SLA RESEARCH ON SELF-DIRECTION: THEORETICAL AND PRACTICAL ISSUES

processes. In other words, teachers need to make their implicit, procedural knowledge,
explicit and declarative.

Another important field that has dealt with the state of awareness is learning
research. Due to the fact that learning processes cannot be observed, researchers have
developed verbal report techniques in order to analyse cognitive processes. The learners are
trained to report, Introspectively or retrospectively, their own intuitions and insights (see
Chapter 5 for a discussion on this subject). It is not certain if verbal reports enhance
awareness or if it is the other way around. What is true is that learners who give verbal
reports of cognitive processes are aware of them.

As it is shown in Fig. 4.1, the only essential element that takes the learner to
hypothesis formation, a further step in learning, is detection. Therefore, all the other
elements are associated, that is, they can help to detect but are not crucial to the learning
process. These authors are emphatic about the non-essential nature of these elements.

4.2.4 Cognition in self-directed learning

In contrast to Tomlin and Villa, as I see it, alertness, orientation and awareness are
extremely relevant for the purposes of constructing a model of self-directed learning. What is
more, what for other-directed learning appears to be associated, for self-direction has proven
to be essential. In order to explain why I say this, let me reconsider these three elements,
alertness, orientation and awareness, from the point of view of self-directed learning.

4.2.4.1 Orientation

Orientation is defined as the "specific alignment of attention". In the case of other-
directed learning, it is common that the teacher helps the learner to focus, or orient, her
attention to specific aspects of, in this case, the target language. However, in a self-directed
situation, there is supposed to be no teacher; thus, it is the learner who has to help herself to
focus their attention to something that she, and not the teacher, has decided to leam.
Moreover, while in teacher-led situations it has been discovered that the students Ieam in
spite of the teacher, in self-directed learning it is definitive that the learner cannot Ieam “in
spite of herself’, so to speak.

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