Have you ever received your test results, skimmed through what you got wrong, and just forgot about it?
A lot of people do that, and it's unfortunate that people miss the opportunity to go through this one method that turns their incorrect mistakes into a grade booster.
Mistakes Feel Like Failure
People more often than not tend to treat mistakes as something to avoid, and possibly something to not even look at!
Of course, it's not right to get stuck up about something you got wrong, but you should at least reflect on that mistake and learn from it. But you may be wondering, what's the best way to reflect anyways? That's a great question!
The Art Of Reflection
Reflecting, it isn't looking at the incorrect answer and seeing a failure. No, instead it's looking at the incorrect answer and seeing an opportunity. The opportunity to understand why it was wrong, what made you write the wrong answer, and write the correct answer in its place.
I call this the W-W-W, or the triple W method:
- why - Find out the reason that led to your answer being incorrect
- what - Any triggers that made you answer the question in that way? A trigger could be misreading the question or getting things mixed up.
- write - Replace the answer so next time you write an incorrect answer down, it'll be easier to retrieve the correct information.
Is There Science Behind This?
There is! Substantial evidence is backs this method!
Just to list a few:
- A 2024 study found that students who had self-corrected themselves had shown better performance on new, similar problems.
- A study conducted by Carnegie Mellon discovered a method called an exam wrapper, and it's when students take post-test reflections to analyse their mistakes, how they studied before-hand, and how they would change their study methods to improve in the future.
- A meta-analytical review of multiple studies has seen that when people actually think and write down information, they tend to remember the information than if they had simply read it.
- A study done in 2009 came to the conclusion that students can benefit from attempting to retrieve the correct answer before seeing the actual answer, even when their attempt is incorrect.
And I could go on listing even more studies, but you get the point.
What Now?
Next time you get your test results, open it up, find the incorrect answers, and instead of seeing a failure, you see a reflection, and apply the WWW method.
If you want to get better and more familiar with applying the WWW method, use Errata, where you put your own resources for any subject, get deliberately wrong answers, find what's wrong, and replace it with the correct answer.
I'll end off with this. The point is that you shouldn't just look at your answers and skip past it, you should reflect and replace it. You've seen the framework, you've seen the science, now it's up to you if you want to see the results. Use Errata to help see those results.