{"id":24586,"date":"2018-06-19T10:27:55","date_gmt":"2018-06-19T14:27:55","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/?p=24586"},"modified":"2022-03-16T10:55:55","modified_gmt":"2022-03-16T14:55:55","slug":"mistakes-help-students-get-better-grades","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/mistakes-help-students-get-better-grades\/","title":{"rendered":"Can Mistakes Help Students Get Better Grades?"},"content":{"rendered":"

A recent study gives new credence to the old wisdom that the best way to learn is by <\/span>learning from your mistakes<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers found that in some instances, when learning new material, making mistakes can help a student internalize the material and perform better afterwards. <\/span><\/p>\n

Students learned better when their mistakes were \u201cnear misses,\u201d defined as being meaningfully related to the correct answer. <\/span><\/p>\n

Random, or \u201cout in left field\u201d guesses, on the other hand, did not help the student learn.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOur research found evidence that mistakes that are a \u2018near miss\u2019 can help a person learn the information better than if no errors were made at all,\u201d <\/span>Nicole Anderson<\/span><\/a>, associate professor in the Departments of Medicine (Psychiatry) and Psychology at the University of Toronto, a senior scientist at <\/span>Rotman Research Institute<\/span><\/a>, Baycrest, and senior author of the study, said in a statement. \u201cThese types of errors can serve as stepping stones to remembering the right answer. But if the error made is a wild guess and out in left field, then a person does not learn the correct information as easily.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The paper is published in the journal <\/span>Memory<\/span><\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers conducted two interrelated studies.<\/span><\/p>\n

First study<\/b><\/h2>\n

In one study, 32 young adults with no knowledge of Spanish were asked to translate Spanish words into English. <\/span><\/p>\n

Spanish was selected due to the unique relationship between many Spanish and English words.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cSpanish words are interesting because some of them are known as \u2018false friends\u2019 by linguists — they strongly resemble an English word but mean something different,\u201d said Anderson. \u201cFor, example, \u2018carpeta\u2019 looks like \u2018carpet,\u2019 but means \u2018folder.\u2019\u202f\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cOther words are known as \u2018unreliable friends\u2019 — they look like an English word but mean something related and not so distant; for example, \u2018carrera\u2019 looks like \u2018career,\u2019 but means \u2018degree,\u2019\u202f\u201d she continued.<\/span><\/p>\n

The participants were asked to guess the English translation of 16 Spanish words, and told the correct translation after each guess. The participants then were given a short break and asked again to recall the translations.<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers found that people were better able to recall translations for Spanish words that were similar to the English word. <\/span><\/p>\n

Misleading words — the so-called \u201cfalse\u201d or \u201cunreliable friends\u201d — were harder for the participants to memorize.<\/span><\/p>\n

Second study<\/b><\/h2>\n

A second study was similar, but used only English words. <\/span><\/p>\n

In this experiment, participants were given a cue word (\u201cband,\u201d for example) and either shown a related target word (\u201cmusic\u201d) or asked to guess the target word. The participants were challenged to remember the target word later in the experiment.<\/span><\/p>\n

At this point, participants were then shown a new target word that was either related to the original target word (\u201cguitar,\u201d in this case) or was related to a homophone to the cue word (\u201celastic,\u201d as in elastic band).<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers found that participants tended to remember target words better after \u201cnear miss\u201d answers ( \u201cguitar\u201d) than after \u201cout in left field\u201d answers (\u201celastic\u201d), or if they were simply told the answer in the first place.<\/span><\/p>\n

Implications<\/b><\/h2>\n

The researchers believe these results demonstrate that mistakes can function as \u201cstepping stones,\u201d for the learner, essentially pointing them in the right direction.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cThat is, in a test, you see a memory cue, and you think \u2018oh, I thought it was career, but it was degree,\u2019 and then remember the correct word accurately,\u201d said Anderson. \u201cBecause \u2018near miss\u2019 errors are closer semantically to the target, they serve as more effective stepping stones.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The results, Anderson noted, supports previous research that suggests that young adults learn better when learning is more difficult. <\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers also have reason to believe that younger learners are not the only ones who benefit from mistakes. Previous research on this topic suggests that older learners likewise learn better when they make mistakes during the learning process.<\/span><\/p>\n

Ultimately, these results demonstrate the important of learning and internalizing material before taking a practice test.<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIf a person takes a practice test and is unfamiliar with the content, they risk making guesses that are nowhere near the right answer,\u201d Anderson said in a statement. \u201cThis could make it harder for them to learn the correct information later.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

The researchers plan on continuing their study on the relationship between mistakes and learning as they move forward. <\/span><\/p>\n

They are currently examining the results of a magnetic resonance imaging study that shows participants\u2019 brain activity during \u201cnear miss\u201d and \u201cout in left field\u201d mistakes.<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A recent study gives new credence to the old wisdom that the best way to learn is by learning from your mistakes. The researchers found that in some instances, when learning new material, making mistakes can help a student internalize the material and perform better afterwards. Students learned better when their mistakes were \u201cnear misses,\u201d […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":61,"featured_media":24596,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_uag_custom_page_level_css":"","_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[230,229],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-24586","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","category-lead-stories"],"aioseo_notices":[],"uagb_featured_image_src":{"full":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mistakes.jpeg",830,533,false],"thumbnail":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mistakes-224x144.jpeg",224,144,true],"medium":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mistakes-300x193.jpeg",300,193,true],"medium_large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mistakes.jpeg",830,533,false],"large":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mistakes.jpeg",830,533,false],"1536x1536":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mistakes.jpeg",830,533,false],"2048x2048":["https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mistakes.jpeg",830,533,false]},"uagb_author_info":{"display_name":"Sam Benezra","author_link":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/author\/sam-benezra\/"},"uagb_comment_info":0,"uagb_excerpt":"A recent study gives new credence to the old wisdom that the best way to learn is by learning from your mistakes. The researchers found that in some instances, when learning new material, making mistakes can help a student internalize the material and perform better afterwards. Students learned better when their mistakes were \u201cnear misses,\u201d…","featured_media_src_url":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2018\/06\/mistakes.jpeg","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24586","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/61"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24586"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24586\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24596"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24586"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24586"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.tun.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24586"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}