INTENSIVE BASIC SWIMMING COURSES AND THEIR EFFECT ON CHILDREN´S SWIMMING LITERACY

Abstract

The main aim of the research is to determine the effect of a 5-day-long intensive swimming course on swimmingliteracy for pupils from elementary school. We used a set of four tests of basic swimming skills for establishingthe input and output levels of their swimming skills, which were point-rated and ranked according to theirdifficulty. Pupils attended the swimming course 5 days in a row, each day for 45 minutes and each hour had itsown goals and content. We tested 60 pupils from elementary school with an average age of 9 years. Monitoredchanges in pupils' swimming literacy according to the evaluation scales are compared statistically by Chiquadrate. For the evaluation of practical significance we used the effect size Cramer´s φc (10 small effect size, .30medium effect size, .50 large effect size). By comparison of changes in the input and output results we found thatour tested probands achieved in the output testing reveal statistically significant better results in comparisonwith input testing in each test of basic swimming skills. We consider that the response to a short intensiveswimming course, where pupils were in everyday contact with the water and their instructor, is significantaccording to the results and it can be regarded as a useful tool for the development of children´s basic swimmingliteracy