Effects of making errors in learning a foreign language

Abstract

Kornell, Hays, and Bjork ([2009]. Unsuccessful retrieval attempts enhance subsequent learning. Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition, 35, 989–998) showed that incorrect guesses do not necessarily harm and might even improve the retention of information on a subsequent test. We sought to replicate the finding using educationally relevant stimuli. In two experiments, our participants either translated sentences in a foreign language receiving immediate feedback (errorful condition), or copied and studied the correct translation (errorless condition). After this training phase, a final test with the same sentences showed that translating sentences wrongly during training did not lower the accuracy of the errorful as compared to the errorless condition. Overall there was evidence that errorful training produced superior learning of the meaning and grammar of the foreign language sentences. The results support the idea that search processes activate a greater network of related knowledge in the errorful than in the errorless condition.