Abstract
The purpose of the study was to compare the effectiveness of the Red Cross and Silvia methods of teaching beginning swimming. College women (N = 76), who were beginners in swimming, served as subjects. Pretests indicated no differences among the four classes prior to instruction. Reliability coefficients of the post-tests for distance and survival time (test-retest method) ranged from .70 to .98. ANOVA procedures utilizing front crawl distance, back crawl distance, survival time, and length of time required to pass the Red Cross combined tests as dependent variables resulted in superiority of the Silvia method over the Red Cross method in each analysis.