Abstract

This study analyzes the diary reflections of a pre-service teacher in a graduate program for teachers of English to speakers of other languages (TESOL), while she studied beginning Arabic and second language acquisition (SLA). Data were collected from the diary entries and from a post-study action research project, and they were analyzed by the diarist/ researcher, by a faculty mentor, and via face-to-face (F2F) feedback sessions between faculty mentor and the diarist. A qualitative analysis reveals that the affective themes of anxiety and motivation were the two most salient features in the learner’s diary entries. The article concludes with a number of teaching implications, including the suggestion that creating a classroom atmosphere that tolerates confusion so that students are able to negotiate for meaning may be significant for both increasing motivation and decreasing anxiety. This study highlights the importance of reflective collaboration between student and faculty so that both contribute to the student’s developing interpretation of the SLA process. This collaboration also revealed the potential for enhancing the pre-service teacher’s ability to develop a more effective set of strategies for teaching.