The first interview: Setting up a personalised plan

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.