This section, along with the previous two, is about the participants’ beliefs, in this
case, their beliefs about the strategies they use when dealing with the task, learning the
language. It is not reporting the actual cognitive behaviour of the participants but the way
they think they behave when learning the language. I am not saying that what they say is
not true. What I want to make clear, though, is the way I gathered this information. It was
reported to me by the participants. It is the way they think things happen. This
information will be compared with section 7.1 and 7.2, where I will put forward the way
I see things were happening. That will be my belief.
A main difference between this section and the ones dealing with person and task
is that, as was mentioned before, the latter refer to beliefs about knowledge while the
former implies beliefs about regulation of cognition (Brown; 1987,69), which basically
refers to the deployment of a skill, that is, procedural rather than declarative knowledge.
For this reason, the information that is included in this section was mainly gathered from
retrospection about cognitive processes, which in themselves involved the participants in
metacognitive experiences.
As in the previous sections, I have organised the information in a certain way. In
this case, I will deal with the already well known classification of learning strategies with
a specific focus on metacognitive strategies, which are highly relevant to the
development of an ability for self-direction. With regard to this, I want to remind the
reader of the potential problem of classifying metacognitive strategies (see section
3.3.2.1). However, I am positive that the data that I have identified as beliefs on
metacognitive strategies refers to actual metacognition, especially in the case when
students needed to reflect on and give an opinion of their own performance.
6.3.1 Beliefs about cognitive strategies
There were several moments when the learners and I talked about their learning
processes (individual and group sessions 5, 6, 10 and from 14 to 19, and 2 input sessions,
4 and 6, see page 124). From these sessions there was one specifically dealing with
cognitive strategies. In I∕G session 10,1 gave the participants a list of cognitive strategies
(taken from O’Malley and Chamot; 1990, 119,120), and asked them to choose the ones
that they use most. The following day, they told me that it was difficult to decide which
strategies they were used to working with. Most of the strategies were familiar to them.