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Richard Walker

Oscar Wilde

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Edited by Richard Walker, Sunday, 15 July 2018, 00:40

“The worst kind of mistake is an accidental one.”

Oscar Wilde 

Actually I just made that up, as far as I know, but it has the right ring. It’s an example of the figure of speech called antithesis, and Oscar was rather good at coming up with them. Here's a couple I like

“Be yourself; everyone else is already taken.”

“I can resist everything except temptation.”



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Richard Walker

Does making mistakes help learning?

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Edited by Richard Walker, Thursday, 10 Dec 2009, 01:50

More specifically there is some recent research to suggest that trying to answer the TMA (say) very quickly without any study of the unit - just jot down the best guess you can come up with - and only afterwards reading the relevant bits of the course may improve retention significantly. See http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=getting-it-wrong&sc=MND_20091029

In fact it seems the effect could apply if we do no more than for example try the SAQ before the related section, or even read the unit introduction, section or unit summary etc. before tackling the body of the unit.

I found this idea intriguing and intuitively appealing, but of course that isn't evidence.

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