ABSTRACT
This chapter examines engagement in private, asynchronous online exchanges via a blog between a novice English as a second language (ESL) teacher and a teacher educator during a 15-week MA TESL teaching practicum. It presents the case of Kyla, who struggles to construct a teaching persona that will enable her to function successfully while teaching an oral communication course for international teaching assistants (ITA). Analyses of her blog entries highlights how she expresses this struggle through emotive language that shifts from overconfidence to deep disappointment. Kyla's practicum placement was a graduate-level ESL oral language course for ITAs taught by an experienced ESL instructor. All the ITAs were highly accomplished in their academic fields of study, mostly from Asian cultures, and required to take this course because of their performance on a university-mandated oral language proficiency test. If one considers the asynchronous exchanges in terms of obuchenie, the actions and intentions of the teacher educator are predicated on recognizing Kyla's perezhivanie.
