Teaching Maneuvers

ozziecat35

ozziecat35

4 out of 5 great lakes prefer Michigan.
Looking for some help on how you guys learned to "talk through" maneuvers. I start a 15 day CFI course on Thursday and am looking for something to help help me transition from the "I just do it" mentality to actually being able to verbalize what's happening.

Thanks for any tips.
 
I just did my initial CFII yesterday, my advice is to talk about anything you touch or think of doing but watch what you're saying and use correct terminology.
 
Comes with practice, so going forward whether solo or working with an instructor just try to explain out loud everything your are doing, why you are doing it, what you are looking for (sight pictures), what you are planning to do (this helps the student learn to think ahead and be ready for what will happen in 30 seconds or 5 minutes).

I am a big fan of recording yourself. Pick up a cheap digital sound recorder and either use a spare headphone jack to input to your recorder (a short 1/4" guitar cable with a 1/4 female to 3.5mm male adapter) or you can pick up a small wired lapel mic and tape it inside your headphone earcup. What you think you say and portray are often very different from reality, so being able to critically assess yourself is really helpful in approving. The first few times you might think you sound really dumb and bumbly.. that's ok, that's the whole point of assessing and learning.

First just work on talking things through, especially the "why I'm doing what I'm doing" part. Then as that becomes more natural, start to work on brevity. Less is often more in a busy and stressful learning environment like a student pilot in the cockpit.
 
During CFI school, we're taught that talking through absolutely everything is a necessary. In the real world, that's not true at all. If you never stop talking, your student is going to get so overwhelmed, so fast. Talk about what's important, and nothing more.
 
I've just finished my course. "Keep It Simple Stupid" was hammered into us. Don't ramble on unnecessarily about things, just have a few key words and/or phrases for what you're doing and stick to them.

Verbal Diarrhoea = Bad. Confuses the poor student.OR, annoys them off depending on the content of what you're talking about. If the flight becomes a whiteboard briefing with wings and a larger price tag with very little practical value, they will probably either a) stuff up the objective of the lesson eg. consistently spiral dive in a steep turn because they are too preoccupied stressing that the stall speed is increased due to higher load factor because you talked about that for the last 15 minutes before arriving in the training area... Or b) find a new CFI because you're wasting their money repeating what you taught them in the ground session before you took off. (true story, I left my first CFI because all he was doing was repeating the ground class while airborne)
 
I find teaching the maneuvers to be easier than teaching the basics of how to fly the airplane. Once they have the basics down, you can more easily talk to the maneuvers. Always adhere to some form of you demonstrating up front: every maneuver I have simply tried to talk my students through for the sake of time has back-fired on me.

Once the student understands the basics, you can teach much without talking at all. Your students' ability to comprehend what you are saying will diminish as they get overloaded. A tap on the altimeter will make it obvious that you know the student is dropping the altimeter from their scan. A rolling motion with your hand can mean "more bank." A little wiggle of the right rudder, and the student will magically input more rudder. A wiggle of the aileron on taxi, and those cross-wind inputs will come to life. When teaching the pattern basics, I give the following instruction: "I want you to verbally accomplish the before landing checklist. If you turn final before accomplishing it, I will punch you in the shoulder." After a few shoulder punches, my students seem to religiously knock-out the before landing check-list.
 
I think my issue is confidence in my own knowledge. I'm a great teacher. I was teaching people who were scared of horses to ride when I was 12, so I know I have that ability. It's just I'm petrified of sounding like a tool because I can't recall some aviation knowledge I know I have and explain it.
 
ozziecat35 said:
I think my issue is confidence in my own knowledge. I'm a great teacher. I was teaching people who were scared of horses to ride when I was 12, so I know I have that ability. It's just I'm petrified of sounding like a tool because I can't recall some aviation knowledge I know I have and explain it.
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Practicing talking through the fundamentals helps. Often we know how to do things, but haven't thought out how to articulate the explanation. Sometimes we think we know things, but really lack some understanding. Practicing really helps with both.

When you're with students, having a good lesson plan helps a lot because you can mentally prepare yourself for the explanations, demonstrations, and anticipate common mistakes and questions. Preparation time can make you appear much more knowledgeable and professional than you are. At least, that's generally working for me and I dont know crap! :)

If you're with a student and blank out, tell them you'll try to think of a better way to explain it and get back to them (just be sure to actually follow up). Occasionally, admitting you dont know or dont have a great explanation, but are willing to work on it shows professionalism in my eyes. Of course, you cannot answer most questions that way, but best to be honest and work on a good answer than to give a flat out wrong answer or be dismissive of the question.
 
I'll agree with I find the basics harder than the more complex manoeuvres. What do you mean you cant trim for level properly? But getting them to do a glide approach into a small open paddock, piece of cake.
 
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