For some of them, working with these issues added more to their metacognitive
knowledge. Ga wrote:
Ga: I became aware that I have to work more on my self-confidence and also
that I already have some tools to work with, my extroverted nature, for instance.
Leamer T said:
T: I became aware that it doesn't seem to be very difficult to change my
negative attributes of my perceived self. I have to work hard but they are not
unreachable.
As I stated before, the results of this task were clearly in agreement with their
performance as language learners. Successful language learners (K and F) showed their
self-confidence in the way they completed the task while unsuccessful or inexperienced
learners (E and T) produced diagrams that reflected their lack of confidence. The case of
Ga is again interesting. Her balanced outcome is the result of her reflection on the
process ofbecoming aware (from a non-aware, other-directed learner to a very assertive,
self-directed one) she has been through. Nowadays, she tends to be a realistic learner
although she still judges herself very hard.
I believe that metacognitive experiences like the self task can help learners (and
their teachers) to become aware of their perceptions, which in turn, enhances their
motivation. According to Ushioda:
What learners believe about themselves is crucially important to their capacity for
self-motivation (1996,55)
Or to put it in Ridley’s words:
In many cases, a lack of self-confidence is associated not only with lack of ability
but also with negative self-perceptions, which give rise to poor motivation and
low levels of effort. (1997, 15)
6.1.2 Beliefs about the teacher’s role
In the last section, I referred to what the learners said about the teacher in order to
know more about the learners, since they hardly referred to themselves in their
biographies. In this section I will add to what was said before in order to get a general
view of the way learners in SAC conceive of the role of the teacher. It has been already
stated that the participants believe that a good teacher is a dynamic one while a bad
teacher lacks this dynamism, turning her/his class into a boring event which makes the