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Applied Academics
Tee Time |
Golf Club Pro
Technical and Professional Communications 12 |
Lesson Idea by: John Mutter, The Gateway Community Learning Centre
School District #83 (North Okanagan-Shuswap)
Being a great golfer is a critical part of being a golf club professional, or "pro." Yet there's more to the job than playing golf all day. Many employers want their golf pros to have excellent business, management and communication skills.
"Beyond management, communication is probably the most important part of our role because we're dealing with a service-oriented business," says Ryan Webber, a golf pro at Arbutus Ridge Golf & Country Club in Cobble Hill, B.C. "Trying to communicate our ideas and goals is very important in our industry."
Golf pros communicate both in person and on paper.
"We send out a six-page club newsletter once a month to all our members, and it communicates upcoming events and changes that the club may be going through," he says. "The newsletter is probably our most effective means of communicating to our membership." The club also holds membership meetings three times a year, where members can bring up concerns and get answers from club managers.
Golf pros also teach golf lessons, either to groups or individuals. In this case, the main means of communication is verbal.
Golf pros must be versatile in their teaching methods because they have to teach people of different ages and skill levels. Some students have never even picked up a club, while others have played for years.
"If you're teaching a class of children, you would explain something to them in an entirely different way than you would to an adult," says Webber. "Or, you would outline techniques in a different way for a beginning golfer than for a more experienced one."
If you're hooked up to the Internet, visit the following Web site for news on the golfing industry, instruction tips and discussion groups.
GolfWeb - Everything Golf on the World Wide Web
www.golfweb.com/
You're a golf pro, and you're teaching some basic golf skills to a group of children between eight and 10 years of age.
Your first lesson deals with gripping a golf club correctly. How would you teach these children how to do this in a way that they can understand?
Brainstorm with your classmates about ways to teach the children. Write down your suggestions.
One way of planning presentations is known as the CMAP strategy. The letters stand for content, message, audience and purpose.
The idea is to match the message of a presentation to the interaction between context, audience and purpose.
Context - anything that might influence audience response
Message - precise details to get the job done
Audience - primary and secondary
Purpose - immediate, mid-range and long-term
In planning a presentation using the CMAP strategy, begin by identifying the obvious context, basic message, immediate audience and primary purpose. Then consider the audience and their goals to determine precisely what information they need or want from you in order to act.
To help determining the CMAP, ask yourself the following questions:
Context - anything that might influence audience response
- Is this message independent or the beginning, middle or end of a longer process?
- What is your relationship to this audience? First contact or established association?
- Degree of familiarity? How formal or informal is the setting?
- Do you have any competition - past, present or future?
- Is the audience expecting to hear from you?
Message - precise details to get the job done
- What is the basic message of this document or presentation? (Say this with an action statement)
- Should a secondary message be included? Stated explicitly or implied? Why?
- Given the audience and the context, how should you word the purpose and action statements?
- What precise amounts, dates, times, etc. will this audience need or want before they act on your message?
- What's the core message? Are any secondary messages required?
- What explanations will help improve the audience's understanding?
- What details would best be presented as graphics, figures or tables?
Audience - primary and secondary
- Who is your primary audience? (Focus on it.) Who else is likely to see this message, now or later? Consequences?
- What does your audience already know about this matter? Need to know? Want to know? How technical or specialized?
- How will your audience benefit from this message? How can you make this benefit clear to them in the message?
Purpose - immediate, mid-range and long-term
- What do I want your audience to do or think immediately after receiving this document or presentation?
- How do you want the audience to respond over the next few months?
- What do you want from the audience in the next few years?
- Are you informing, persuading, explaining, advising, recommending, evaluating, describing, proposing or doing something else?
- Why is this message needed? Now? Are deadlines involved? If so, have you specified them?
Now, back to your group of eight to 10 year olds.
Answer each of the applicable questions in each of the Context, Message, Audience and Purpose sections. When you have a list of your answers, you will develop a "start up statement" to guide you through the development of your presentation. This device is called a "CMAP Statement" and it looks like this:
I am speaking to (audience) to tell (audience) that (the basic message in one phrase) in order to get (audience) to (purpose stated as action) given these circumstances (setting and environmental influences).
CMAP Instructional Strategy was developed by David Wiens,
Kwantlen University College, British Columbia. © 1998
You are operating a holiday golf camp for families. You know that children and adults learn in different ways, so you have divided your group into four age groups: eight to 10, 11 to 15, 16 to 18, and adults. You will be making a presentation on the basics of putting to each of the groups. Then, you'll ask them to do a variety of practice drills. Your presentation will include instruction on putting grips, posture, alignment and basic stroke.
Create a CMAP statement for two of the four age groups showing how you would customize the instruction to meet the different audiences.
Solution to Practice
| This is one possible CMAP statement for the example in the Learn section:
"I am speaking to a group of 8 to 10 year olds to tell them that they need to "Stand to the Handle" in order to develop proper body and ball alignment positions for all regular golf shots with all woods and irons."
("Stand to the Handle" means to line up the golf club shaft, using the butt of the club as a guide, by pointing it at your belly button or belt buckle.)
Here is how the golf pro would handle the group. As an experienced pro, Webber doesn't have to formalize a CMAP statement with every group. He must, however, think about the best way to convey his message before he actually starts to teach.
"What I try to do with kids is use teaching aids," says Webber. "If I had a child who wanted to learn a grip, he wouldn't have the attention span that an adult would. It would be quite boring for him to go through the fundamentals of how to grip a golf club. What I would do is try to make it as fun as possible and use different kinds of teaching aids that would be interesting."
Webber relies on some specific items as teaching aids, including a 'form' that forces your fingers to clasp the golf club with the correct grip.
"Teaching aids establish the proper motion and proper set up and grip just by holding the club."
Other ideas you could use to teach children include:
- Show them illustrations of the skill
- Use different teaching drills that make it more interesting
- Hold a contest and award appealing prizes;
- Videotape the children practising, then play the tape back to them
"Kids like to see themselves on TV. So, I videotape each one of them for five minutes, and then we show it back to them afterwards. We can show them what they're doing wrong, but most of the time, they lose interest in that," Webber says.
Webber rarely shows video taped instructions, because children don't understand what the teacher is saying on the tape as it relates to them.
"If you talk to them on the same level as an adult, you'll lose them. It's very important that you keep their interest level up." |
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