The Efficacy of Using Learning Cues to Teach Children Perform the Backhand

Abstract

Attention is very important for learning. Children are known for not paying much attention due to lack of selective attention resources. Selective attention is the ability to direct the attentional focus to a specific point in the environment, in order to pay attention to what is relevant (Ladewig et all, 2001). One way to assist children to pay more attention while teaching a task, is by using cues, that are one or two words, short phrases, with higher meaning to the learner. The objective of the current study was to test the efficacy of the cues, while school children performed the backhand. The statistical results of the retention test have shown, after 20 days rest without any practice, very high levels of significance in favor of the cue group, which was even able to increase the mean average from the post-test. On the other hand, children that did not receive cues had a decrease in performance in all six technical factors, from the post-test to the retention. In conclusion, the use of learning cues was very effective in assisting children to learn the backhand. Future research must continue to explore the use of cues, while teaching different motor skills in different contexts.