Swimming

Last year my daughter Rosie learnt to swim. No, that’s wrong; she didn’t learn, she decided to swim. It was weird, the process took no more than a moment. What happened was this: she was sitting on the side of the pool with her towel wrapped around her, dripping and shivering and watching a friend, Carmen, kick her way unaided from her mum to the side of the pool. Rosie dumped her towel, pulled off her armbands and jumped in. We were given no warning. Despite a total lack of technique –she swam like a spermatozoa or a deformed tadpole- there was no doubt about it, she was swimming. Within an hour she’d demonstrated rudimentary breathing techniques, crawl, doggie paddle as well as fearless underwater skills. It was like a switch had been flicked. We were amazed.

What is the key to success in Rosie learning to swim so fast? Well, she might have watched Carmen carefully in order to know what to do, but I’m not sure that instruction or demonstration were so important. For me the keys were:

motivation – Rosie could see the advantages in being able to swim without aids such as independence, speed and especially, being a big girl.

fearlessness – Rosie wasn’t afraid of the risks involved (such as drowning!)

decisiveness – Rosie saw the process not as a long hard climb to achievement but as a decision to make: Am I going to do it or not?

Some of my students speak English like this. They don’t paddle around the shallow end with their armbands on or just dip their toes in the water, they leap into the deep end. I’m not talking about any particular level: I know some elementary students aged 8 or 9 who speak English fearlessly and I know upper intermediate adults who hardly say anything in English. The advantages the real English swimmers have are precisely those that Rosie showed that day at the pool. They are motivated by English and you can see that they enjoy getting wet; they are also unafraid of drowning and accept that learning means getting lungfulls of water from time to time.

Most important though, is that switch. They made a decision to swim unaided because they know that for some things you can only learn by doing.