Last Updated6 June 2023

Effective Communication will cover the ways that you can be an effective communicator. Learn some important communication tools, discover different styles of communication, and delve deeper into different feedback and questioning tools that a ski instructor can use.

Feedback

Feedback is essential for learning to take place. Throughout the process of discovering new skills, your students are engaged in feedback. This can be from the interaction with snow and the environment, with you the teacher, participation with other students in the class, or internal dialogue.

To simplify, feedback can be broken into three categories:

Intrinsic, Extrinsic & Augmented Feedback

Intrinsic Feedback

This is feedback that comes from within a student, from their sensory perception and proprioceptive pathways during movement. It is important for both the instructor and the student to be aware that this is happening whenever skiing or practising a movement. The more aware students are of their own performance, the better and faster they will become at learning. A responsibility of an instructor is to help students develop an awareness of, and accurate ability to interpret intrinsic feedback.

Extrinsic Feedback

This is feedback that comes from an external source. In ski teaching this often comes directly from the teacher to the student. Extrinsic feedback can also be feedback gained from observing, or talking to a fellow student. It can also be the use of video. Extrinsic feedback is good to help create a mental picture of the task.

Augmented Feedback

Augmented means to make something greater, larger, or more complete. This means that augmented feedback represents a collaboration between the instructor and the student. In this form of feedback, the instructor adds to and adjusts information that the student perceives about their experience performing or understanding the task.

This collaboration generally starts when the instructor asks a question that incites conversation about what is to be learned. Since augmented feedback is collaborative it involves the student’s understanding and/or awareness, it engages the student in critical thought and experimentation.

This type of exchange has the most potential to create lasting change in performance. See the Seek-Give-Seek feedback model.

Positive & Negative Feedback

When considering the form your feedback delivery takes, one of the most desirable traits is that it should be positive. Think of the positivity of your feedback as a spectrum or a scale. At one end you have positive and the other you have negative.

It’s possible to present any type of feedback in both a positive and negative way. Empathy is a great way to identify where on this spectrum your feedback lies.

Ask yourself: “How would I feel with that feedback? Would I feel good and happy with it or would it make me feel inadequate or less than average?”

Initial & Delayed Feedback

Timing is everything! This expression is highly relevant to delivering feedback, especially in the sporting world. There are two types of feedback relative to timing: initial and delayed.

Initial feedback occurs as soon as your student has finished their performance or upon completion of a task. This could be when your student has stopped sliding or even when a particular movement within their riding is complete. Often, when initial feedback is offered it’s very easy for your student to attach it to sensations, responses in their snowboard and, hopefully, recent successes.

Delayed feedback occurs when there is a period of time between skill execution and delivery of feedback. Depending on this delay your student may not remember the situation you are offering feedback for. It’s possible to cause confusion between some similar situations your student may have experienced and worse still, the feedback now has no relevance due to the natural progression of your student.

Much of your time as an instructor will be spent learning, practising and refining how to construct your feedback in order to deliver it to your students with optimal effect. The art of feedback delivery can take time to craft. Start exploring and experimenting with more feedback types outside of this manual and allow yourself to become more creative with your choices to influence the overall sense of achievement that can be enjoyed within your lessons.

One of the most effective ways to practise delivering feedback is to consider how you receive feedback when you are the student. Receiving feedback can challenge the recipient in many ways. It may shatter confidence and trust or it could build abilities and overall stoke. As a recipient of feedback you can’t do much about the delivery but you can always consider ways in which it could have been phrased more appropriately to suit your needs.

Remember, however, that when receiving feedback the underlying intention is for a positive end result in order to progress and develop.

Feedback – Checking For Understanding

Checking for understanding is when the instructor receives feedback from the student to gain a clear picture of the student’s level of understanding. The instructor uses this feedback to assess the student’s ability to repeat the performance away from the lesson situation or to move on to new information.

This process requires the use of a number of senses including:

Observe

The instructor can watch students perform the task and evaluate the level of understanding by their performance. It is important not to depend solely on this evaluation to determine the student’s understanding because they may mimic a task but have insufficient understanding to repeat the manoeuvre.

Ask

The instructor needs to ask open questions that require a detailed answer and promote conversation. By asking students to describe what is happening or what they are doing and feeling allows an assessment of the students’ understanding.

Listen

The instructor needs to listen carefully to answers to questions. Descriptions that students provide often identify the cause of a problem a student is experiencing. Listening carefully to the student at all times during the lesson will provide the instructor with feedback, even when a question is not being specifically asked, e.g. a student could complain about cramp under the foot. This could indicate that they are not balanced effectively along the length of the ski.

The Role of Feedback in the Learning Process

A vital component when a new skill is being developed is for the learner to know how their performance compares to the desired outcome. In order for this to be achieved the learner needs feedback. This can come in many forms and can vary in depth and detail depending on the learner, e.g. in a first lesson it could be as simple as an encouraging “Yes that’s it!” from the instructor. Or it could be a detailed analysis of a specific movement in a specific part of the turn.

As the instructor listens to their student and gains experience, they will develop a feel for what level of feedback their students need. Too much information for a new learner can be overwhelming and not enough information can be frustrating if the learner isn’t getting that picture of their current performance. Either way, the feedback allows the learner to key into their current performance so that they can either make a change to their performance or repeat the performance to develop that skill.