strongly disagree with. I will not discuss the implications of verbal reports on verbal
behaviour here, for I am leaving the issue for a later chapter; I rather want to state now that
there are many people, and not just teachers but researchers as well, that agree with me. On
an anecdotal level, fellow research students on occasion have made comments such as: "My
informant seems like he does not understand what I am asking for!" I know that feeling of
frustration because I myself have had the same experience. Elsewhere authors (Faerch and
Kasper; 1987, Cohen; 1994) have highlighted the cognitive and social constrains of verbal
reports. For a reader who has never tried out this technique it would be difficult to judge the
degree of "simplicity" of the procedure. Nevertheless, when she tries them out and they do
not work, she may think that either she did not carry out the procedure in the right way,
because she did not read well -not because the procedure was difficult to carry out- or
because she had the wrong students, which is even worse.
Another area in which it is important not to give an impression of simplicity is
innovation, something that for Wenden seems to be a straightforward process (1991,131). At
least, those who have undergone the innovation of setting up and running a self-access
centre know the implications that this fact conveys. It is not just the organisational level
which is affected. As I see it, it involves knowledge, skills, attitudes and awareness of not
only the learner but of the teacher as well (Clemente, 1995b), particularly if we take into
consideration that for the teacher the self-access centre does not always mean an alternative
but also an imposition (see 3.3.4, p. 63).
I agree with Wenden that the attitudes and beliefs of the learner are essential for their
success, or failure, when trying to develop autonomy. Attitudes and beliefs are an important
part of the learner's metacognitive knowledge. However, I do not think that her way of
coping with the problem gets the results she expects. First, she thinks that attitudes are
straightforward phenomena easy to handle. Let us remind ourselves that attitudes are not
observable behaviour and that sometimes people of certain cultures do not openly talk about
them (apart from the fact that people's talk does not necessarily reflect their attitudes).
Second, she does not take into account cultural factors that underlie these attitudes. Attitudes
about learning form part of a learning culture (see 4.3.5, p. 110), which, in turn, responds to
specific contexts and situations. Finally, some of the techniques she uses to uncover and deal
with these attitudes are not reliable. For example, she proposes to ask a student to give
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