Commentary driving benefits
Commentary driving will help with your advanced training in three ways.
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It will help you to develop a selective system of hazard observation. This means that you will learn to better identify the critical hazards ahead.
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It will help with your planning of the drive as you consciously process critical information on the road ahead.
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It will help develop one of the most important skills of all required for giving practical tuition, i.e., the ability to communicate verbally with your pupils while the car is moving.
Thinking about teaching...
You may feel that the third point raised above is a little obvious and that you will have no problem communicating – after all, most of your pupils will speak the same language as you and have good hearing!
The truth is that many trainee driving instructors, perhaps most, have difficulty reading the road for their pupils and then conveying the information in a coherent manner; developing a good commentary will help you to eliminate this problem. With this in mind it's important to get as much practise as possible.
Your commentary driving projects
Your only task with regard to commentary driving at the moment, is to re-read this unit and make sure you understand what a commentary drive is and why it's important.
No commentary driving yet! You will start practising your commentary when you study the next section. Also be aware that if you do any Google searches for commentary videos you must remember that you will be watching experts - you will reach expert standard, but it takes a while. As with all learning take it easy and follow this course as directed for best results.
The commentary driving projects provided in this course are designed to develop your skills in a step-by-step manner. Each project requires you to drive for a fixed length of time giving a commentary to a specific set of guidelines.
A simple start (next section of the iCourse Driving)
This introduces basic 'bare bones' commentary and will help to develop your observation skills and to get your brain and mouth working together!
Developing your commentary (later)
Just as the title says, this project adds 'body' to the basic commentary that you will have practised.More advanced commentary (later)
This introduces 'full blown' commentary driving practise.
For maximum success, make sure that you can walk before you try to run!
As with much of the material in this guide the projects may initially seem very basic, but remember – If the foundations are not firmly in place the building will fall when the third floor is added! The reason that we keep repeating this message about learning 'step-by-step' is because it is so important.
If at any stage, as you work through i-Course Driving, you find that you can complete a commentary project easily, practise that aspect of commentary for a longer period rather than 'jumping forward'.
To get you started on thinking about commentary information and to revise/develop your knowledge of road markings the next page is a 'Road Markings' seminar.
Next: Road Markings...