SLA RESEARCH ON SELF-DIRECTION: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES

"represents an excellent position to promote the learner centred philosophy"
(Jones; 1995,228)2. The latter calls for a type of instruction that goes along with the
philosophy that strategy-learning implies: autonomy in learning. Learners need "discourse
space and initiative" (Little and Singleton; 1990,17), "support for cooperation and autonomy,
and partnership behaviour" (Huttunen, 1996,88). As regards metacognitive strategies, for
instance, the instruction needs to be of a descriptive rather than a prescriptive nature,
avoiding the "you should" type statements. In addition, the learners need to feel free to make
their own decisions and try things out. On this topic, I have to say that I do not agree with
one of O'Malley and Chamofs suggestions about teaching strategies (1990,200 and Chamot
and O'Malley,1994,385). According to them

after naming and describing the strategy to be taught, the
teacher then models the strategy by actually performing a task and
thinking aloud about the mental processes comprising the strategy.

(1990,200)

To my mind, the "modelling" of strategies goes against my understanding that every
student has to find his/her own way to deal with learning strategies. As I see it, modelling
strategies turns instruction into a very prescriptive exercise.

Taking this point into consideration, it is understandable why there have been some
researchers that report failure in teaching metacognitive strategies (O'Malley and Chamot;
1990, 161, Bialystok; 1990, 142, Ellis; 1994, 557, Chamot and Rubin; 1994, 778) For
almost all of them the problem was that the learners were not interested in self-directed
learning. They just wanted information about the target language. In some cases, the
problem also was that the training was "blind" in the sense that it was not explicit for the
learners the purpose of the instruction (Wenden; 1987c, 159). There has been no report on the
mode of instruction with relation to the learning of metacognitive strategies, which, to me,
shows more a lack on focus on this aspect rather than showing its unproblematic nature.

60

<<   57   58   59   60   61   62   63   >>

More intriguing information