SLA RESEARCH ON SELF-DIRECTION: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES



the Oaxaca/97 project. As it was stated there, this change in the program consisted in
giving the participants specific grammar points to work with.

Underlying this decision there was a belief that making the learners focus on
something consciously would give me better results (in terms of research data) than a
top-down approach (Batstone; 1994,30) freely chosen by the learners, i.e., I wanted them
to pay more attention to specific linguistic forms. I am aware of the fact that, as a
language teacher, I believe that a DECPRO approach (going from declarative to
procedural knowledge, Johnson; 1996), the way Johnson explains it (based on
conclusions of studies such as Schmidt and Frota’s (1986) and Ellis’ (1990), among
others), results in better learning. I find a clear link between Johnson’s statement:

Declarative knowledge need not to be conscious knowledge.. .But if we wish to
convey declarative information to students, one of the most obvious ways of doing
so is by means of conscious knowledge (104)

and my belief on awareness (intention, attention and awareness of understanding) as an
essential element in self-direction.

By assigning the students a specific grammar point to study I ran the risk of being
accused of exercising “imposition”, that is to say, of making decisions on behalf of the
learners. Imposition is, of course, something that should be openly avoided in learner-
centred approaches, particularly if one is promoting self-directed learning. Being aware
of this risk, I made the decision for several reasons. The following is what I wrote in my
field notes:

Today I started individual counselling dealing with plans to work with the past tense and
the third conditional. I think that this is going to work better than what I did before,
because in the past attempts:

1) When I told them to work in the SAC and describe the way they work, the problem
was that they weren’t really focused on something (and then they
didn’t notice anything), although everybody said that they were ready.

2) When I asked them to think of a different strategy to work with a specific material,
they only thought of a different type of exercise (which in it was very difficult). It
was also difficult for them to give suggestions to their peers....

3) Because they don’t start thinking in terms of contents (what aspect of the
language they want to study) but in terms of materials (what materials they are
going to use) the materials become so influential that they cannot think about
other possible strategies.

I told them to work on a specific grammatical form because:

a) I wanted an homogeneous activity (to be able to generalise and compare)

b) I wanted to be sure that it was something new and/or interesting and
something complex and/or challenging.

с) I think that some of them do not know what to choose to Ieam because they
don’t know it yet! (theoretically, a learner cannot write a study plan if she doesn’t
know what is the content of what she is going to leam!)

213



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