Language Centre. Apart from the fact that such a generalisation is not at all well
supported, it does not say anything about the learners, which is the main priority in this
section. As an attempt to give a different interpretation, I think that it is important to
notice that this before∕after classification of teachers coincides with the imposed∕free
nature of the IeamingZteaching of English. In other words, the "before-bad" stage of
teaching refers to a period of studying in which students have to attend courses and pass
subjects that were absolutely compulsory. On the contrary, the "after-good" stage of
teaching suggests that the student voluntary decided to Ieam English, either as a foreign
language or as the main area of their B A. One of the participants explained this saying
that in high school she considered English as a "subject", very much like the study of
Chemistry or History, "you have to Ieam facts, you have to take exams". Later, referring
to the "after" stage, she uses the word "dream" to refer to her learning of English and
adds that it is a "pleasure" to attend English classes nowadays. In short, my reading of
this data is that the two stages refer to the time before and after the students were able to
make the free decision to study the target language.
From the amount of time and language that they used in reference to teachers and
their experiences with them, in proportion with what they said in their biographies, one
thing is clear: teachers are very important for the learners I worked with. Taking this into
account, it seems to be rather logical to refer to the teacher when learners were asked to
consider their own learning experiences. Because the teacher is such an essential factor
in their lives as language learners, it is easy to understand that they tend to consider the
learners' performance by judging the performance of their own teachers. Considering this
perspective, one can easily understand the concept one learner developed about language
learning. She says:
Gl: At school, I had this teacher that only taught us grammar, no skills. At that time
I thought that that was it: learning English is learning the grammar. I didn't know
that there were skills
6.1.1.2 The "profile" task
At the end of the project, and after several group discussions, individual sessions
and learning tasks, learners were aware and revealed more about themselves as language
learners. In particular, I learned a lot from two specific tasks. The first one was a
"profile" task in which they have to write they own learner profile. In order to do this