ABSTRACT
One of the principal goals of advising in language learning is to help students become more autonomous learners (Carson and Mynard, this volume). According to Kelly (1996, p. 94 ), this is because
advising (or as she terms it, counselling) is founded in the humanistic
worldview, “which affi rms the primary need of an individual for autonomy
and self-responsibility”. Kelly (1996, p. 94 ) also sees advising/counselling as
a “process of reorientation”, which involves the changing of “acquired
beliefs about oneself and the world”. A learner can undergo such change
through dialogue in the course of the advising process, when discussing
and refl ecting upon “expectations, motivational factors, prior beliefs, [and]
experiences” (Mynard, this volume, p. 34 ). In this chapter, I will explore the
beliefs learners have about causal explanations for their learning perform-
ances and I will propose that such beliefs need to be examined during the
process of becoming a more autonom ous learner. I will conclude that causal
attributions are a valuable area of focus in the advising process. The chapter
features some examples taken from advising sessions and suggestions for
directions for learning advisors to explore.
