Aptitudes and abilities
Posted: Tue Apr 21, 2020 1:11 pm
What the difference between Aptitudes and Abilities?
An aptitude is generally a natural talent or ability. Otherwise, an ability can be learnt.
I agree substantially with B'don.Boustrophedon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 22, 2020 12:14 amOne of those distinctions where somebody decides to use words in a particular way, in a particular situation and expects everyone else to either understand or follow suite. For instance, I never managed to understand which was a lesson objective and which was a lesson target. Didn't give a f.ck then or now. The pupils never understood either. Years later a department of education instructor was lecturing me on how to teach rudimentary programming, he said we were not teaching skills but capabilities. I had him explain the distinction and what he meant, three times, I still did not get it. I understand the words but not what he meant by them in that context. Conclusion; he was bullshitting.
Good rule of thumb; if the pupils don't understand, when other teachers have explained it to them and I don't understand it either, then it probably doesn't matter.
Generally if I don't understand something it's either quantum mechanics or b.llsh.t and I'm making progress on the quantum mechanics.
At a guess I would say that an aptitude was a natural gift for learning summat and an ability was the result. But then I could be wrong.
That's how I understand it, which is why there are abilities and [/i]natural[/i] abilities to distinguish between learnt skills and aptitude. Nature v nurture, sort of.Pucksoppet wrote: ↑Wed Apr 22, 2020 7:22 amI agree substantially with B'don.Boustrophedon wrote: ↑Wed Apr 22, 2020 12:14 amOne of those distinctions where somebody decides to use words in a particular way, in a particular situation and expects everyone else to either understand or follow suite. For instance, I never managed to understand which was a lesson objective and which was a lesson target. Didn't give a f.ck then or now. The pupils never understood either. Years later a department of education instructor was lecturing me on how to teach rudimentary programming, he said we were not teaching skills but capabilities. I had him explain the distinction and what he meant, three times, I still did not get it. I understand the words but not what he meant by them in that context. Conclusion; he was bullshitting.
Good rule of thumb; if the pupils don't understand, when other teachers have explained it to them and I don't understand it either, then it probably doesn't matter.
Generally if I don't understand something it's either quantum mechanics or b.llsh.t and I'm making progress on the quantum mechanics.
At a guess I would say that an aptitude was a natural gift for learning summat and an ability was the result. But then I could be wrong.
Aptitude: Natural, baseline, untrained competence/ability. Having an aptitude for something doesn't mean you are immediately good at it, but that you can be trained easily.
Ability: Capability/competence to actually perform a task. Ability can be improved by education, training, and practice. Aptitude can't.
Having an aptitude for languages doesn't mean you can speak all the languages of the world, but that you can learn a new one more quickly than someone who doesn't have an aptitude for languages.
Your early play may have honed your abilities but what drew you to play with those toys rather than others was an aptitude for them. You wouldn't have continued to play with them if you'd found them hard or dull. Talent (aka aptitude) isn't much use on its own. It takes practice and learning to bring out its full extent. You don't sit at a piano for the first time at the age of 30 and play brilliantly, no matter how much aptitude you were born with.Martin Y wrote: ↑Wed Apr 22, 2020 10:02 amI've wondered how far seemingly innate aptitudes blur into trained abilities due to early play experiences we just don't recognise as pertinent training.
e.g. I found technical drawing classes dead easy, but several of my fellow students really struggled and they learned to come to me with questions about how some part would look if it were turned 90°or if you could see through it to features on the reverse. I suspect lots of early play, from building blocks to Lego to Meccano, developed my abilities to think of objects in 3D.