A Diligent Student’s Distress in English-Medium Instruction Classes: A Longitudinal Study51DiscussionFirst, Finding 2 clearly shows that the focal student experienced distress in the difficulties in spontaneous L2 speaking. Distress evolved from multiple causes and her beliefs, as exemplified in Findings 1 and 3. The structural analysis of her narratives helped in determining her belief, her distress, and its causes by identifying how she made the point of the story （AB） and evaluated the situation （EV） and the complicating events （CA）. Her narratives showed how distress evolved from the pressure to prepare perfectly to avoid being embarrassed, the experience of losing face, and not being able to participate in the discussion despite her diligent work in preparation for attending the class.The deficit view of EMI students may argue that the pressure, embarrassment, and inability to participate in discussions stem from the focal student’s L2 English deficiency. However, if we look at Excerpt 5 closely, the difficulty in spontaneous L2 speaking cannot be attributed strictly to students’ L2 proficiency. The focal participant said she could not respond when someone asked her a question, because the question was “something unexpected” and she was “not prepared.” However, if the interlocutor encouraged her to speak and waited, she would have had some time to prepare and could have been able to speak, as she was able to speak in Excerpt 7 （“I spoke more than last time” for the prepared answers）. In other words, it should be stressed that EMI students as emergent bilinguals may have the language and content knowledge, but they need a little more time to construct what they want to say. This illustrates the point that spontaneous L2 speaking occurs as part of collaborative, social activity. Recognizing the EMI classroom discussion task as a social practice contributes to understanding how distress is induced by the co-construction of social identities that threatens the identities of the individuals （Duff, 2010; Morita, 2004）. Excerpt 6 describes the focal participant could only either nod or say, “I agree with you.” She could not contribute to the group discussion at all, despite her thorough preparation before the class. There is a dissonance between how she appears and how she is as diligent and knowledgeable as other students. Thus, she felt “embarrassed,” and her threatened identity became unbearable distress （Excerpt 8）. Thus, EMI students’ distress in spontaneous L2 speaking should not be attributed only to language problems but also to the quality of classroom interactions. Future studies can provide naturally occurring data for conversation analysis and examine this point.Although not mentioned in her narratives and journals, other potential reasons for distress are the different formats and constraints that online classes place on individuals. The author observed that each class disappeared suddenly from the PC screen with a “Leave Room” button. Any trace of physical time and space for students to connect and share some playful moments before and after each class were absent in the observation, journal, and interview data （except during the first class, students enjoyed introducing each other and had a free conversation in Japanese, but this did not last for the rest of the course）. If there was such an occasion, students could have eased their distress or even have had follow-up conversations regarding class discussions that they could not finish within the given discussion time. The effects of COVID-19 and the specific issues brought about by online classes certainly deserve
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