Shannon Robertson

ENGL 255: Introductory Composition

June 09, 2020

Directional Process Essay: How to Improve Your Tennis Skills

The outbreak of the infectious coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has forced most people to stay

home for unusually long periods and has limited our social contact with others. The lack of social interaction

has given rise to increased stress and has taken a toll on people’s mental health (Kar et al. 199). One of the

best ways to decrease or relieve the burden stress can have on our health is to “get physical exercise” (200).

Improving a skill in a given sport can be a great form of physical activity. It can tremendously improve your

physical well-being but also aid in personal development and allow you to do something you enjoy. Tennis

is an excellent option since you can play with others while maintaining sufficient physical separation to

avoid close contact. It is also a relatively inexpensive sport requiring only a pair of racquets, tennis balls, and

a tennis court, which is usually free to use and can be abundantly found in cities and rural areas. Once you

have access to the items as mentioned earlier, it is highly recommended to follow these steps to improve

your tennis skills: watch videos on how to play tennis, practice on a wall and play with friends.

Improving your tennis skills requires you to engage in the process of learning, and according to

Willingham et al., “individuals think and learn best in different ways” (266). These different ways people

learn are known as learning styles (Csapo & Hayen, 129). The learning styles are categorized as visual,

auditory, kinesthetic (tactile) or a combination of the three styles (129). Online videos are both a visual and

auditory teaching medium that can cater to a broad audience of learners. Consequently, it is an excellent

resource to begin improving your tennis skills. Start with watching videos that describe rules of the game,

positions of play and the tennis court layout. Next, watch videos on how to properly grip a racquet, proper

stance and follow through for serving, forehand shots and backhand shots. After seeing how the experts are
positioned and how they play, you can get into the kinesthetic or tactile aspect of learning; start to practice.

Now that you have learned the rules of the game, how to perform different tennis shots properly and

have watched professionals demonstrate proper body mechanics, you must practice. This learning by doing

method is known as tactile learning. For any physical activity requiring the improvement of motor skills,

tactile learning is mandatory. One cannot become an expert at a given sport without practicing. You may be

in a position where you don’t quite yet feel comfortable competing against someone else, so it is

recommended that you practice on a non-judgemental and inanimate wall. It may not sound like fun, but

you can practice hitting the ball with the correct racquet position to place the ball where you intend for it to

go. Hitting the tennis ball against a wall can improve your lateral quickness, endurance, coordination,

precision and overall technique for playing tennis. A wall will always return your serve; however, it is

unforgiving in the fact that the way the ball rebounds off the wall is a direct reflection of how well you play

the game. The more you have to chase down the ball, the more you have to practice to improve your game.

Playing on a wall is part of the “guided response” stage of the psychomotor learning progressions involved

with learning motor skills and can be considered one of “the early stages in learning a complex skill that

includes imitation and trial and error” (Clark). Practicing on a wall can eventually progress you to a more

advanced stage of psychomotor learning and give you the confidence to challenge a friend or stranger to a

tennis match.

Finally, you have built up the confidence to play tennis with a friend. Now you can impress them

with the new skills you learned and build on those skills. You are currently in the “mechanism” or “basic

proficiency” progression of playing tennis, playing has now “become habitual, and the movements can be

performed with some confidence and proficiency” (Clark). With consistent practice playing and competing

with others, you can move on to the “complex overt response” or “expert” stage of playing tennis. In this

stage of learning, you can tell by the feel of hitting a tennis ball what the intended result will be (Clark). By
this point you can be considered a proficient tennis player; you can continue your progression to adapt your

game to your opponents’ playing styles in the psychomotor progression known as “adaptation” or even

reach the final outcome of psychomotor learning known as “origination”, a process in which you can create

new movement patterns or shots (Clark). In the final stage, your highly developed skills allow you to be

creative in your approach to the game. At this stage, you have mastered tennis and can consider teaching

others.

The tips provided to help you improve your tennis skills may have been an oversimplification, but

every skilled player had to start somewhere. Learning from the comfort of your couch by watching videos is

a start, going out and playing a wall by yourself may look silly, but it is an effective way of practicing until

your proficiency improves and you have the confidence to challenge another tennis player to a match. You

will have gone through all of the psychomotor learning progressions by the time you have mastered playing

tennis. Acquiring the ability to play tennis competitively is a labour intensive and time-consuming process

earned through practice and hard work. Still, the joy you get from learning something new and being good

at it is priceless. Now you can consider the learning process to have come full circle; the student has become

the master, and you can now teach others how to play.
 Works Cited

Clark, Don. “Bloom’s Taxonomy: The Psychomotor Domain.” 09 Jun. 1999,

http://www.nwlink.com/~donclark/hrd/Bloom/psychomotor_domain.html. Accessed 9

Jun. 2020.

Csapo, Nancy & Hayen, Roger. “The Role of Learning Styles in the Teaching/Learning

Process.” Issues in Information Systems, vol. 7, 2006, pp. 129-133.

Kar, Sujita Kumar et al.”Coping with Mental Health Challenges During COVID-19.”

Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19), Medical Virology: From Pathogenesis to

Disease Control, edited by Shailendra K. Saxena, Springer Singapore, 2020, pp. 199-213.