The effect of instructional and motivational self-talk on skill performance has already been studied; however, the effect of free self-talk wherein the skill performer chooses self-talk words or phrases with respect to their situational emotions has seldom been investigated. Thus, the purpose of the present research is to determine the effect of free self-talk on the performance of front-crawl.54 female, inexperienced students participated in the pre-test, five training sessions, and the post-test, while performing free self-talk during their training program as they wished. The results showed that 30% of the participants used instructional self-talk, 24% used positive motivational self-talk, 35% used negative motivational self-talk, and 11% useda combined form of self-talk. Those who used the combined form were omitted from the sample. One-way analysis of variance showed that the group which used instructional self-talk had a better performance in the post-test. The results are discussed with regards tothe existing theories and the proficiency of participants.
