June 2006 -- Question: Although I have played tennis my whole life, I am a relatively new teaching professional. I’ve read a lot about how people learn differently, but I really don’t know where to start. Can you shed some light on this?
Answer: First, let me commend you on a very profound question. It would be very easy, as a new teacher to the game, to want to be the most knowledgeable, the best communicator, the most savvy as a player, the most technical, etc. All of these attributes deal with “I.” You are starting out your career with a question that is totally student oriented, which is very impressive. Having said all that, I must be honest and say it would take a book to answer the umbrella question of how people learn. I will try to summarize this, but I do recommend that you quench your thirst for understanding your students by studying some books on motor learning or by attending USPTA specialty courses in this area so you can directly ask some of the same questions of our Association’s best minds in this field.
Generally, people arrive at our tennis facilities with a combination of three different learning styles. Although everyone learns through all three methods, many have a predominant style of learning from which they improve most effectively. These learning types are visual, kinesthetic and auditory. The predominant mode of learning is visual. This means you, as the teacher, would demonstrate what is to happen, and then let your student try to mimic the movement. The second learning type is kinesthetic, or feeling what they should be doing. In the kinesthetic mode, the students actually experience the action to take place. You might position their volley grip properly and let them “feel” the angle of their wrist or the exact hand positioning at ball impact. The third style is auditory, whereby the student hears the information and then attempts to perform the action.
The question now becomes what method to use. This depends totally on you and your student. I would recommend that you, as a beginning teacher, develop a basic model of teaching from which to work. Then, vary your style as needed. Over your career, you will likely find that a combination of all three learning styles creates the most benefit for the student. However, you will have to work from your “sweet spot” as well as from the perspective of how your student learns most effectively. For example, you will have some students who want all the sport science information you can dish out. The more technical and the more detail, the better for them. Then, there will be other students who don’t care about the technical stuff and just want to learn how to finish points more effectively. You must learn how to quickly decide what type of learner you have in front of you and how to best work with that player. This will develop with experience.
As you continue studying how people learn and adapt your teaching to various learning patterns, be aware that you will have to develop teaching cues that will help your students acquire the skills they need. These cues may or may not be scientifically correct but will serve to give your students a “picture” of what they need to do. For example, you might tell a player, when overhitting their one-handed backhand, to point a line at the ball with their shoulders and “fix” the front shoulder just before impact. They will never truly stop the shoulder rotation but this “cue” might help them control the motion, thus allowing them to hit a better one-handed backhand. These cues can be applied to all learning styles.
Regardless of a student’s learning preference, it is important that you remain flexible in your instructional style and always be ready to change what you are doing. To get a clear picture of this, let’s look at a couple of learning models.
Input-Processing-Output: You give the student input (telling him to “hit your volley like this”), the student processes what you have said/done/shown, and then gives you an output by trying it. This is the part that will give you trials as a teacher. People “process” things differently, based on parental upbringing, the environment, peer pressure, etc. Often, the output is nowhere near what you meant or what you said when you began the instruction. You must give specific feedback that the student can process further and then watch the output again. This model of input-processing-output will demand very specific feedback to be successful. You may have to try numerous teaching methods and drills before something works for your student but, when the correct output occurs (the volley hit correctly), you and your student will have reason to celebrate.
How people break and improve habits: A common question is: Why is the learning process sometimes difficult? Learning theory can take us into the ways people journey through skill progression. One accepted theory has people going through four stages:
- Unconscious incompetence – This is when the student is doing something incorrectly but doesn’t realize that he is doing it. Videotaping a poor stroke could create the learning tool for the student to “see” what is wrong and bring it to awareness in his mind.
- Conscious incompetence – Here the student knows what is wrong and understands that it is incorrect, but hasn’t been able to change it yet. This is where your teaching comes in. You must create the mechanisms by which she can begin new movements to improve the mechanics.
- Conscious competence – Now the student is working to improve the stroke and knows what to do in a particular situation. It might be a struggle but, as long as he keeps it front and center in his mind, and is intent on performing the new skill, he is “rewiring” how to do it correctly.
- Unconscious competence – The student has been doing it consciously for a while and now the movement takes place naturally and without thought. It is now a part of her repertoire of strokes.
In summary, teaching is a wonderful profession. It is a gift to be able to help people improve at whatever they are striving to achieve. It is easy to get frustrated and sometimes uncomfortable when teaching if the student’s “output” is not what you desire. However, that also is the beauty of teaching. If you are challenged by the learning phenomenon, and you examine it from a positive perspective, the student and you benefit. Don’t let these challenges frustrate you as you develop in our great profession. I congratulate you again on your decision to become a tennis-teaching professional.
Send questions to jgroppel@LGEPerformance.com.
