Inherent Curiosity and the Effect of Error Generation on the Ability to Learn German Words
Kiara Toler, Amy Rouse, & Leonie Steele
a Research Methods Project supervised by Dr. Hilary Stebbins
(Spring 2021)
Stebbins_Steele_postercheck out these “elevator” talks from some members of the group
During advising appointments, I often hear my students express frustration with having to take a second language. In my experience, it is the gen ed area that students struggle with the most. Are there any take home messages from your study or what you read in the literature that could help students feel more confident in those classes?
Hi Laura! Through this literature and previous literature, I have read, self-practice is something that can help students feel more confident in foreign languages. Not being afraid to make errors, while this is scary, will help improve learning. One take-home message from our study about language learning is that there are many different ways to approach it but that making errors does not mean you are not learning, trying, or improving, in turn, you are doing all of these.
Very interesting topic! Love the poster! Do you think that when students are forced to take a language (like for gen eds) they are less likely to remember topics than if they took a language because they genuinely want to learn that language? Would error generation increase when being forced to take a class?
Hi Rachel, thank you so much for your comment!! As for answering your question, I believe that students who are forced to take a language and are genuinely not interested in learning that language would be less likely to remember the words and topics they are taught. When someone is genuinely interested in learning a language it triggers their curiosity, which will help in learning. I also believe that the only way that error generation would increase in this case would be if the student is actually trying to participate in the error generation. For example, if the student was asked to make guesses as to what a word means and they just throw in a whole bunch of random letters, then we have reason to believe that they are not actively participating in error generation. When a student doesn’t actually perform the error generation then they won’t benefit from it.
The poster looks great! Learning a new language is thought to be fairly difficult by most people. This study used the German language, and I wonder if the study would yield the same results if another language was used! Do you believe a language that is very different from German would cause less retention?
Hey Shelby! You brought up a very good point! The study we attempted to replicate this study from actually used Swahili words, rather than German. In that study, they found significant results with error generation, unlike ours which were not significant. I believe this concept could be applied to any language and see similar results as well, whether hard or easy words are used. Thank you for your question!
This is very interesting! I have a minor in German and have found that error generation helped a lot when learning plural forms (which is a bit of a complex system). You didn’t find any effects in this study, but I wonder if you would be more likely to effects or an interaction if this study took place over a longer period of time and people had more experience with how the language works. Also, German is very interesting in how compound words are formed; maybe there would be more of an effect for this more specific domain of words when people have some German background, as a lot of these words don’t mean exactly what you would expect.
Hi all! Great presentation. I would think that curiosity would influence learning because if a person is interested in a topic, I would think that they would want to learn more about it and remember the information. The results of your study were very surprising to me as you found that inherent curiosity did not influence learning. My question is do you think that this goes beyond the scope of language learning? I, personally, think it would.
Interessant! Ein gutes experiment! I enjoyed reading your poster, and I really like the layout. A few thoughts I had while looking through your poster. Methods related questions include: Did people skip the demographic questions? It appears that you have demographics for only about 80-85% of your participants. Were the participants randomly assigned to groups? How long did the study take? You note that it may be that people were fatigued. How many people started the study, but didn’t complete it?
I’m assuming that your participants had no prior knowledge of the German language. can this error generation method for learning work if there is prior learning? For example, if I am learning German in the classroom and later take quizzes on vocabulary, will error generation help in that case rather than just trying to memorize the words that I’ve been exposed to?
What an interesting (and somewhat relatable) experiment! On a personal note, I took a language for two years that I was not very invested in. Any inherent curiosity I had at the beginning of the first semester quickly disappeared as time progressed.
I do have a question about “error generation.” I’m not very familiar with the term. Can error generation learning occur through other means such as watching a foreign movie and “guessing” about the translation of words or phrases that are spoken rather than written?
Great job!
Hi all! I really love how your poster looks and how you ties that in with the German. Do you think that the results would be different if you used a different language or would you get the same results?
Goodness, I truly enjoyed reading/hearing about your study! What an interesting topic to do an experiment on, and I found your poster and topic to be very engaging! In regards to your findings/implications, I truly do believe that potentially administering this in person in the future, your study may result in different findings. I find that I have a shorter attention span while using my phone/computer at home to study or learn, I have tons of distractions.