Therefore, the definition of self-directed learning that underlies this study implies
that when an adult Ieams a language in a self-directed way, she intentionally and effortfully
acquires knowledge and skills through different means (study, instruction, experience).
Being an adult, she uses different procedures of acquisition, some of them being part of a
general cognitive problem-solving system. One of the most relevant elements of this system
is the ability to make decisions. In this sense, my definition is closer to the one proposed by
Esch who says that learning is "all the activities undertaken by individuals who have decided
to acquire a foreign language" and adds that learning behaviour is
the management of all the acts learners carry out with the
objective of assimilating both linguistic knowledge and the
know-how. (Esch;1994a,50)
4.2.3 Cognition in other-directed learning5
The process of learning a language is one of the most complex in human learning. It
consists of acquisition of knowledge and skills, and, according to O'Malley and Chamot
(1990,20), it involves the acquisition of declarative and procedural knowledge. Declarative
knowledge is the starting point that consists in controlled information processing. In order to
acquire procedural knowledge, human beings need to go through a transitional process that
ends in a stage of automatic information processing. In regard to language, the declarative
stage consists of knowing about the language and the procedural stage means using the
language. This model is not specific for language acquisition but accounts for skill
acquisition in general (Sternberg; 1994,666).
Seeing this scheme from an autonomy perspective, learning a language would be
taking charge of the two learning stages and making all the decisions on how to acquire
declarative knowledge and how to develop efficient procedures to turn it into procedural
knowledge. This statement seems to be clear but still it does not say anything about the
cognitive aspect of self-directed learning. In order to do this, it is necessary to look at more
specific theories of learning.
For our students in the SAC, to acquire declarative knowledge seems to be a
straightforward issue. One just decides what to leam, chooses the materials whose content
matches with one's own decision on objectives and Ieams it. However, in reality, this does
81