Tips for Teaching Manoeuvres

This week Blaine will be introducing tips for teaching manoeuvres to your pupils, when to starting to teaching them and what to teach.  Over the next few weeks Blaine will look at different manoeuvres and break these down into useful techniques that he has found to work well for his pupils.

More videos showing Blaine teaching real learners can be found at http://www.driving-instructor.tv/library/adis/teaching-real-learners

As always, please ask questions and leave your comments in the box at the bottom.

Video Transcription

Hi

Over the next few weeks I will look at teaching manoeuvres, why we teach them and how. I will go through all of the different manoeuvres and techniques that I use for each one.

The bottom line is that we teach manoeuvres because they are on the test but also I think that we teach them because it gives the pupils the skills required to control a car in a confined space using speed and steering if necessary for the manoeuvre.

I tend to start manoeuvres quite early on, even maybe on the first or second lesson. This might not be as a specific manoeuvre but I will be looking to do some straight reversing and then I would be looking at going into a parking bay. So I am not teaching reversing into a parking bay, I’m teaching very slow car with very quick steering and good observation. So we are just looking at turning left and right, judging when the car is straight as this is one thing pupils tend to have a little problem with and which way to steer when going backwards.

The golden rules I tend to use are that I want them to be looking out of the back when they are reversing and steering as pupils have a tendency to look at the steering wheel and look at the front. My experience of this is that if they do that they are going to steer the wrong way or the incorrect amount. So we start with some straight reversing with some steering up a car park using the lines of the parking bays to judge how straight they are steering. I think if you do this at the very early stages it helps with clutch control in general and it takes away the mystery of manoeuvres. I believe the long you leave it the more they think it is going to be difficult and build up a perception that as we are leaving this it must be very difficult. By doing the basics at the beginning you are hopefully illuminating those problems. Like I said, we are not doing a manoeuvre as a manoeuvre; we are just doing some reversing and steering.

When I start the reversing into a parking bay I like to cover this early on also as it gives skills to control the car early on. I will be covering the tips for control on other manoeuvres in my next blogs.

So if you don’t already, give it ago and see how it improves co-ordination and clutch control which are the most important things a learner can learn alongside observation which manoeuvres are all fantastic for.

Filed in: Teaching Learners
Tagged with: ADI • manoeuvres • PDI • teaching learners • techniques