With this in mind, I would like to give a brief account of the I∕GS and the way
they linked with the ISs.
The first session, “Please, don’t pay attention”, was aimed to make the
participants aware of their attention and the way they could control it. Throughout
different activities, the participants regulated their attention according to the instructions
of the leader of the group. After these three sessions, I had the feeling that I did not get
relevant information from the learners. At that time, their answers were too vague for me
to make sense to them. However, as the reader will notice in the following section (7.2),
at the end of the project, the data as a whole was more coherent than what it appeared at
this early stage.
After the activities, they discussed their experiences and reactions. Skill-wise, I
believed that it made the learners realise the possibilities of working at a level of
metacognitive skills (although they have not been introduced to the concept).
Theoretically, it dealt with the concept of attention, which was going to be introduced in
the following IS.
After the first IS (on self-direction and learning process), we had a series of three
individual sessions which I called Awareness 1, 2 and 3 for the aim was to discuss their
awareness according to the three first elements of the learning process. The following
figure shows the connection:
|
1) BEING READY |
2) NOTICING |
3) STRUCTURING |
|
a) Awareness 1 |
Awareness 2 |
Awareness 3 |
|
b) Intention |
Attention |
Awareness of understanding |
|
c) Are you ready? |
Are you focused? |
Did you understand? |
|
d)Tell me what you plan to do |
Tell me what you found |
Tell me what you understood |
Fig. 7.6 Three Input sessions on awareness
The purpose of these sessions was to make them realise their degree of intention,
attention and awareness of understanding when learning the target language. These
sessions were supported by open questionnaires (see appendix 7) which they had to
answer before attending the session. In that way, they were not taken by surprise when
answering my main question (point d) in Fig 7.6) but already prepared to talk about it.
During the session, I also made reference to the previous IS in which I introduced the
concepts of being ready, noticing and structuring.
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