box where everything goes through, was highlighted as an essential element that is
present during all the different stages. Awareness, in other words, is conceived not as a
stage to go through but as a constant feature of the self-directed learning process that is
present in different degrees at different stages. This is the reason why I will not discuss
awareness in a specific section. Rather, I will deal with it as it occurs in each of the
different stages of the learning process mentioned above.
One final introductory note. When dealing with learning, one has to be aware that
it is a difficult aspect to research. I am sure that in the Oaxaca/97 project there were
several things that I did not notice. As I see it, there may be three causes for this. The
first one is pointed out by Ridley (1997) and I have already referred to it some
paragraphs above. This is “the potential mismatch between what learners believe they do
and what they actually do” (20). Second, there is the possibility that certain element was
present in the actual learning process, but the learner did not report it because she was
not aware of it. Finally, the learners and I did not share the same model of learning, or
the same terms to talk about it (especially at the beginning of the project). Let me now
analyse alertness and orientation with reference to the data I collected in the Oaxaca/97
project.
7.2.1 Alertness and orientation
In section 4.3, a difference was established between the factors that relate to
alertness and orientation. It was said that there are internal as well as external factors that
affect them (see Fig. 4.2). According to that scheme, the internal factors of alertness are
the characteristics of the learner that make her ready to leam, whereas, the external
factors are the contextual aspects which are involved in the learning process. From the
perspective of metacognitive knowledge, I already dealt with both of them, in the form
ofbeliefs about person, task and strategy2
In the awareness round of individual sessions (see section 7.1.3), the participants
were directly asked about their readiness to Ieam English (see questionnaire appendix 7).
All the participants answered that they were ready to Ieam the language. Their comments
on this answer reveal that this belief lies in their awareness about their high motivation,
which is the most important element for them to be ready. This sort of reasoning is
something like “I really want to Ieam English, so here I am, ready to Ieam it”. With
regards to orientation, there are also two types of factors, an internal and an external one,
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