6.1.1 Beliefs about self

6.1.1.1 Written biographies and oral accounts

At the beginning of the project, the participants were asked to write a biography,
in their mother tongue, concerning their history as language learners and the way they
describe themselves. Although all of the accounts are very individual, there are some
things that all of them share. First of all, it is salient the fact that the learners avoid,
consciously or unconsciously, talking about themselves. In general, very few of the
written biographies contain personal traits about the authors. Essentially, these traits are
reduced to an adjective concerning their performance in relation to the learning process,
"scared", "analytic", "motivated", "slow", or their way they relate to the target language:
"I like English", "I love English", "I used to hate English". Fortunately, I also had the
opportunity to talk to them and discuss their written biographies. This fact allowed me to
make them elaborate on their statements. Although I did not ask them about things that
were not included in their written accounts (I only asked them to elaborate on aspects
that were included in the written biography), throughout the oral interaction the
participants said more about themselves. For instance, one participant (Gl) who had not
said anything about herself with the written version, directly told me in the oral
interaction: "I am a dependent learner. I want the teacher to explain things to me".
Another participant, whose written biography consisted of scarcely three paragraphs with
no personal features, said in the oral interaction: "I feel like a ship without a captain"," I
feel embarrassed learning with a group of youngsters", " I am at an age in which I cannot
allow myself to waste time".

I find it very difficult to generalise about learners’ personal accounts. The
direction and range of comments were so varied that it is almost impossible to suggest
any specific trend. There were only two people who coincided in describing their
previous experience of learning a foreign language. Both of them used the word
"difficult". However, from this, I cannot deduce that the others did not find it difficult, or
that the others find it easy. As I see it, the only possible interpretation of this is that
learners focus on different aspects of their learning (perhaps because something was
more salient for them, perhaps because of their own nature and personalities).

However, I did find a very striking trend in all the written accounts. This was the
reference to learners' former teachers. All of them commented on their teachers and their

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