skill acquisition

• Motor or movement skill


  An action or task that has a goal and that requires voluntary body and/or limb movement to achieve the goal and is learned rather than being innate
• Continuity of skills


  • Discrete
  • Serial
  • Continuous
• Organisation of skills


  • High organisation
  • Low organisation
• Skilled performers perform with seemingly effortless way
• Motor or movement skill


  An action or task that has a goal and that requires voluntary body and/or limb movement to achieve the goal
• Skilled performers know what they are trying to achieve and are often successful
• Beginners/novices seem clumsy, slow, and lack control, tire quickly and expend more energy than necessary
• Skills cannot be neatly labelled, best analysed using a scale or continuum
• Factors affecting motor skills

  • Precision of movement
  • Definite beginning and end
  • Environmental effects
• Simple skills


  Straightforward with hardly any judgements and decisions to make
• Complex skills


  Involve many decisions to make
• Complex skills


  • Slip catch in cricket, pass by a midfield player in hockey
• Simple skills


  • Sprint start in swimming
• Environmental influence on skills

  • Open skills (affected by environment, predominantly perceptual)
  • Closed skills (not affected by environment, predominantly habitual)
• Pacing of skills


  • Self-paced (performer controls rate)
  • Externally paced (environment controls rate)
• Self-paced skills


  • Javelin throw
• Externally paced skills


  • Receiving a serve in badminton
• Muscular involvement in skills

  • Gross skills (large muscle movements, not very precise)
  • Fine skills (small muscle movements, high precision)
• Gross skill


  • Shot-put
• Fine skill


  • Snooker shot
• Continuity of skills


  • Discrete (clear beginning and end)
  • Serial (several discrete elements in a sequence)
  • Continuous (no obvious beginning or end)
• Discrete skill


  • Penalty flick in hockey
• Serial skill


  • Triple jump
• Continuous skill


  • Cycling
• Organisation of skills


  • High organisation (sub-routines difficult to separate)
  • Low organisation (sub-routines easily identified)
• High organisation skill


  • Dribbling the ball in basketball
• Low organisation skill


  • Tennis serve
• Types of skills


  • Individual (no interaction with others)
  • Coactive (interaction with others but no direct opposition)
  • Interactive (direct interaction and opposition with others)
• Individual skill


  • Netball catch
• Interactive skill


  • Hockey penalty flick
• Sub-routines


  The elements or components that make up a skill
• Task analysis involves understanding what needs to be taught in a detailed way to develop a plan
• Task analysis can reveal the specific abilities required for a particular skill and the sub-routines that make up the skill
• Task analysis can help identify why a particular movement is not being fully executed and develop a strategy to eliminate the problem
• Knowing how to classify skills

  • Helps to decide on the type of teaching/learning strategies that will optimise performance
  • Might be appropriate to split a skill up into its component parts (its sub-routines) if it is serial in nature
  • Might be appropriate to build strength of large muscles if the skill is predominantly gross in nature
  • Knowledge of the perceptual requirements of a skill will help the performer to take in the correct amount and type of information so that there is no attentional wastage
• Closed skills


  Skills where the environment is constant, so they are better practised repetitively so that the skills become almost automatic
• Open skills


  Skills where the environment is changing, so a variety of situations should be experienced so that the performer can create a number of different strategies to cope with the changing nature of the environment
• Discrete skills


  Skills that are better taught as a whole rather than splitting them up into sub-routines
• Serial skills


  Skills that are better taught by breaking them down into sub-routines, with each sub-routine learned fully before the skill is practised as a whole
• Continuous skills


  Skills that are more effectively practised as a whole so that the kinaesthetic sense of the movement can be retained and the performer can feel the 'true nature' of the skill