The most common mistakes in the basic swimming techniques after a 20-hour swimming course in the first cycle of the primary school

Swimming is important for the students' physical, mental, and social development. However, the safety aspect of swimming is of paramount importance. Swimming skills can make a difference in terms of being able to save oneself and survive. We believe this is the key reason for swimming training, or swimming literacy development, for students. Elementary school offers its students enough swimming contents for them to acquire the title of a swimmer at the end of their education. However, the system of swimming lessons (development of swimming literacy) only records the number of swimmers or non-swimmers and their acquired titles based on the standard criteria, rather than based on the level, or perfection, of their swimming skills. The central task of the Master's thesis was to determine which errors and how many of them the third-grade students commit after the mandatory 20-hour swimming course when performing the basic swimming techniques: front crawl, breaststroke, and backstroke. Our research includes 271 third-grade students (2017/18) from Celje's eight elementary schools. The results were obtained by filling out three previously prepared observation sheets (front crawl, breaststroke and backstroke). The results have shown that a high percentage of students are able to swim with all three basic swimming techniques (front crawl, breaststroke and backstroke). In the basic front crawl technique, the students commit the most errors with regard to head position, downsweep, and insweep. Most frequently observed errors in the basic breaststroke technique include lack of gliding during both the outsweep and insweep, absence of exhaling into the water, and imperfections in the execution of the strokes. In the basic backstroke technique, the students were observed to struggle the most with the catch phase, the mid-pull phase, and body positioning. The results of our research point out that when teaching swimming, considerable attention should also be paid to correct execution of the swimming techniques, and that more care should be taken to correct the most frequently observed errors