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126 Christina Wielgolawski positive which is good, as well you’ve encouraged me to come up with my own decisions about things and you’ve pretty much supervised me making my own decisions’. Another helpful function noted by Cathy was that I had ‘come up with some pretty practical suggestions and really interesting learning tips’. The coach was also there to respond to both specific requests (e.g. helping to select French texts from the Web) and more general ones (e.g. providing more constructive criticism). While learners in one-to-one situations often seek feedback on their actual language use, when it came to speaking, Cathy seemed satisfied in recognising that oral interactions that have gone well demonstrate that her pronunciation, fluency, vocabulary and structures are effective. Concerning writing, Cathy sometimes brought along exercises or paragraphs that she would like checked for accuracy and appropriateness. In fact, as the weeks passed, the amount of time spent during coaching sessions on learning support, such as strategy development, slowly decreased while time spent on language support, such as grammar explanations, increased. This occurred as Cathy became more proficient at learning and, as a result, more able to use the target language, which in turn led to more questions. However, in contrast to traditional teaching, this progression was driven by Cathy following up what she had been working on during the previous week. At the same time, the coach continued to check with the coachee whether any concerns had arisen, and to elicit explanations of, and justifications for, the rationale for decisions and actions so as to promote reflective learning. Cathy found that in more formal teaching settings ‘there’s been more spoon feeding and more discipline from the teacher’. Nevertheless, in coaching it is vital to constantly gauge the mood and respond accordingly, and Cathy also noticed: ‘You’ve put a little bit of pressure on me … when I’ve been quite slack, but not to the extent where I start to clam up’. This becomes possible when the coachee and coach have, over time, built up a good working relationship. The coach as model Cathy seemed appreciative when I shared what had and had not worked in my own language learning and this helped to ensure that a genuine dialogue was taking place. Several times, Cathy fed back that ‘the practical tips from your own personal experience, I’ve found that very useful’. This comment referred to my explaining how I organised my own learning time, went over flash cards while standing in long queues at the post office, made my own set of French scrabble On the road to self-directed learning 127 cards to play alone and adopted active copying1 of short interviews from magazine articles. I also related how long it took to be able to understand a particular TV news presenter and acknowledged that I still had trouble with movies when everyone is talking at once. Lamb (2004, 3) recommends that those in language teaching ‘need to experience autonomous learning themselves’.Acoach needs not only to have tried but also to have succeeded in SDL to be an empathetic, believable role-model and have a better understanding of the situation of the coachee. Conclusion Coaching differs from other SDL approaches by catering for those who are unable, or do not wish, to access SAC-based advisers. This longitudinal investigation has sought to track the reflections, dialogue and actions of a coachee in order to gain insights into the language coaching process. This study deals with only one coach and one coachee. Further similar studies are required to ascertain the extent to which these findings are generalisable, as well as what may have been overlooked by this participant researcher. Keeping the small-scale nature of this study in mind, the key benefit of the coaching approach appears to be its highly flexible and ongoing support of a personalised SDL programme. Coaches can guide and assist not only with analysing needs, setting goals and planning programmes, but also by asking thoughtful, open-ended questions to raise awareness and to establish a dialogue about SDL, about what is and is not working and how the learning programme can be enhanced. Regular contact is recommended so that difficulties are identified early and can be dealt with promptly by utilising a problem-solution orientation. As time passes, the coach’s increasing knowledge of the coachee and their developing relationship results in advice that is finetuned to the individual. In the case...

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