I know I wrote a couple of posts a while ago concerning the issue of teaching Karate and I breifly mentioned this technique in one of them, however I didn't go in to detail about it. Probably because I hadn't realised or appreciated how effective it was because of the amount of teaching experience I had at the time. I feel that any other karateka who, like myself, aren't very expeienced teachers might find it useful.
To an extent, this will sound blindingly ovbious, but when you're actually having to teach, as somebody lacking in experience, it isn't like that at all. An effective technique for teaching Karate one to one is, instead of just telling the student what to do all the time, discuss their training with them and ask them some questions about it, ( "How d'you think that went?", " what d'you struggle with in this partcular technique/kata?" etc...) .
This means that, for a start, it's much easier to find out what the student is like as a karateka which can be important to bear in mind when teaching them. It also means that you can identify their weak areas more quickly and effectively so you find the right things to work on with them sooner and the student makes more progress as a result.
Discussing it with them also means that they are encouraged to look at their own training and think for themselves and they get and feel taken seriously as a karateka, therefore they are more likely to have the right attitude to training, make progress and not give up easily if they're dealt with like they're capable of doing those things. I remember my Sensei mentioning once or twice that he taught every student as if they were going to reach 10th Dan- this could've been what he meant by it. I think this effect that discussing stuff is particularly effective with children, although I've never taught any adults one to one. But I do think, that in many societies and cultures, childern are often talked down to and generally looked down on, so if that's what they're used to, then they're, as Karateka, going to have that mindset that they get from being looked down on in society in training: that they're incapable and that their thoughts and opinions aren't important. I know not all readers will neccsarrily agree with me, but I think that children can be perfectly capable karateka and gain a lot from training.They can't do this if they're not taken seiously in training, even if the rest of society dosen't do the same thing. Infact, the opinion of any student of any age is important to me if I end up asking them what they find difficult about a certain technique/kata to pinpoint what to work on, without it, the efficiency of my teaching would decrease significantly. Or worse, it would have a negatve impact on the rest of their training because they get the idea that they're incapable as Karateka, so they act like it.
For me, as an inexperienced teacher, asking the student questions instead of telling them what to do all the time really takes the pressure off one to one teaching because the focus isn't on me all the time. Besides, it takes expeience to confidently tell people what to do, even if it is counter-productive in the context of teaching karate, so I also avoid showing my inexpeience so I feel a bit less like a fool(!!) and my decrased discomfort and nervousness mean that I'm able to give better feedback to the student . Finally, if a student is respected, not just as a karateka, but as a person they are more likely to return that respect.
I'm aware a great deal of this is in theory, and you've probably thought up at leat one exception or 'what-if ' by now about this approach to one to one teaching, which I will talk about in my next post. It's true that often in this post I am just speculating, rather than speaking from experience about the effects that it might have, however, in my, at this point in time, relatively short experience of teaching karate, this approach has never had a negative effect.
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