Learning from Ronaldo: The Pursuit of Excellence

First, a confession: I almost never the sports section of any of the newspapers and magazines I do regularly read. But I know that Cristiano Ronaldo is a great football player, so when his name caught my eye on the BBC News front page as I was having my morning coffee before class today, I followed the link and read the article.

According to "Cristiano Ronaldo: Real Madrid Forward Agrees New Contract" (2013), the suspicion some had that after they recently signed up Gareth Bale for a record amount, Real Madrid football club might lose Cristiano Ronaldo to another major club, has proved false. Affirming his commitment to Real Madrid, Ronaldo has now signed a contract to remain with them until 2018.

You might wonder how, if I almost never read anything in the sports sections, I know that Ronaldo is in fact a great footballer. I'm pretty sure he is simply because I know his name, having seen it in the news and heard in discussions with friends over the last few years. Other such names that come to mind are Beckham, Messi, and most recently Bale, although I have to admit I was a bit unsure of his first first name. At least I'm sure that Beckham's first name is David - so I'm sure he must be really good at football, although he's also made some very sexy advertisements for men's underwear which attracted some attention. And in case you are now wondering about that, I don't normally read articles about men's underwear advertisements either, but I guess that the name Beckham, and perhaps an eye-catching photograph, might have caught my attention.

But what I really thought of when I saw the title of the article and then read it was that there were some useful lessons for studying in the Reading and Writing course in AEP. I'm sure that Ronaldo, like most sports devotees and fans, knows a lot about the techniques and strategies that make someone a great player. But your average football fan, however well informed, however knowledgeable about football rules, technique and strategy, is not a great player, and in many, perhaps most, cases, can't even play very well, or perhaps can't even play the game at all. This seems to me to also explain why Quest, and the AEP course, is not a grammar course: learning a lot about English grammar and stuffing your English vocabulary won't make you a successful reader or a good writer. Grammar and vocabulary are certainly important, just technique and strategy are to Ronaldo, but what is more important is practice. I'm sure that Ronaldo practises daily, probably for hours every day. It's the same for us this term: we will certainly be worrying about and studying both grammar and vocabulary, along with other technical language points, but the most important part of the reading and writing class is actually reading and writing: the regular practise that we then analyse to see what worked well and what might be improved on.

And just like football practise and playing, reading and writing both take up some time. Daily. I think six days a week is probably enough, but if you would prefer to practise seven days a week, I wouldn't want to discourage that.

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Reference

Cristiano Ronaldo: Real Madrid forward agrees new contract. (2013, September 15). BBC Sport Football. Retrieved September 16, 2013 from http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/0/football/24099077