learning from mistakes

[resilient]

although a simple question; what is the best way to learn from your mistakes?

[mayonnai5e]

It really isn't all that difficult in my opinion. The hard part is that you have to be willing to be self-critical and realize when what you were thinking was not right. It's pointless and a waste of time to try to argue you think the solution is incorrect.

The best way to spend that time and energy is to analyze the solution, determine the correct thought-path that would have led you to that solution, figure out what led you to the incorrect thought-path, and create lessons for yourself that will lead you, next time, to the correct solution-path. In other words, what did you do wrong, why you did it wrong, and how you are going to do it right next time. Now the implementation of all this....that's a whole different beast....

[Stacey Koprince]

Also, keep a list of problem you do - in a notebook, in an Excel file, whatever.

Every time you make a mistake, make a note of exactly why you made the mistake (didn't know the content? forgot something? calculated incorrectly? made a careless mistake? read the question wrong? and on and on).

Once you know why you made a mistake, you can come up with a plan for what practices / habits to implement to minimize the chances that you'll make that same kind of mistake in future. But you can't do that until you know what's causing your mistakes!

[resilient]

right now i am having problems in the subject verb agreement area. I seem to make most mistakes there. I just finished the complete book for manhattan gmat sentence correction in about three days and am nice and prepped but very tired..lol ANother weakness I have is multiple rules being tested in each sentence. I usually lose because I forgot to look at the other section being tested in the sentence.
What should I do from here?

[Stacey Koprince]

There are almost always multiple rules being tested in a single sentence, so know that from the start. Deal with the original sentence first - if you can find any errors there, cross off A and also cross off any choices that repeat the exact same error.

Once you've exhausted any errors you spot in the original sentence, compare the remaining choices, but compare them VERTICALLY - that is, look for differences in the same parts of each answer choice. The differences tell you what the potential errors might be (though sometimes a difference doesn't actually indicate an error). Start with whatever differences you know are errors and, specifically, start with whichever difference you feel most confident about. Keep doing this till you have only one choice left.

For the subj-verb errors, as I mentioned before, figure out WHY you're making the mistakes you make. Then you can actually figure out how to combat those mistakes.

[resilient]

I do have one more question. I have sentence correction and reading comprehension in my pocket because of your help. I am devoting a good 10 more days to totally understand SC. I have been studying for months and want to finish this. Taking your advice, I am spending the day going over every single mistake and nit picking all mistakes. Also I am going to play the game of fining the wrong answers. this works great because once I learned the wrong answers the rest was easy. IN addition to all of this, I am going through some grammar lessons too. Your suggestions welcome. Studying hard but studying smarter, I will prevail.

p.s. I am learning because in my last sentence to you "studying hard b ut studying harder" modified phrase and "I" the correct antecedent.

thank you for all your help

[Stacey Koprince]

Excellent - that sounds like a good plan for SC!