I am investigating swimming instruction because I am interested in finding out how young people learn to swim and at what age is it most effective to begin swimming lessons. To determine the best age at which to begin swimming instruction I gathered data from five different sources. I researched this topic because I want to teach swimming lessons to children. A great deal of my best childhood memories involve playing and swimming in the water. I would like for children to be able to enjoy this form of play and exercise and love it as much as I do.
             Proficiency in the water can be defined by two levels. Level 1 is defined by water confidence, buoyancy, self-submersion, and blowing bubbles while fully submerged (Parker-Blanksby, 1997). For children who are especially young being comfortable in the water can be difficult depending on the child's personal experiences in water and any modeling behavior the child has witnessed before (Weiss, 1998). Level 2 is defined by the ability to float and achieve basic locomotion (Parker-Blanksby, 1997). Children should start swimming between the ages of four and six because if they start earlier it will take them longer to advance from level 1 to level 2, and just achieving level 1 for children under the age of four can take as much as two and a half hours of total instruction time (Parker-Blanksby, 1997). Children four and over require less than one hour of instruction to achieve level 1 (Parker-Blanksby, 1997). Level 2 is far more difficult to master for children under the age of four. However, children that are between the ages of four and six tend to achieve level 2 after about the same amount of total instruction time.
             Yet a third level of swimming proficiency is defined by advanced swimming strokes such as the freestyle, backstroke, and breaststroke (Parker-Blanksby, 1995). Children under five were not able to achieve this highly complicated level of swimming. Even children ...