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This portfolio is the culmination of the author���s work in the Master of Second Language Teaching program at Utah State University. Throughout this collection the author shares her personal views and experiences from teaching secondary and postsecondary beginning Spanish courses, supporting her claims with existing research. The portfolio consists of three sections: (1) teaching perspectives, (2) research perspectives, and (3) annotated bibliographies. The objective of this work is to identify hindrances to the progress of foreign language teachers and learners, and best practices to stimulate their success. On the basis that language learning can promote cross-cultural understanding, these findings are valuable to educators and learners who seek to bridge cultural divides and unify their communities���one classroom at a time.

This paper examines challenges native English speakers face in learning Mandarin Chinese, a language "culturally and linguistically remote" (Pyun, Kim, Cho, & Lee, 2014, p. 111) from their native language (L1). The author documented her language learning experience in a beginning Chinese course through daily journal entries reflecting on progress, challenges, and successes. Emotive descriptors from a total of 47 entries were identified and categorized according to positive or negative affect; out of 42 emotive descriptors used 125 times, the most common was "frustrating". These frustrations proceeded from two categories: (1) challenges specific to learning Chinese, such as tones (Zhang 2016), script (Zhao, Guo, & Dynia, 2013), and cultural distance (Ruan, Duan, & Du, 2015); and (2) challenges generalizable to all foreign language (FL) learners, such as fear of incompetence (LoCastro, 2012), self-comparison to classmates (Bailey, 1983), and a high affective filter (Krashen, 1982). FL teachers should understand these frustrations in order to decrease student anxiety and create a positive learning atmosphere. Students are encouraged to keep a language learning journal, as it affords both cognitive and emotional benefits.

Publication in the conference proceedings of EUSIPCO, Florence, Italy, 2006