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How To Teach Go / Proposed Outline
Sub-page of HowToTeachGo
This topic is currently under discussion. Jared proposed this outline for a topic about new players (newcomers, curious cats and children), but after adding a chapter or two on teaching intermediate players it can turn into a good outline for HowToTeachGo in general.
1. The First Lesson1.1. Which concepts are absolutely neccesary to start playing go?
1.2. Which concepts are advanced / semi-optional?
1.3. Which concepts are completely optional?
2. Teaching Style2.1. In which order should concepts be introduced?2.2. Should the "capture game" be used?2.3. How should the lesson be kept fun and interesting?
3. Different Students3.1. Teaching Go to Childrenamadis: I would like to organize a go afternoon for children, but the idea is a bit terrifying. Any advice from people who are experienced at teaching go to kids? How would you organize such an event? 3.2. Introducing Go to Curious People
3.3. How should teaching be adjusted to the student?
Dieter: Let me add a few notes on How to teach in general. First, you have to set goals for your teaching. Who's the audience? What are they expecting from the lectures? What do you intend to teach them? How to teach Go largely depends on whether your trainees are newbies, beginners, children, passers-by on a Games Exposition, or one single dedicated student. Second, you have to explore the available resources. What material do you have/need? How frequently will you teach? How many auxiliary teachers will be present? What are the qualities of the teachers? Third, you have to take the human nature into account. Attention span decreases with the number of people present and with time. People learn more by doing something than by showing it to them. The levels of understanding are: accepting, understanding and performing. Many lectures get stuck at the acceptance level. A few examples from my own experience to illustrate that there is not one single teaching method for all situations where someone is to be instructed in Go. Case 1: The audience was a group of people belonging to a service club. They were not expecting to be able to play after the session. Their expectations were to learn about this oriental game that they knew to involve important strategic principles. The session would take a whole evening after working hours. No second session was planned. We were two lecturers for an audience of about 20 people. Our intention was to spread the word of Go. We took turns, using the magnetic supersize upright goban, me to talk about the history and culture, my colleague to explain the rules and some strategy. The choice for emphasis on culture and strategy was warranted by their expectations. Obviously their understanding of the strategy was mitigated by their lack of playing ability. In the second half of the session we had them play against each other on 9x9 as we would usually do with newbies (see below). We also took a laptop with IgoWin and a few Oriental attributes such as fans, in order to appeal with variety. Case 2: Here, the audience were passers-by at a games event. Some of them will take the whole day to learn just a few games. Some of them want to superficially learn about it. Our intention clearly was to have some people interested enough to stick with the game. There were the three of us to a varying number of 0 to 10 trainees. We would use the atari-go method for newbies to get them play as quickly as possible. Cultural or strategic information was almost absent. We used small boards only and gave away cardboard gamesets to people who stayed about for a certain amount of time. Ko was introduced to those people who discovered it after a few short games. Case 3: When newcomers arrive at the club, their interest is usually already raised. They will know something about the rules and probably intend to come back for more. In this one-to-one situation, one can spend more time teaching and rise to the tactical/strategic level somewhat sooner. We would have newcomers be instructed by the strongest player present, or by our "official instructors" who received lessons on teaching Go by our federation. Ideally there were two of them so that they could play against each other, atarigo or real go depending on their knowledge. If there was only one, we would team him/her up against our weaker players so as to keep the gap in strength to a minimum. Summary: In all these cases, I cannot say that our approach was always ideal or effective. In particular I have often been disappointed in the third case. It is very difficult to strike a balance between keeping things easy and making it interesting. How do you keep the flame awake that this is indeed a fantastic game with ungaugable deepness while making it accessible to play games from the start and keeping the game within reach of the newcomer. That's a balance I can't say to have found. This is a copy of the living page "How To Teach Go / Proposed Outline" at Sensei's Library. ![]() |