A diary study focusing on listening and speaking: The evolving interaction of learning styles and learning strategies in a motivated, advanced ESL learner

Abstract

Abstract Using a personal diary, the first author, an advanced learner of English as a second language (ESL) who desires to improve her academic language competence, focuses on her own evolving learning styles and learning strategies for ESL listening and speaking while living in the US. The author examines dual contexts: the internal context of attitudes, motivations, and emotions and the external context of the unfamiliar country, its culture, and the author's observable interactions with people in that culture. She looks at how the internal and external contexts work together to affect her styles and strategies for learning. For this introverted, reflective, and visual learner, learning by listening to lectures and actively participating in classroom conversations are not easy tasks, but her diary shows that she eventually manages the different aspects of her overall learning style and learns to use relevant strategies that make her a more active classroom participant.