English Chess Forum

Can anyone advise how we can furnish some of our stronger club players with coaching skills? That is to say, how we can equip them to be effective in instructing adult novice players? I know people become coaches, but where do they acquire the skills set to impart their knowledge?

Rather to my surprise the ECF has no guidance to offer.

PB

Paul Buswell wrote:Can anyone advise how we can furnish some of our stronger club players with coaching skills? That is to say, how we can equip them to be effective in instructing adult novice players? I know people become coaches, but where do they acquire the skills set to impart their knowledge?

John Littlewood wrote a handy book, titled "Chess Coaching," some twenty or twenty-five years back. I found it useful. Other than that, make a list of what's to be taught -- tactics, endgames, mating patterns, and so on, and how it's to be taught. Not that difficult to do.

Make the novices play games and every time they lose a piece, or even a pawn, unintentionally then it counts as a loss. One of the worst habits beginners have is of making completely random aimless moves that frequently lose material - that is the first thing that needs to be drilled into them so that they can play properly.

Paul Buswell wrote:Rather to my surprise the ECF has no guidance to offer.

I'm staggered by that. Have you contacted Andrew Martin?

Thanks gentlemen....

Arshad: thanks for the tips - but "how it's to be taught" is, I think, far easier said than done - I don't think pedagogical skills are innate.

Joey: I defer to anyone with practical experience but instinctively I can think of few things more likely to annoy and thus lose the adult novice.

David: yes, of course

PB

Paul Buswell wrote:Arshad: thanks for the tips - but "how it's to be taught" is, I think, far easier said than done - I don't think pedagogical skills are innate.

You may be right. This was your question:

I know people become coaches, but where do they acquire the skills set to impart their knowledge?

Part of being a teacher is innate, unfortunately. Take the worthy Richard James. He has a knack for it. One aspect of it is patience. Another a willingness to prepare teaching materials and organise a course of instruction. Most people don't have it. Assuming they have this, then some books come in handy. Like Littlewood's "Chess Coaching," Tony Gillam's "Simple Checkmates," and Ivashchenko's "Manual of Chess Combinations." In addition to the teacher, the student has to be there. If these are adult students, they'll probably start disappearing after two or three visits, when they see that serious work is required to learn the game.

Arshad Ali wrote: Part of being a teacher is innate, unfortunately. Take the worthy Richard James. He has a knack for it.

That's very kind of you, Arshad, but I don't think I really have a knack for teaching at all.

All I have is an ability to relate to children and an ability to organize things fairly efficiently. There's a (rather unusual) philosophy underlying everything I do which I'll write about in more detail sometime, somewhere.

Actually, being a teacher (of a class) and being a tutor (of an individual) are very different jobs requiring very different skill sets. I have the skill set for the latter, at least up to a point, but not really for the former. I did very little teaching at RJCC: our success was very much due to the way the club was organized. There's also a very big difference between teaching, or rather, tutoring, a young beginner, an ambitious teenager and an inexperienced adult.