Transcription
It’s during the subsequent interviews that I ask the learners about what they’ve done, whether they’ve applied my advice or not, whether they’ve followed the methods I suggested or whether they’ve tried other things, things that seemed more relevant and coherent to them, And then we’re going to discuss this, these ways of doing things, and see if they were useful or not, and then if they weren’t useful, it’s time to discuss it again, to think together about other possible uses, other resources.
If during the first meeting I have the feeling that the advisor explains a lot of things, during the following meetings it really starts from what the learner has done with the tools they’ve used, the documents they’ve used and the way they’ve used them.
Transcription
Subsequent appointments are much less prepared by the advisor in the sense that the initiative is largely that of the learner. In the best-case scenario, in my ideal interview, it’s the learner who leads the interview, so the process can be extremely varied. But there is one phase which exists in a slightly embryonic form in the first interview, and that’s the history phase, i.e. what happened between the last interview and the current one.
Transcription
So when we meet the learner for the second, third or fourth time, they’re bound to have worked. If they haven’t worked, we’ll look at the reasons why they haven’t, but in general they’ve still tried to do something, they’ve engaged in activities, and they report back. So with their difficulties, their possible facilities, their pleasure, their interest, or on the contrary their lack of interest. They express their frustrations, they express their satisfactions. But you can never really predict what’s going to happen in a counselling interview, because it’s the learner who’s going to bring up what they want to discuss.
Transcription
The first interview is like anyone’s first meeting, there’s a necessary, unavoidable initial contact. Then the first interview is used to begin to determine the learner’s possible approach, so it’s going to be used to elucidate the whys and wherefores, why they’re here, why they want to learn language X or language Y, what they’re going to do with it, what resources they have, what they like to do, what they don’t like to do, how they plan to learn from the outset, at what points we’re going to work. There’s also a whole explanation of what self-directed learning is all about, in particular an explanation of what the role of this interview we’re having is, it’s not a private lesson, it’s not an individual lesson, it contributes something else, So this contribution is in the area of when I’m going to work, how long I’m going to work, how much time I have to work, what my deadline is, what my constraints are, do I have to learn very quickly or do I have a project in three years’ time so I have time to see it through. Can I work in the morning, can I work in the evening, can I work at home, can I work in a resource centre? But the first interview is not intended to exhaust the question, it is intended to get the learning process underway, and to clarify the conditions for learning in a self-directed context.
Transcription
In general, the first interview consists of getting to know each other. The important thing is that these are discussions between two individuals who obviously need to get to know each other, so the first thing is to get to know each other. There are discussions about the learner’s identity, what they do, why they’ve come, what their needs are, and together we determine the learner’s very specific needs, which we then turn into objectives. In other words, it’s because you want to learn a lot that you’ll be able to do it in the limited time available. So that’s what we call defining objectives, setting priorities, saying what’s most important, where we’re going to start, that’s it. So that’s setting objectives. Secondly, and this is obviously closely related, you need to determine what resources the learner will be able to start working on, because they need to start learning the language in order to be able to reflect on their learning. So determining the resources, the times when they are going to come and work, whether they work at home or at the centre, there are huge variations in all these dimensions. This is what makes self-directed learning totally individualised.
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During the first interview, what I do is invite the learner to express their needs, to express what their project is with the language and from there to transform their needs into objectives, to help them prioritise their objectives because sometimes a learner arrives with a need like I want to speak English and then we’re going to help them define more precisely what they mean by I want to speak English. Sometimes speaking English turns out to mean writing English.
Transcription
In fact, I’d like to come back to what makes my situation so special, in that I’m dealing with pupils or young students who are going to be teachers, and so they’re generally a long way from this self-directed learner posture. So all the work in the first few sessions is going to be to help them get into this teaching posture for themselves in a way, and that’s not easy. You can’t rely on words to get you there, and that’s what we’re going to do in the first sessions, what we’re going to do together, so that we really have the opportunity to build that posture, to put them in that posture. It’s a slightly complicated business, but an exciting one. In other words, when you set objectives with them, when you try to work out the resources they need, when you try to work out with them how much time they want to spend on their learning, at what time of day, etc., all these questions, which are precise questions that are in a way an essential protocol for the first sessions, provide opportunities to build this attitude.
Characteristics of advisory interviews
The first advice interview thus seems to have a more canonical form than subsequent ones, as it must lead to different results expected by the advisor. The adviser aims to :