12.2
MAKING MISTAKES
118
LISTENING
1
Work with a partner. What are the main reasons
why people make mistakes? Make a list.
2
a
12.1
Listen to three extracts from people who
have made mistakes. Which of the reasons you
thought of in Exercise 1 are mentioned?
2
b
Listen to the extracts again. Take notes about each
speaker under the following headings:
• Mistake
• Cause
• Result
3
Comparing and contrasting
Discuss these questions
in small groups.
1
What are the reasons why these three people made
mistakes?
2
Do you think that people make mistakes for the
same reasons?
READING
4
a
Read the text and match one of the three causes of
mistakes mentioned in the text (bad technology, bad
information, bad decisions) with each speaker from
Exercise 2.
4
b
Read the text again. Look at the summary
statements of the main ideas below and match them
with the correct paragraphs.
1
Our brains are not to blame.
2
We see what we expect to see.
3
New technology causes new problems.
4
People used to think that someone’s physical
features were a cause of crime.
5
Our brains are not accurate processors.
6
New research ends an old debate.
4
c
Which reason in the text do you think is the most
common cause of mistakes?
WHY DO WE MAKE
MISTAKES?
When computers first became
popular, many English teachers
complained about spellcheck
because they thought it would
make us lazy when reading through
our homework. Now we are in
the age of auto correct, which is
so annoying that there are several
websites for people to complain
about it.
But while it’s easy to find fault
with technology, it’s easy to forget
that there is always one imperfect
processor at the centre of all our
communications: the human brain.
In fact, you could say that the
brain is the original auto correct.
Our brains are always receiving
messages from the world around us
and changing it a little. For example,
each of us has a blind spot in our
vision where the optic nerve passes
through the retina. However, no
one notices this gap because our
brains fill in the missing information.
When it comes to reading, we’re
likely to see whatever we expect to
read and we tend to ignore things
that don’t meet that expectation.
This can be a big problem for
people who are paid to find
mistakes in text, such as editors
and proofreaders. It’s not enough
to have a good understanding of
grammar; editors need to find ways
to stop themselves reading a text
like normal people. But because
there is no single method that will
catch every mistake, editors have to
use a variety of unusual techniques.
For many years, experts have
debated whether we make
bad decisions because of faulty
information or if mistakes are
the result of the brain using that
information incorrectly. For
example, someone might make
a bad choice when choosing a
hotel because the brochure was
misleading or because they couldn’t
remember which hotel seemed to
be the best. Now new research
from Princeton University suggests
that we make mistakes because of
‘noisy’ information travelling to the
brain.
In tests they have discovered that
the internal processing inside the
brain is extremely efficient and
there are no noticeable problems.
On the other hand, they observed
that the way the brain receives
information is very messy. So
messy, in fact, that we are all
guaranteed to make mistakes from
time to time.
