Background Self-talk and goal setting facilitate learning sports skills and athletes’ performance; however, the practical use of these strategies, especially in combination, remains limited.

Aim: The aim of this study was to determine the effect of the combination of self-talk and goal-setting on the acquisition and retention of badminton long serve skill.

Martials and Methods: Forty-eight female high school students (15–18 years) were purposefully selected and divided into four equal groups (instructional self-talk, performance goal-setting, combined, and control) based on pre-test scores. The training included 4 sessions (every other day) with 30 trials each. One-way ANOVA and repeated-measures two-way ANOVA were used to compare group performances across stages.

Results: Findings showed that all groups improved significantly during acquisition, but their progress differed: the combined group outperformed the control from the second session, and the self-talk group showed significant gains over the control in the third and fourth sessions. In retention, only the combined group performed significantly better than the control, with no significant differences among the other groups.

Conclusion: The results support the effectiveness of self-talk and goal-setting combination in the performance of perceptual motor skills. Therefore, coaches recommended to use this interactive method.