Student teachers’ collaborative construction of grammar awareness : the case of a highly competent learner

The paper investigates how a student on a Masters level teacher education course for English language teachers goes about constructing her grammar knowledge. The learner is a novice teacher with English as a foreign language. Learner diary, interview and group interaction data were analysed thematically, revealing that she made relatively few, usually brief, verbal contributions to the group work but was nonetheless a very active and competent participant. One of her main strategies was ‘listening to others’. At the same time, important learning skills allowed her to identify, create and make use of learning opportunities. She is contrasted with another learner who speaks considerably more and is a risk taker. The central argument to emerge is that the learners are each enacting their individual identities. How learners approach the construction of knowledge is therefore unique to each learner; there are a number of ways of being a ‘competent learner’.