SLA RESEARCH ON SELF-DIRECTION: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES

8.2.1 Authenticity: a matter of being and becoming ready

As I see it, on the issue of being and becoming, that is, authenticity, the
way Thelen conceives it, there are three aspects that proved to be worth mentioning.
These are readiness, attitudes and self-esteem. Within the context of this study, readiness
seems to play a relevant role in self-direction in two different ways. First, there seems to
be a conflict between being ready and becoming ready. This issue arose when I
introduced the process of language learning and established “being ready” as an essential
stage to start a learning process. Generally speaking, I can say that the participants
seemed to be more oriented towards the ‘being ready’ side. As I saw it, they had not
considered the possibility of becoming ready for learning a language. When I asked the
participants if they were ready to Ieam English in the SAC, all of them answered
positively, (see section 7.1.3, p.199). As a member of the same larger culture, I can
provide an attempt of explanation for this fact. We live in a context lacking in resources
and with few opportunities. I think that this makes us believe that we need to be ready.
Being ready, then, means to be prepared for anything and everything, to take advantage
of any opportunity, to face the unexpected, and to survive adversities. As one of the
participants put it

X: If you aren’t ready you lose your chance!

Moreover, being ready, in Mexican Spanish, (ser∕ponerse listo) also means being
smart, clever, intelligent, aware. Not being ready, then can also mean a disability for
learning a foreign language, a sort of belief that "No soy Io Suficientemente Hsto para
aprender ingles” (I am not clever enough to Ieam English). None of the participants,
fortunately, had that extreme belief.

Therefore, coming back to our main discussion, I will suggest that, for the
creation of a learning culture, and in this particular case, for the adoption of self-
direction as a learning scheme, the learners have to be aware they can become ready.
That is, they have to become aware that, on the one hand, they are not necessarily ready
(and they are not expected to be ready) for learning a foreign language, and on the other,
that it is not an either∕or matter between smartness and dullness.

I believe that a learning to Ieam scheme like the one I developed during the
Oaxaca/97 project is a means to “become ready” and, if understood and accepted as such
it can be extremely beneficial for learners in a self-directed scheme. Learners need to be

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