Research of a Way to Master Cooking Skills of Junior College Students : Part III

Abstract

In order to fully understand actual cooking skills with a knife, I improved the evaluation method in my second research by adding two items. One was to check the form while holding the knife, and the other was to check whether or not the students touched the backside of their left hand fingers with the knife while cutting cucumbers. I gave a performance test based on cutting cucumbers in round slices to 117 students who major in health and nutrition at our junior college. The results are as follows: 1. The total points of the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd trials showed that the skills in cutting cucumbers in round slices gradually improved trial by trial. The second trial especially showed a more noticeable improvement than the others. 2. For cutting cucumbers in round slices, the students who touched the backside of their left hand fingers with the knife during cutting got more points than the students who didon't for all points that were checked. These included checking the thickness of the cut cucumbers and the uniformity of the slices. 3. Any form of holding the knife while cutting cucumbers showed almost the same result. One could infer that the students were accustomed to their own forms of holding the knife for a long time.