Learning front-crawl swimming by daily or weekly lesson schedules

The Modified Erbaugh Rating Scale-Front Crawl (MERS-F) (a rating scale for assessing stages of front-crawl swimming patterns) was used to measure performance change by 6-year-old male and female beginner swimmers participating in either 10 daily (Group D) or 10 weekly (Group W) lessons. The MERS-F was found to be a relatively objective (r = .98) and moderately valid (r = .78) assessment instrument. The maximal front-crawl skill rating of each lesson was subjected to a three-way ANOVA (Group x Gender x Lesson-repeated), which revealed that (a) the rate of improvement was the same for daily and weekly lesson schedules despite the higher performance rating for children in the daily lessons throughout; (b) front-crawl swimming skill increased significantly for both groups after the third of 10 lessons; and (c) there was no significant difference in the performance of boys and girls (p < .05).