How do you teach technique?

Building here on a response to NBK's excellent question about teaching taisabaki.

I wonder ... with some honesty and self-reflection that a semi-anonymous forum allows ... how do you teach and correct your students one on one?

A.  Do I have in mind a most basic framework for a technique, observe the student's effort on repetition, correct what appears to be the largest repairable problem, and then observe more repetitions, going back over it until progress is made, and then move on to another suggestion?  Do I remember to add positive feedback?  Given that a beginner may perform a technique with wild differences between repetitions, do I observe a sort of average and work from there without correcting every move?  Do I believe that many details come naturally if I have the right framework?

B.  Or do I believe that details are really important, and do I offer to the student a list of things that he or she is doing incorrectly?  Does only perfect practice make perfect and do I correct every small mistake before moving on?  Are details important to teach from the beginning as there is nothing natural about judo?

Both have valid points.

I run into this a lot as I usually choose approach "A."  Probably the way I phrase my questions more than implies that.  Kind of like the "balanced reporting" I see on the local news channels.  

To say that the head of our club is rather taciturn in his use of approach "A" is an understatement but his tendency to reserve his opinion works well.  The person I refer to as "my sensei" also chose approach "A."  

But sometimes it occurs that when I am using "A" another black belt will observe, on their turn take approach "B," and contradict the point I was trying to make with a flood of other criticisms.  I no like that but sometimes beginners soak that up too.  It is a common and traditional way of teaching judo.

Whadda ya thunk?

A) I think is better initially, but my natural preference is towards B). I need to stop doing that because B) can often dangerously border on distinction without difference.

Bearing in mind that someone can only retain a finite amount of information at first pass, care needs to be taken not to micromanage needlessly. Better to use strategy A), then place students in a situation where self-exploration and physics does the rest. *Then* at next pass, introduce the next slice.

But see - now we get to the problem of what to teach first for best impact. Adults and children don't learn in the same way (to be a pedant: we should more correctly refer to this as androgogy not pedagogy) so it can be a bit of a puzzler.

This is why I had to bite my tongue on the previous thread wrt "traditional method is best". Adult learning methodology wasn't exactly at its peak in 19th century Japan

A.) for the most part. I was originally taught as in B.), and for me, it was very frustrating, and I've seen it done over and over again and stifle learning.

A lot depends on the student though, their learning style, base level of coordination, age, personality, etc.

I think there are base level body skills that (tai sabaki?) that underlie judo (no duh, eh?) that get ignored in the teaching/learning process. So I will include them as appropriate in the process.

I tend to go from the broad to the specific, overall.

I have to consciously not do B and try to teach in A. We forget that the student does not have our experience. How can the student step to the right spot when they have not learnt effective balance taking, entry and fitting? How can the student adjust the direction of a throw when they have not yet learnt to feel uke's weight?

On another level, correctional instruction is time-consuming. I think it is better for the student to do 20 repetitions 70% correctly than do 5 closely-observed and corrected repetitions that will still be only 80% right. Further, those 5 repetitions will be an expression of the sensei whilst the 20 other repetitions will be an expression of the student. Which do you think would be more real?

Both, depend of the level of those i teach.

For beginner, when i show a technique for the first time, i will insist more on 'core principles' of the technique, not on the details. Then i let them practice it, and correct them, showing what they do wrong vs the 'core principle' and a do tell them that we will cover more details soon, but they have to 'feel' it in some way , before i will try to pinpoint every details.

When i teach to advanced people, it's not the same thing. I will cover more details, more 'set-up' etc. I'm always talking about the core principle, but adding way more detail 'cause they can absorb it very fast 'cause they are already experienced and they can see that this or that little 'details' can make difference.