SLA RESEARCH ON SELF-DIRECTION: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES

will give coherence to the whole programme. This step is usually identified as the
elaboration of the study plan. The next step involves making decisions about the methods
and techniques that appear to be the most appropriate to achieve the learning goals. For this
step, it is necessary that the learner identify her learning style and the strategies that suit her
best. For Holec, the fourth step, monitoring the acquisition procedures, consists of the
decision on the most suitable time and place for the learning process to take place. The last
level of decisions involves the evaluation of both, product, i.e. what has been learned in
reference to personal thresholds and, process, in terms of the effectiveness of the decisions
taken at the other four levels.

PREPARATION
OF
DECISION

Agent:
the learner,
with or without:

-educator

-adviser
-teacher
-materials

-etc.

Fig. 2.1 Two stages in the self-directed learning scheme (Based on Holec;1996)

I found that the content and philosophy of the two courses that Holec prepared for
the Mexican teachers in 1993 are very well synthesised in a paper published in 1996, where
Holec summarises the basic principles of self direction in language learning. To start with,
he states that in a self-directed learning scheme "all the decisions concerning the learning
programme are the responsibility of the learner himself' (1996,89). However, he

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