Reflecting on the reasons I had at the moment of the decision-making, I can see
that (a) was mainly a response to my concern about getting some accountable results out
of the project. Points (b) and (c), however, seem to be more guided by pedagogical
reasons. To make the learners work with something new, interesting, complex and/or
challenging was important for two reasons. On the one hand I believe that a learning
situation that meets these features is good for enhancing learners’ motivation. On the
other hand, I feel that any of these characteristics need to be present in order for the
learners to notice something in specific. In particular, I thought that this last point would
make a difference in the learners that found it difficult to manage their attention. This
problem of attention, as Ridley says, is not exclusive of self-directed study:
It is a common enough classroom phenomenon that some learners -whatever
their age, or the type of language course they are following- do not pay
sufficient attention to what they are doing when they are performing learning
tasks. (1997, 2-3)
However, Ridley is referring to a metacognitive level (“what they are doing when they
are performing learning tasks”) within a classroom situation. She does not refer to
attention at a linguistic level because in a classroom situation it is assumed that the role
of the teacher is to help the learner to focus her attention to that level. In a self-directed
scheme, as I see it, one cannot take for granted that all learners will focus their attention
on linguistic forms whenever it is necessary.
For this reason, I consider that point (c) is particularly relevant for those students
who need more guidance with self-directed learning. The ones that work better in a
“guided learning” framework (see section 6.2.4) are the ones that expect this type of help
from a counsellor3. I must add here that for all the participants the focusing on the
specific assigned grammatical forms was a matter of renoticing for this was not the first
time they have studied them.
In the following discussion about the participants’ process of noticing I will refer
to two frameworks dealing with noticing. These are Johnson’s chapters about
declarativisation in Language teaching and skill learning (1996) and Batstone’s chapters
on product grammar in Grammar (1994).
Johnson states that declarative knowledge has two main roles. One is the “initial
point for a process of proceduralisation” and the other is a “data base” of knowledge
214