6.2.1 Beliefs about learning

From what has been said it seems obvious that the learners' beliefs about learning
and learning a language has been made up and changed according to their personal
experiences. The teaching situations that they referred to (see p. 157) plus the way they
conceive themselves as learners, get mixed with the way they conceive the ideal
situation. This melting pot underlies the beliefs that will be presented in this section.

When talking about learning, the participants expressed different views. For
instance, one of them said that

X: Significant learning takes place when you can apply what you have learned.

while others defined learning according to the learner involved in it. Thus the passive
learner gives the idea of being filled:

K: Most of the students are buckets that wait to be filled

But the active learner acts in different ways:

Ga: The learner brings knowledge with him and matches it with what the teacher
is offering. He verifies, gets involved. Then the teacher gets interested, he likes this.
She feeds the interaction.

X: the learners have to act as well, pay attention, ask questions, talk about their
doubts. It is a mutual effort.

Among the participants' views, there is also the general belief that learning is
something difficult, a process that human beings naturally oppose to:

Ge: the child opposes everything that requires some effort.

and learning requires work and sacrifice. This is why education

is so difficult. You have to obey.

K: Everybody tends to go for the easy thing, the least effort. The easy things
make us feel secure

This is the justification for making learning compulsory, as well as for the presence of
different types of pressures that go from physical punishment:

A: It works. I learned that way. I studied only because I knew that there
was the stick. A real fear to punishment. When there was no punishment,
I didn't study"

Ge: But we leam, with punishment and 50 pages of repetition.

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