Another learner who mentioned an interest on examples, not to replace
explanations, but to support them, was K. For her, the dialogues and passages were
essential to give her the context to place the new knowledge.
K: Yesterday, I solved my doubt.
C: Aha (laughter)
K: Definitively
C: And now you have a good hypothesis about/
K: Yes
C: how to form the 3rd conditional
K: Yes, now
C: Hmm
K: I had a doubt.. .because I had, I mean, at the very moment that you
mentioned “conditional” I thought about if clauses, so I said, it’s got to be
the if clauses. But the structure, I had doubts about that.
C: You were mixing the past, the have
K: Yes
A: with the modal
K: Yes
A: and what happens is that they belong to two different parts
K: Exactly, that was my doubt. And then, so, now I know how, I put my ideas
in order
C: Hmm
K: And then. And now it is only a matter of looking for examples and it is not a problem
of focusing on the grammar, the structure
C: That is already
K: Now, to look for examples and to reinforce, to begin to master the structure, but what
is causing me problems is the use...
Again, an inner guide seems to be present in the way K works. In this case, this
inner guide is based on several aspects: 1) her current state of general linguistic
knowledge of the target language, Here she is aware of the presence of a schema for the
conditional that she calls “if clauses” which was triggered in the moment I mentioned the
third conditional (“at the very moment that you mentioned...”); 2) and the actual state of
that schema (“but the structure, I had doubts about that”); 3) her learning style when
dealing with form (“it is only a matter of looking for examples...”) and 4) her
weaknesses (“but what is causing me problems...”).
The role of exemplification in context plays a very important role in K’s learning
strategies. Her first attempt to work with phrasal verbs was:
K: I think that Γd rather have to look for the same verbs with a minimum of five
or eight examples, to give me an idea of how they are used.. ..Yes, because if
I just wait until I come across them in a movie or a video. Sounds like it is not
Likely to happen.
But a week later she reported:
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