
K. Anders Ericsson
2
Abstract
The expert performance framework distinguishes between deliberate practice and less effective practice activities. The current
longitudinal study is the first to use this framework to understand how children improve in an academic skill. Specifically, the
authors examined the effectiveness and subjective experience of three preparation activities widely recommended to improve
spelling skill. Deliberate practice, operationally defined as studying and memorizing words while alone, better predicted
performance in the National Spelling Bee than being quizzed by others or reading for pleasure. Rated as the most effortful
and least enjoyable type of preparation activity, deliberate practice was increasingly favored over being quizzed as spellers
accumulated competition experience. Deliberate practice mediated the prediction of final performance by the personality trait
of grit, suggesting that perseverance and passion for long-term goals enable spellers to persist with practice activities that are less
intrinsically rewarding—but more effective—than other types of preparation.
Keywords
deliberate practice, grit, spelling, expertise, academic achievement
The roots of education are bitter, but the fruit is sweet.
—Aristotle
On June 1, 2006, a 13-year-old girl correctly spelled the
word ursprache to triumph over 273 other finalists in the
Scripps National Spelling Bee. The current investigation
examines the acquisition of spelling expertise in this elite com-
petition. How effective are the various preparation activities
widely recommended to improve spelling skill? Are the most
effective preparation activities enjoyable and effortless for
competitive spellers? Finally, what traits enable some spellers
to accumulate more of the most effective types of practice? The
answers to these questions are relevant not only to competitive
spelling but also to academic learning in general. If the roots of
education are indeed ‘‘bitter,’’ as Aristotle speculated, then
individual differences in the capacity to stay committed to a
challenging, far-off, but ‘‘sweet’’ goal may help explain why
some students learn more than others.
Prior studies have demonstrated that the cumulative time
that National Spelling Bee finalists devote to preparing for
competition predicts performance, but these investigations
have not distinguished among different types of preparation
activity (Duckworth, Peterson, Matthews, & Kelly, 2007;
Duckworth & Quinn, 2009). In many other domains, world-
class performers have been shown to acquire their skills
through thousands of hours of solitary deliberate practice,
effortful activities designed to improve performance (Ericsson,
2006, 2007, 2009; Ericsson, Krampe, & Tesch-Ro¨mer, 1993;
Ericsson & Ward, 2007). Deliberate practice entails engaging
in a focused, typically planned training activity designed to
improve some aspect of performance. During deliberate
practice, individuals receive immediate informative feedback
on their performance and can then repeat the same or similar
tasks with full attention toward changing inferior or incorrect
responses, thus improving the identified area of weakness. In
the current investigation, the expert performance approach is
applied for the first time to a domain directly related to aca-
demic learning in children. In particular, we distinguish among
three types of activities widely recommended by experienced
competitive spellers, their parents, and coaches to improve
spelling skill (Trinkle, Andrews, & Kimble, 2006). The first
type of preparation is verbal leisure activities, including read-
ing for pleasure and playing word games, in which spelling is
of incidental importance (Logan, Olson, & Lindsey, 1989;
1
University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA
2
Florida State University, Tallahassee, FL, USA
Corresponding Author:
Angela Lee Duckworth, University of Pennsylvania, 3701 Market Street, Suite
215, Philadelphia, PA 19104
Email: duckwort@psych.upenn.edu
Social Psychological and
Personality Science
2(2) 174-181
ªThe Author(s) 2011
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DOI: 10.1177/1948550610385872
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Olson, Logan, & Lindsey, 1989). The second type of preparation
activity involves being quizzed by another person or a computer
program (Logan et al., 1989; Olson et al., 1989). The final type
involves the solitary study of word spellings and origins, a
category of preparation activity that meets the criteria for
deliberate practice.
Solitary deliberate practice activities have been found in
many other domains to be more effective than practice
completed with other people (Ericsson, 2006). For example, the
accumulated time that musicians have spent practicing alone
during development is the best predictor of expert performance
(Ericsson et al., 1993). Similarly, studying chess games by one-
self improves chess skill more than playing games of chess
with other people (Charness, Tuffiash, Krampe, Reingold, &
Vasyukova, 2005). If solitary deliberate practice activities are
more effective than alternative preparation activities in the
domain of spelling, then what explains individual differences
in the willingness to engage in them? After all, National
Spelling Bee finalists have access to dictionaries and word lists
and can thus engage in solitary study whenever they have free
time. It has been hypothesized that working in solitude on chal-
lenges that exceed one’s current skill level (e.g., memorizing
words one does not already know) is more effortful and less
enjoyable than other kinds of preparation activity (Ericsson
et al., 1993). Thus, individuals who accumulate more hours
of deliberate practice likely do so because they are committed
to improving their performance, not because they find these
hours of practice intrinsically rewarding.
Consistent with this prediction, prior research has shown
that National Spelling Bee performance is associated with two
personality traits: grit and openness to experience (Duckworth
et al., 2007; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009). Spellers higher in
grit—defined as the tendency to pursue long-term challenging
goals with perseverance and passion—perform better at the
National Spelling Bee, whereas spellers higher in openness to
experience—defined as preferring using their imagination,
playing with ideas, and otherwise enjoying a complex mental
life—perform worse. If deliberate practice is indeed more
effortful and less enjoyable than rival preparation activities,
then we would expect grittier spellers to initiate and sustain
more deliberate practice than that of their less gritty competi-
tors. Thus, cumulative deliberate practice experience may med-
iate the association between final competition performance and
the personality trait of grit. Likewise, if deliberate practice is
not stimulating to spellers who prefer creative and novel
intellectual experiences, then a lack of cumulative deliberate
practice may explain why spellers higher in openness to
experience perform worse in final competition (Duckworth &
Quinn, 2009).
In the current investigation, we tested the following
hypotheses in a longitudinal study of competitors in the 2006
Scripps National Spelling Bee:
Time devoted to deliberate practice activities predicts
spelling performance better than time being quizzed or time
engaged in leisure reading.
As spellers accumulate experience, they increasingly
privilege deliberate practice over being quizzed when
preparing for competition.
Deliberate practice is more effortful and less enjoyable than
being quizzed or engaging in verbal leisure activities.
Grittier spellers are more likely to engage in deliberate
practice, and their cumulative time devoted to this activity
explains their superior performance.
Spellers higher in openness to experience accumulate less
deliberate practice, which explains their inferior performance
in final competition.
Method
Participants
Of the 274 finalists in the 2006 Scripps National Spelling Bee, 190
participated in this study. The mean age of participants was 12.88
years (SD ¼1.07); 47%were female. Participants did not differ
from nonparticipants on age, gender, or spelling performance.
Procedure
Before the May 31 competition, all 274 finalists were mailed
consent forms, self-report questionnaires, and prestamped
return envelopes. Those who elected to participate in the study
returned the questionnaires in April and May 2006.
Measures
Spelling performance. Performance was measured as the
final round that participants achieved at the 2006 National
Spelling Bee.
Grit. The personality trait of grit was assessed with the Short
Grit Scale, an eight-item self-report questionnaire with
established construct and predictive validity (Duckworth &
Quinn, 2009). Participants endorsed items indicating consis-
tency of passions (e.g., ‘‘I have been obsessed with a certain
idea or project for a short time but later lost interest’’;
reverse-scored) and consistency of effort (e.g., ‘‘Setbacks don’t
discourage me’’) over time using a 5-point Likert-type scale
(5 ¼very much like me,1¼not at all like me). The observed
internal reliability for the Short Grit Scale was a¼.82.
Openness to experience. Participants completed the Big Five
Inventory (John & Srivastava, 1999), a 44-item questionnaire
that includes 10 items assessing openness to experience
(e.g., ‘‘I see myself as someone who has an active imagination,’’
‘‘I see myself as someone who likes to reflect, play with ideas’’)
and is completed with a 5-point Likert-type scale (5 ¼agree
strongly,1¼disagree strongly). The observed internal reliability
of the Big Five Openness to Experience subscale was a¼.68.
Cumulative deliberate practice and quizzing. Participants read
the following prompt
Duckworth et al. 175
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We want to make a distinction between study activities
in which you study and memorize words alone and activities
in which you are tested on your spelling by somebody who
pronounces a word (including a computer program) and tells
you whether you spelled it correctly.
Then they estimated their weekly engagement in these two
types of activities for the previous 4 weeks.
A section of the questionnaire entitled ‘‘Longitudinal
Development’’ asked participants to complete a table with esti-
mates of the average hours per week spent studying in solitary
or doing quizzing activities for each year in which they were
regularly practicing spelling. We log transformed these
variables before analyses to reduce their skew. Estimates of
recent and cumulative lifetime study time were correlated,
r¼.57, p< .001, as were estimates of recent and cumulative
lifetime quizzing time, r¼.55, p< .001. To reduce multicolli-
nearity and increase reliability, we created a composite score
for cumulative deliberate practice by averaging standardized
weekly and lifetime estimates of time spent studying alone.
We followed an identical procedure to create a composite score
for cumulative time being quizzed.
To validate questionnaire estimates for weekly practice,
59 participants were interviewed by phone, as selected among
152 who had volunteered contact information. This subsample
of interviewed participants did not differ from the complete
sample in composite studying time or time being quizzed
(as reported in the questionnaire) or in final round achieved.
At the start of each interview, participants were asked to esti-
mate the time spent studying and being quizzed during the prior
week. Although the questionnaire estimates of recent studying
time and time being quizzed were made a month or two before
the spelling bee, they were still significantly correlated with
the interview estimates for the 2 weeks before the competition,
r¼.46 and .58, respectively, p< .001.
Leisure reading time. Participants answered three questions
beginning with ‘‘About how many books (excluding
textbooks) have you read from start to finish in ...’’ a n d t h e n
indicating the ‘‘past week,’’ ‘‘pastmonth,’’or‘‘pastyear.’’
Responses to these items were skewed and highly correlated
(average r¼.78), so we log transformed, then standardized
and averaged estimates to create composite scores for leisure
reading time.
Attitudes toward verbal activities. Using 9-point Likert-type
scales, participants rated 11 activities on the degree to which
each was enjoyable, effortful, and relevant to improving perfor-
mance in spelling bees. Deliberate practice was operationally
defined with three items: ‘‘learning to spell new words from
a list or Paideia by yourself,’’
1
‘‘reviewing words in your
spelling notebook,’’ and ‘‘studying word origins.’’ Two other
activities related to being quizzed: ‘‘spelling words pronounced
by someone else (parent, coach, etc.)’’ and ‘‘typing words pro-
nounced by a computer spelling program.’’ Two items related
to verbal leisure activities: ‘‘leisure reading (comic books,
magazines, newspapers, novels, etc.)’’ and ‘‘playing word
games.’’ Finally, we included four reference activities
(e.g., ‘‘eating your favorite food,’’ ‘‘cleaning your room.’’)
similar to those used in prior research (Ericsson et al., 1993).
Enjoyment, effort, and relevance ratings were separately
computed by averaging the ratings for deliberate practice,
being quizzed, and verbal leisure activities.
Results
Prospective Associations Between Preparation Activities
and Spelling Performance
Deliberate practice time predicted performance in final compe-
tition better than time being quizzed or leisure reading time.
Because final round was ordinal, we fit ordinal regression
models and standardized continuous predictors to facilitate
interpretation of odds ratios (OR). In separate models predict-
ing final round and controlling for age and gender, deliberate
practice and time being quizzed were significant predictors,
OR ¼2.64, p< .001, and OR ¼1.61, p< .01, respectively.
In contrast, leisure reading time did not predict performance,
OR ¼0.99, p¼.97.
Time devoted to deliberate practice and that to being
quizzed were each highly correlated when controlling for age
and gender (partial r¼.49, p< .001). Leisure reading time was
not related to time being quizzed (partial r¼.02, p¼.82) but
was inversely correlated with deliberate practice time, partial
r¼–.16, p< .05. To estimate the unique variance in spelling
performance explained by each type of preparation activity,
we included all three as predictors in a simultaneous ordinal
regression model predicting final round and controlling for age
and gender. Deliberate practice time remained a significant
predictor of performance, OR ¼2.49, p< .001, but time being
quizzed and leisure reading time did not, OR ¼1.09, p¼.66,
and OR ¼1.10, p¼.56, respectively.
Because estimates of preparation experience were
self-reported, one concern is that the observed associations
with performance in final competition were affected by
spellers’ knowledge of the relative efficacy of these activities.
In particular, it is possible that more expert spellers recognized
deliberate practice activities as being more effective and there-
fore inflated their estimates of time devoted to such activities.
To eliminate judged relevance of practice activities as a
potential bias on reported engagement in each activity, we fit
a simultaneous ordinal regression model predicting final round
from the perceived relevance to improving spelling perfor-
mance of each type of practice activity as well as time devoted
to these activities. The predictive validity of deliberate practice
(OR ¼2.85, p< .001), being quizzed (OR ¼1.27, p¼.25), and
verbal leisure activities (OR ¼1.20, p¼.31) was largely
unchanged. In this model, the perceived relevance of verbal
leisure activities predicted worse spelling performance
(OR ¼0.59, p< .01), but the rated relevance of deliberate
practice (OR ¼0.83, p¼.43) and being quizzed (OR ¼0.90,
p¼.64) did not.
176 Social Psychological and Personality Science 2(2)
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Increases in Deliberate Practice With Experience
Early in their competitive spelling careers, spellers devoted
more time to being quizzed than to deliberate practice, but over
time, they increasingly favored deliberate practice over being
quizzed to prepare for competition. An analysis of the 130 spel-
lers who had been preparing for spelling bees for at least 3 years
showed that 3 years before the 2006 competition, spellers spent
an average of 78 hours per year in solitary deliberate practice,
about 11%less than the 88 hours they spent being quizzed by
others, paired-samples t(129) ¼–2.52, d¼–.22, p¼.01. Two
years before the 2006 competition, these spellers spent an aver-
age of 113 hours per year in solitary deliberate practice,
compared to 128 hours being quizzed by others, t(129) ¼–1.91,
d¼–.16, p¼.06. In the year immediately before the
2006 competition, spellers spent an average of 226 hours
per year in solitary deliberate practice, compared to 238 hours
being quizzed by others, t(129) ¼–0.94, d¼–.10, p¼.35.
Finally, in the month directly preceding the final competition,
spellers spent an average of 9.9 hours per week in solitary delib-
erate practice, 31%more than the 6.8 hours per week they spent
being quizzed by others, t(129) ¼3.40, d¼.35, p¼.001.
To confirm this trend, we used hierarchical linear modeling
to model within-individual trajectories of the proportion of
time annually devoted to deliberate practice as opposed to
being quizzed. Hierarchical linear modeling allowed for the
inclusion of all spellers who provided data on their preparation
activities for at least 1 year, n¼183. The average intercept was
.42, t(182) ¼18.81, p< .001, indicating that the average parti-
cipant initially devoted 42%of preparation time to deliberate
practice and 58%of time to being quizzed. The average slope
of .02, t(182) ¼2.64, p< .01, indicated that the average parti-
cipant increased the proportion of preparation time devoted to
deliberate practice by an incremental 2%each year.
Subjective Experience of Preparation Activities
The pattern of increasing deliberate practice with each year of
competition experience was interesting given the subjective
experience of such activities. As shown in Figure 1,
a repeated-measures analysis of variance revealed a significant
difference in how enjoyable spellers found deliberate practice,
being quizzed, and verbal leisure activities, F(1.91, 357.24) ¼
217.13 p< .001. Post hoc paired-samples ttests confirmed that
verbal leisure activities were rated more enjoyable (M¼7.68,
SD ¼1.29) than being quizzed (M¼5.29, SD ¼1.97), t(188)
¼17.15, p< .001. Being quizzed was in turn rated more
enjoyable than deliberate practice (M¼4.96, SD ¼2.12),
t(187) ¼2.53, p¼.01. Figure 1 also illustrates a repeated-
measures analysis of variance revealing a significant difference
for effort ratings, F(1.76, 330.86) ¼101.62, p< .001. Post hoc
paired-samples ttests confirmed that verbal leisure activities
were rated less effortful (M¼4.04, SD ¼2.21) than being
quizzed (M¼5.82, SD ¼1.95), t(188) ¼–10.57, p< .001.
Being quizzed was in turn rated less effortful than deliberate
practice (M¼6.25, SD ¼1.78), t(188) ¼–3.28, p¼.001.
Finally, a repeated-measures analysis of variance showed a sig-
nificant difference in the perceived relevance of preparation
activities to improving their spelling performance, F(2, 376)
¼86.34, p< .001. Post hoc paired-samples ttests showed that
verbal leisure activities (M¼6.26, SD ¼1.84) were perceived
by spellers as being less relevant than either deliberate practice
(M¼7.77, SD ¼1.45) or being quizzed (M¼7.79, SD ¼1.60).
Deliberate Practice as a Mediator of Grit and Spelling
Performance
Prior analyses demonstrated that the personality traits of grit
and openness to experience each explained unique variance
in performance in the 2006 National Spelling Bee
2
(Duckworth
et al., 2007; Duckworth & Quinn, 2009). Specifically, grittier
spellers performed better, whereas spellers higher in openness
to experience performed worse. Using path analysis in MPlus
5, we fit a multiple-mediator model to assess which type of
preparation activity accounted for these predictive relation-
ships. We treated spelling rank as an ordered categorical
variable. Because MPlus permits a maximum of 10 categories
in ordered variables, we grouped spellers who reached the
highest three rounds. In a model without the mediators, both
grit (standardized effect ¼.22, p¼.008) and openness to expe-
rience (standardized effect ¼–.22, p¼.013) predicted spelling
performance. The multiple-mediation model fit the data well,
w
2
(2) ¼1.57, p¼.46, comparative fit index ¼1.00, root mean
square error of approximation < .001. Table 1 presents the
means, standard deviations, and correlations for the variables
in the multiple-mediation model. As illustrated in Figure 2,
grittier spellers accumulated more deliberate practice and more
time being quizzed but not more leisure reading time. Deliber-
ate practice time in turn predicted spelling performance, but
time being quizzed and leisure reading time did not. A test of
the specific indirect effect confirmed that time in deliberate
3.5
4.5
5.5
6.5
7.5
Enjoyment Effort Relevance
Deliberate Practice
Being Quizzed
Leisure Verbal Activities
Figure 1. Ratings of enjoyment, effort, and relevance for deliberate
practice, being quizzed, and verbal leisure activities.
Note: Error bars indicate one standard error of the mean.
Duckworth et al. 177
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practice mediated the effect of grit on spelling performance,
indirect effect ¼0.15 (bias-corrected bootstrapped 95%confi-
dence interval ¼0.08, 0.29). In contrast, there was no evidence
that the inverse association between openness to experience
and spelling performance was mediated by any of the three
types of preparation activity measured in this study.
Discussion
Our major findings in this investigation are as follows:
Deliberate practice—operationally defined in the current inves-
tigation as the solitary study of word spellings and origins—
was a better predictor of National Spelling Bee performance
than either being quizzed by others or engaging in leisure read-
ing. With each year of additional preparation, spellers devoted
an increasing proportion of their preparation time to deliberate
practice, despite rating the experience of such activities as
more effortful and less enjoyable than the alternative prepara-
tion activities. Grittier spellers engaged in deliberate practice
more so than their less gritty counterparts, and hours of
deliberate practice fully mediated the prospective association
between grit and spelling performance. Contrary to our predic-
tion, we did not find evidence that the inverse association
between the trait of openness to experience and spelling
performance was mediated by any of the three preparation
activities measured in this study.
The current study had at least two important limitations.
First, we relied on spellers’ retrospective self-reported
estimates of time devoted to deliberate practice and being
quizzed. The strong association between these estimates and
separate estimates from a subsample of spellers interviewed
by phone provides some evidence for their reliability. More-
over, the significant variance in final competition performance
explained by these estimates offers evidence of their validity.
However, it is possible that spellers’ estimates were biased
by their recognition that deliberate practice was more effective.
Against this possibility, on average, spellers rated deliberate
practice activities and being quizzed as being equally relevant
to improving spelling bee performance. Furthermore,
associations between spelling performance and time devoted
to various practice activities were largely unchanged when con-
trolling for spellers’ ratings of the relevance of these activities
for improving their skill. This finding implies that the more
successful spellers did not differ from less successful ones with
respect to their insights into whether quizzing or study alone
were more relevant for improving spelling performance.
Nevertheless, future studies should employ experience
sampling methodology or diary measures rather than retrospec-
tive self-report measures to obtain more reliable, unbiased
estimates of relevant preparation activities.
A second limitation is that we did not collect data that
thoroughly explored the potential contribution of being quizzed
to spelling performance. A large literature demonstrates that
being tested on material improves later retention (Roediger &
Karpicke, 2006). In our investigation, time spent being quizzed
by others predicted spelling performance, but this association
Table 1. Means, Standard Deviations, and Correlations of Variables in the Mediation Model
Measure MSD 1 234567
1. Spelling performance 3.13 2.05 —
2. Grit 3.44 0.78 .17* —
3. Openness to experience 3.99 0.55 –.11 .17* —
4. Deliberate practice 0.00 1.00 .31*** .30*** –.04 —
5. Being quizzed 0.00 1.00 .19** .17* .07 .49*** —
6. Leisure reading 0.00 1.00 –.01 –.04 .09 –.07 .05 —
7. Gender
a
0.47 0.50 .02 .09 .05 .14 .12 .35*** —
8. Age 12.88 1.07 –.05 –.01 .03 –.10 .03 –.14 .11
a
The mean of this variable multiplied by 100 represents the percentage of girls.
*p< .05.
** p< .01.
*** p< .001.
Spelling
Performance
.38***
.46***
.06
.17*
.31***
.03
.16*
-.18**
.09
-.10
.00
.06
.09
Grit
Openness to
Experience
Deliberate
Practice
Being
Quizzed
Leisure
Reading
Figure 2. Deliberate practice, being quizzed, and leisure reading time
as a function of grit.
Note: Associations with the covariates of gender and age are not shown.
*p< .05. **p< .01. ***p< .001.
178 Social Psychological and Personality Science 2(2)
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was reduced to nonsignificance when entered simultaneously
with time spent in deliberate practice. One possibility is that
being quizzed, which spellers enjoy more and find less effortful
than solitary study, plays an important motivational role.
Indeed, our findings are consistent with a narrative in which the
association between time being quizzed and final performance
is fully mediated by deliberate practice. In addition, effective
solitary study and learning may involve some form of self-
testing (Karpicke, Butler, & Roediger, 2009). For instance,
spellers might use flashcards during solitary study or cover
up words, attempt to spell them, and then uncover the words
to check their accuracy. Finally, being quizzed by others should
provide spellers with specific feedback (e.g., the identification
of areas of weakness) and general feedback on the overall
effectiveness of their study methods. Both kinds of feedback
should improve the quality of subsequent deliberate practice
activities. The current investigation was underpowered to iden-
tify an interaction between time spent in deliberate practice and
time being quizzed. Clearly, an important avenue for future
research is the exploration of the likely complex and dynamic
relations between the quality and amount of deliberate practice
and testing in the acquisition of superior academic skills.
In a series of essays entitled Talks to Teachers, William James
(1899) opined that the ‘‘processes of verbal memorizing,’’ like
most schoolroom work, till it has become habitual and
automatic, is repulsive, and cannot be done without voluntarily
jerking back the attention to it every now and then ... It flows
from the inherent nature of the subjects and of the learning
mind. (pp. 108–109)
Consistent with this sober view of the learning process, the
most effective preparation activities for developing spelling
skill were perceived by spellers as more effortful and less
enjoyable than alternative preparation activities.
Prior research has demonstrated that more successful middle
school students choose more difficult learning tasks as com-
pared to their less successful peers, who choose easier learning
tasks (Owings, Petersen, Bransford, Morris, & Stein, 1980; for
a more general review, see Bransford, Brown, & Cocking,
1999). If more effortful and less enjoyable preparation activi-
ties more efficiently develop academic skills, then perhaps it
is not surprising that homework time does not reliably predict
academic achievement for children in elementary school
(Cooper, Robinson, & Patall, 2006) but that study time does
reliably predict academic achievement when the quality of
study activity is taken into consideration (Plant, Ericsson, Hill,
& Asberg, 2005; Trautwein, 2007; Trautwein & Ludtke, 2007).
The current findings suggest that teachers should distinguish
between more and less effective academic preparation activi-
ties. Offering opportunities for deliberate practice of academic
skills has the potential for dramatically improving student
performance (Kellogg & Whiteford, 2009). The present inves-
tigation suggests an additional, cautionary note, however:
Deliberate practice is more effortful and less enjoyable than
less effective forms of academic preparation; thus, less gritty
students, who are dispositionally less inclined to sustain long
periods of deliberate practice, might benefit from learning
self-regulatory strategies, including goal setting and planning
techniques (Gollwitzer, 1999; Mischel & Mendoza-Denton,
2003; Oettingen & Stephens, 2009). Such metacognitive strate-
gies have been shown to facilitate the effort of college students
(Oettingen, Barry, Guttenberg, & Gollwitzer, 2009), high
school students (Duckworth, Grant, Loew, Oettingen, &
Gollwitzer, in press), middle school students (Duckworth,
Kirby, Gollwitzer, A., & Oettingen, 2010), and possibly even
much younger children (Patterson & Mischel, 1975) toward
long-term goals whose benefits are not immediate.
In sum, whereas there is surely some truth to the adage that
champions pursue ‘‘what they love,’’ our investigation suggests
that the solitary practice required to excel is more effortful and
less enjoyable than rival pursuits. This finding is consistent with
qualitative interviews of a small number of spelling bee partici-
pants (Guo, 2007). The winner of the 2006 National Spelling Bee,
for example, was a young girl who had steadily improved her final
ranking during 5 consecutive years of competition. By her 4th
year, a journalist observed thatshe ‘‘does more word study by her-
self. She works with numerous spelling study guides, makes lists
of interesting words from her reading, and labors her way through
the dictionary’’ (Maguire, 2006, p. 222). Immediately before her
fifth, victorious year, she said, ‘‘I’m trying to learn words off the
regular list, to learn more obscure words that have a chance of
coming up.. .. I’m studying as hard as I can for my last year—to
go for it’’ (p. 360). Ourinvestigation suggests that this young vic-
tor’s flawless march through the words tmesis,izzat,kanone,
aubade,psittacism,recrementitious,clinamen,hukilau,Shedu,
towhee,synusia,cucullate,terrene,Bildungsroman,chiragra,
Galilean,andgobemouchein the final competition wasmade pos-
sible by tremendous passion and perseverance for the long-term
goal of becoming the best speller in the nation. Such grit facili-
tated 5 years of very effortful—and not particularly enjoy-
able—deliberate practice.
Notes
1. The Paideia was the official study booklet of the Scripps National
Spelling Bee in 2006.
2. None of the other Big Five factors (i.e., Agreeableness, Conscien-
tiousness, Extraversion, and Neuroticism) accounted for unique
variance in spelling performance, whether Grit was included in the
model or not (see Table 10 in Duckworth & Quinn, 2009).
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interests with respect to
the authorship and/or publication of this article.
Financial Disclosure/Funding
This research was supported by a grant from the John Templeton
Foundation. The research reported here was supported by the Institute
of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education, through Grant
R305C050041-05 to the University of Pennsylvania. The opinions
expressed are those of the authors and do not represent views of the
U.S. Department of Education.
Duckworth et al. 179
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Bios
Angela Lee Duckworth is an assistant professor in the Department of
psychology at the University of Pennsylvania. Dr. Duckworth’s
research interests concern self-control, grit, and other factors that
determine effort and achievement.
Teri A. Kirby is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology at the
University of Washington. Her current research interests include pre-
judice, stereotyping, and social cognition in general.
Eli Tsukayama is a PhD student in the Department of Psychology and
an Institute of Education Sciences (IES) Fellow at the University of
Pennsylvania. His research interests include character strengths and
positive outcomes, with a focus on self-control and achievement.
Heather Berstein graduated from the University of Pennsylvania in
May of 2009 summa cum laude with distinction in psychology and Phi
Beta Kappa membership. She is currently blending her passions for
psychology and business in a marketing role at American Express.
K. Anders Ericsson, PhD, is Conradi Eminent Scholar at Florida
State University, USA. He studies expert performance and how expert
performers attain their superior performance by acquiring complex
cognitive mechanisms through extended deliberate practice.
Duckworth et al. 181
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