I have been thinking of this today, not in philosophical way, but in regards to Chinese (Mandarin) learning for my son. He has great �ear� for languages and great memory, I attribute those to the nature. He can trick his teachers making them believe that he knows the material due to his short term memory and visual memory (being able quickly located what he needs to answer questions). However, I know for fact that he does not work on memorizing words for his lessons. His vocabulary should be much better than it is, currently he has effortlessly memorized about 50 - 60%, what about the rest? So I have come to conclusion, that he is not outside the 10,000 hours rule and I may have to become a Tiger mother to work with him on the vocabulary and writing.