SUMMARY
The purpose of this study was to determine the impact of motivational self- talk on learning of soccer shot in novice players were mediated by anxiety. 30 non athlete students with age mean of 14.9±0.78 years were selected and randomly divided into three groups as positive self-talk, negative self-talk and control. Amount of subject's anxiety was evaluated bySpielberger state- trait anxiety inventory(STAI) and soccer kick accuracy of subjects were measured by Moore-Christine shoot-skill test. Training protocol contain of 3 sessions with 40 trials in each session. Upon completion of training all subjects completed posttest of anxiety and accuracy soccer kick. Retention and transfer tests of accuracy soccer kick were executed after 72 hours. To analyze the data, in addition to descriptive statistics, one-way Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) and repeated measures ANOVA was employed (P=0.05). The findings suggest that anxiety in positive motivational self-talk group was significantly decreased in posttest. Also soccer kick performance of positive motivational self-talk group was significantly better than its pretest and performance of negative group's posttest. There were no differences between groups in retention and transfer tests.