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This study analyzes the perezhivanie of one second-language learner (Chinese L1) who studied Japanese as a second language and engaged in her learning experience in a Japanese cultural setting through yearlong language advisory sessions. Perezhivanie, a Russian term, and a Vygotskian concept, is employed in the study to observe L2 learner development and to capture the bidirectional influences of the characteristics of agency and the environment. The data analyzed come from two sources: (a) our written correspondence, including email exchanges, from before the study was conducted and (b) audio-recorded data of six face-to-face/ online advisory sessions on a bimonthly basis with a particular focus on her perezhivanie. By applying perezhivanie as a unit of analysis that avoids the cognition-or-emotion and person-or-context dichotomies, the findings revealed the developmental processes of one L2 learner and focused on how both advisor and advisee mutually transform the specific social situation into a social situation of collectividual development through yearlong advisory sessions. Notably, the participant evaluated her original experience negatively at first, but eventually, she learned to value the failure and reinterpreted the initial experience. The significance of the study is to contribute to describing the detailed case of learner perezhivanie with a particular focus on entrance exams in East Asian sociocultural settings.

Through advising in language learning, this study describes two Japanese secondary school students’ (Ai and Yu: both pseudonyms) longitudinal trajectories of socioculturally mediated emotions in four dimensions. To investigate types of emotions, the research integrates multiple qualitative methods and Plutchik’s wheel of emotions, thus acknowledging both contextually complex and longitudinally dynamic aspects of emotions. Throughout a year of 19 advisory sessions, the amount of time spent was 1,263 minutes (Ai’s 12 sessions = 891 minutes; Yu’s 7 sessions = 372 minutes), and the number of emotional incidences identified was 358 (201 for Ai; 157 for Yu). Among multiple findings, the most notable was that both participants experienced convergence of emotions: the one process from diversified to less diversified emotions was caused by longitudinal dynamics of emotions in Ai’s case and by contextual complexity of emotions in Yu’s case. The study concludes by suggesting a tentative four-dimensional model of emotions to capture trajectories of advisees’ emotions from multiple perspectives. This model can help advisors to understand advisees’ emotionality and, therefore, to implement emotional support appropriately and continuously.