of my psycholinguistic knowledge in order for them to take advantage of it) and
analysing with them linguistic matters (which allowed for an insight of their learning
processes which both, they and I, took advantage of). The acceptance of this fact, I
believe, makes me surer of my own abilities as a SAC counsellor. After all, I am proud
of my expertise as a teacher of language and psycholinguistics.
Second, it has made me aware of things that I had never considered before. It is
amazing the amount of factors that I discovered in the analysis of my own performance.
Among them, I want to mention the one that I consider the most relevant of all. This is
the assumption that when being a counsellor you need to have your own model of
learning, your own theory of how things work. This is one of the main differences that I
noticed between the way I worked as a counsellor before and after the Oaxaca/97 project.
To have developed a theoretical model of self-direction certainly changed my way of
working with learners. Every moment I was working with learners, I had my model in
mind. That helped me to make sense of what they were saying and doing. It was my own
way of understanding self-direction.
With this I am far from assuming that my model is the model for self-directed
learning. By no means do I want to imply that. I am very aware that my model may be
wrong. My model is valid to the extent that it works for me, that it makes sense for me.
What is important is to have a working theory of learning, something I can compare with
the learners’ process. I have realised that without it I cannot help learners. It would be
like a blind guide trying to help people to find their way. Hopefully, in the end, the
different experiences and contacts with learners will have the role of enhancing and
polishing this “working theory”.
Third, writing this chapter and analysing my own performance, with all the
decisions and changes that it involved, I have realised that I have to “enhance and polish
my working theory”. Working with the participants in the Oaxaca/97 project made me
realise that, even though there were several things that I confirmed there were others that
I had to reconsider. One of the most relevant is the role of awareness in the practice
stage, basically in the processes of restructuration and proceduralisation. As the reader
will remember, I depicted awareness as a state of mind, in different forms, which had to
be present along the whole process of learning. However, I did not reflect on two facts.
First, it is important to state that at a practice stage awareness has another function (apart
from the three already mentioned): awareness of flawed performance. Second, two of the
functions that I had considered within awareness (attention and awareness of
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