SLA RESEARCH ON SELF-DIRECTION: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES

As we can see, we only Ieam using our short-term memory. We do not practise.
“Well, I tested my hypothesis and now what? PRACTICE and USE.” Therefore,
we only go half the way and that is why we forget everything we leam, and that
fact prevents you from being able to use the language outside, in the real world.

Before the input sessions, A did not consider practice as a necessary stage for his
learning process. Now, he has realised that it is important but he does not know how to
deal with it. This was basically the case for all the participants at early learning stages.
There were some advanced learners, like Gl and E, that talked about practising and
realised its importance but who, being unable to cope with it, referred to it more in terms
of wishful thinking (“I would use....”, “I imagine myself using it”, etc) than actual
behaviour. In short, most participants showed problems when trying to put their
declarative knowledge into practice.

Dealing with automization, Johnson (1996) highlights the fact that learners need
to be aware of the nature of their mistakes. He mentions several aspects of what he calls
realisation of flawed performance. As I see it, the most important factor is to consider
that one cannot assume that learners are aware of their mistakes. Therefore, he says

Positive action needs to be taken to make learners aware, and the likelihood
is that it will need to come from outside (i.e. be extrinsic) (126)

Considering this point in terms of self-direction, we are again dealing with the
role of external forces, in this case, to trigger proceduralisation, and the function of the
SAC resources to provide this force.

However, as it is the case in self-direction, external triggering is not
enough for managing proceduralisation. According to Johnson,

Learners seem to need to see for themselves what has gone wrong, in the
ROCs under which they went wrong (ibid.)

We are now talking about self-monitoring and self-evaluation of one’s own
performance, two metalinguistic strategies that enable learners to analyse their
performance and evaluate it. In the case of analysing, Johnson suggests the recording of
performance for description and examination purposes. The self-recording, self-
transcribing and self-analysing of performance has proven to be an effective strategy
within a self-directed scheme (Clemente 1996b). I will deal with this in the following
sections.

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