Specific Challenges not met.

[nick_uk]

I have 1 piano student who is making very slow progress.

  If I give her a four bar passage in a piece at the hands together stage she tells me she is practising it but I suspect she is spending more time practising parts in the piece which I have previously set. (after having talked to her father). I don't want her to practise these parts as she is wasting time on parts already mastered. 

My question is..............Is it a good idea to photocopy the parts I want her to work on and then cut them out so as she only has the bits I want her to work on. She won't have the whole of the piece then in front of her.  I will have already done an overview of the piece with her and she will also have a copy of the music on cd.

Nick

[mound]

Is it a good idea to photocopy the parts I want her to work on and then cut them out so as she only has the bits I want her to work on.

That sounds like a great idea.

Check out this book:
The Practice Revolution : Getting great results from the six days between lessons

It actually mentions doing just that as a way to solve that specific problem you are mentioning.. What did he call it.. Umm.. ack, I can't remember at the moment, he has names for all the "practice syndromes" and that was one of them.. 

-Paul

[nick_uk]

HI Paul,

Thanks for your reply.
I've actually just received the practice revolution book so I'll have a good read of it and see what they say.  I'm going to try the photocopying sections of a piece when I start my student on a new piece. I think it could work! Will post back and tell my findings.

nick

[lostinidlewonder]

I think a lot of teachers have that problem. Most students find that when they play stuff they already know but stumble through bits they can't, that is practicing. I tell my students when you practice it all should be only parts you can't play.

I make sure that a students understands that when you sit at the piano instantly you must ask a question. Am i playing for fun or am i studying? If you are studying then you don't play what you can you work on the sections you cannot. In fact i told one student who couldnt get this idea to work for them, never play what you can, only play what you cant for 1 week. When practicnig it shouldn't be comfortable, it should be a tough struggle to memorise, excecute.

I've found most slow progressing students are not actually deficient in playing ability but more learning ability. I try to tell them not to mix practicing and playing. Each should be taken seperately. Because if you mix the two is hard to balance it, usually playing takes over from practice. Thats what i have found works anyway. Most students makes constant progress if they clearly understand the two different piano playing.

For students who struggle to play a bar I simply draw a line in the middle of the bar, or close to, seperating the groups of notes. And then another line seperating the two staves. Just work in the four quadrants, top left is 1, bottom left is 2, Both hands together, that is 1 and 2 will be step 3.  The top right quadrant is 4, bottom right is 5, those two together is 6. Then both 3 and 6 together is the last step 7. Dont move onto the next until the previous one is played without any note errors or fingering mistakes. I give this to little 5 year olds or older students who wont tell me their age lol, they all seem to make progress tackling the bars.

Still its pretty logical for most of us to just learn RH and then LH then put it together, but i have found for begnining students or students with struggle, seeing their achievment in seven steps is fast rewarding and an obvious indicator to them, when their teacher isnt around, to they know their work or not.

[bernhard]

I agree very much with lostinidlewonder. Specially when s/he says:

“I've found most slow progressing students are not actually deficient in playing ability but more learning ability”

You may want to try to spend a whole lesson only on the specific bars the student is stuck with. Your aim will not so much to teach the student the bars, but rather show him/her the process by which such an impossible passage (for her) can be tackled. Although this may seem like a waste of time (something the student should be doing in their time rather than in the lesson), believe me it is time well spent. Explaining usually does not do any good. One must actually do it. Sometimes a student sincerely does not know how to practise. They have to be shown. More often they know how to practise and can talk you through the stages (because they have you say it so often), but they do not really believe you and have no intention to go through what they regard as utter drudgery.

Actually spending the lesson going through the steps (rather than being told what to do), and then experiencing the improvement that unfailingly results, usually drives the nail home. Also be prepared to repeat the same thing for a couple of lessons. Then tell them: “ don’t you think you could do this by yourself and use the lesson time in a better way?” Also point to them the resulting improvement and say: “You see, that is how I know if you have been practising correctly or not: by your improvement – If next week there is no improvement, it means that there was no practice – no real practice. You may have done a lot of piano activity, but you have not practised.”

Eventually they get it (or else they drop it! )

Good luck.

Best wishes,
Bernhard.