Why making mistakes helps you learn (and how to use them)
Most of us feel bad about a wrong answer. But a mistake you make while practicing is one of the most useful things that can happen to you, as long as you find out the right answer straight away. The best time to make a mistake is now, while it costs nothing, so you don't make it on the test.
Trying first beats reading first
In a set of experiments by Lindsey Richland, Nate Kornell and Liche Kao (2009), students who tried to answer questions before reading a text remembered more of it afterwards than students who simply spent the time reading, even though most of their first answers were wrong. Nate Kornell, Matthew Hays and Robert Bjork (2009) found the same with word pairs: a failed attempt to recall something, followed by the answer, made it stick better than studying the answer alone.
Guessing makes your brain search for the answer. When the right answer arrives, it lands in a mind that was already looking for it.
The surprise of being wrong
When you were sure you were right and turn out to be wrong, you tend to remember the correction especially well. Brady Butterfield and Janet Metcalfe (2001) called this the hypercorrection effect: errors made with high confidence were corrected more often than low-confidence ones. The surprise makes you pay attention.
The catch: you need feedback
A mistake only helps if you find out what the right answer is, and why. Practicing without checking your answers can leave the wrong idea in place. So:
- Check every answer as soon as you can, not at the end of the week.
- Read the explanation, even when you got it right by luck.
- Come back to it later. Try the question again tomorrow and next week. If you get it right then, it's learned. If not, that's one more useful mistake.
Make mistakes on purpose
- Quiz yourself before you study a topic. Guess the answers, then read and see what you missed. (What is active recall?)
- Mix your practice. Switching between kinds of questions makes you choose a method each time, and wrong choices teach you to tell them apart. (Mixed practice in maths)
- Spread it out. A little practice every day gives you more chances to get things wrong and fix them than one long session. (Spaced repetition)
How TONEC STUDY uses this
TONEC STUDY is built around trial and error. You answer first, then see the right answer and the explanation straight away. TONEC STUDY keeps a list of the questions you got wrong, and with Premium, "Practise my mistakes" gives them back to you until you get every one right.