Nowadays, prodigy is one of the most popular topics concerned by many

experts. The article “Watching Prodigies for the Dark Side” published on April
1, 2005, also examines this field as Marie-Noëlle Ganry-Tardy –the author - a
child psychiatrist in private practice in Paris - specializes in solving the
problems of young gifted children. This essay will respond to the author’s
arguments about the drawbacks of the prodigies and how to detect it early and
solve it effectively.

In her article “Watching Prodigies for the Dark Side”, Marie-Noëlle Ganry-
Tardy (2005) discusses the problem of young brilliant children if they are not
appropriately challenged and how to deal with them. The author begins the
article with an example of a prodigy – Jeffrey – who has difficulty in getting
grades and communicating in school because not been identified early to lead
in the topic. Then, Marie discusses the disadvantages that gifted children
encounter which are caused by “ emotional paralysis”,“developmental
disorders”, “dyslexia” and “a steady diet of frustration”.The author then
provides methods for recognizing the dangers that a child prodigy may
encounter as well as answers to a variety of problems. Finally, the author
concludes that identifying and avoiding traps within a child prodigy's world not
only aids their progress, but also benefits society.

Marie-Noëlle Ganry-Tardy is a child psychiatrist in private practice in Paris.

She specializes in solving the problems of young gifted children. Therefore, he
is really qualified, knowledgeable and experienced in writing psychological
and prodigy issues. Therefore the information she gives must be censored and
reliable. Besides, Scientific American is an American popular science
magazines. Many famous scientists, including Albert Einstein, have
contributed articles in the past 170 years the oldest continously published
monthly magazine in the United States. Hence, the information of this
magazine is official, trustworthy and highly authentic. These two factors can
make us assured of reliability when reading this article.
In term of the arguments, Marie took Jeffrey's case to explain the problems
prodigies experience. Although providing an example to help the reader grasp
the material, it makes the article difficult to follow and distracts from Jeffrey’s
story. However, in the issues and solutions section, the author appears to have
done a decent job of offering specific situations and step-by-step solutions for
those cases, not in general. This makes it easy for the reader to follow along
and figure out what they should and can do in various situations.
Besides, the evidences in the article are not specific, clear and do not have an
accurate source. The author gives “Two to 3 percent of children are considered
highly gifted, showing IQ scores of at least 130” or “dyslexia affects 10 percent
of children regardless of their intelligence”. This issue has not been proven or
referenced to any source, so readers may misunderstand this as the author's
subjective opinion, which is not reliable because the source of this information
is unknown. Even when suggesting the dark side of geniuses and solutions, the
author simply writes down those solutions without mentioning evidence to
prove those processes or solutions work. For instance, phonics therapy can cure
dyslexia in five-year-olds in six to 18 months or psychomotor training is
advised if the nonverbal result is more than 10 points lower than the verbal
result, however these conclusions do not have any evidence to prove this is
effective.This makes a part of readers skeptical and do not have faith in that
solution. Hence, a scanty rage of evidences, examples, and quotations decrease
the reliability and credibility of the information given in the article.
In term of style, the article is written in the form of formal with a clear
organization including 3 main parts. The article lead in by giving real-life case
of Jeffrey. Then it is argument for slide 1 being the dark sides and argument for
slide 2 being the solution for each situations. In the conclusion, there is the
author’s own opinion. The author organize her article in discursive – article
form with a variety of sentence structures such as simple, compound,
complex…The article tends to be balanced towards the issue. In term of
language, The author used high level words, complicated sentence structures
with a lots of relative clauses, a variety of linking words such as thus, however,
as, for example, moreover, and, but,…Some technical terms and difficult
concepts also get into the article, for example: personal loss. But they have
been explained, the author even demonstrates how personal loss is measured
and give example for it: “Moreover, with their heightened self-awareness, …
feel a personal loss ... For example,…self - image”. However, some technical
terms, such as developmental disorder, are simply mentioned without
explanation by the author.