about the second part (the main clause). It is like when you are playing a game and
you already know the content of the card you are about to choose.
Here, F is not just working in a task-as-plan (Breen; 1987), but he is also taking
into consideration his metacognitive knowledge of language task in order to foresee the
effectiveness of the task if worked in different circumstances. His experience of task-as-
process allows him to plan his task in the most appropriate way.
b) Selective attention
There were also instances of selective attention to specific elements of the language:
F: Right now I am interested in chunks, idioms, you know, to Ieam them by heart. If
in a book I come across introductory phrases I can use in my writing I work on them.
K: When watching the film, I paid attention to tag questions and the way they used
them in context.
Ga: I wanted to see the different pronunciation of wood and good and practice it.
However, it was noticed that only the students that followed an inner guide (see section
7.2.1, p. 209, for a discussion of this concept) were using this strategy.
c) Self-management
Another relevant metacognitive strategy for planning that was present in the
participants’ reports was self-management strategy. According to O’Malley et al, this
strategy consists of two types of procedures. Let me label these as a) and b):
a) Understanding the conditions that help one successfully accomplish language
tasks and arranging for the presence of those conditions;
b)controlling one’s language performance to maximize use of what is already known
(quoted in O’Malley and Chamot; 1990, 137)
Type b) was only noticed in one participant:
F: I have improved a lot since the last project1.1 think that one of my problems
was that I tended to think very fast. You need to think in English and organise
your ideas. I felt that I had a lot of knowledge and I wanted to use it all at once.
Currently, F is very aware, for example, that he needs very detailed monitoring in
order to organise his ideas when dealing with the third conditional. He explains: