Failing the best way to learn?
A study published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory and Cognition has turned on its head most of the current theory about how we learn.
Over the past decades our education system has created study conditions where errors are not permitted. eg, repetition of mathematical problems making sure student gets it right. The idea was that if students make errors, they will learn and repeat the errors later. The new research shows that students actually learn faster if they make mistakes.
People remember things better, longer, if they are given very challenging tests on the material, tests at which they are bound to fail. In a series of experiments, they showed that if students make an unsuccessful attempt to retrieve information before receiving an answer, they remember the information better than in a control condition in which they simply study the information. Trying and failing to retrieve the answer is actually helpful to learning. It’s an idea that has obvious applications for education, but could be useful for anyone who is trying to learn new material of any kind, such as languages.
We learn better when we first guess! One of the exercises is when reading a textbook, try and do the test (if there is one) prior to reading the relevant chapter? Or turn the chapter heading into a question and try and answer it before reading? Then when you read the chapter, your mind is already actively seeking the answer instead of passively reading.
Similar research, published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Applied observed similar patterns and quantified the improvement in learning as being around 10%. Not bad for failing.
This work has implications beyond the classroom. By challenging ourselves to retrieve or generate answers we can improve our recall. Keep that in mind next time you turn to Google for an answer, and give yourself a little more time to come up with the answer on your own.
Adapted from Getting It Wrong: Surprising Tips on How to Learn, Scientific American
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