Successful language learners exercise their agency as they experience learning or acquiring the target language. Their agency acts as the push from within themselves; influenced by the need of an end to be fulfilled and the action taken is within the permitted perimeter of the environment. This is evident in the current study on nine international students whose insights were captured through document analysis of their online postings and interviews. Findings revealed that these international students exercised their agency by making relentless efforts in employing language learning strategies despite the challenges they faced to become better learners of the English language. Further findings illustrating agency were investment and imagined community. Although both investment and imagined community concur with existing literature, the findings from this study further highlight ‘experience’ as an impetus for investment in English language learning.

• Arkoudis, S., & Love, K. (2008). Imagined communities in senior school mathematics: Beyond issues of English language ability. The Asia Pacific Communication: Special issue Chinese students: Perspectives on their social, cognitive, and linguistics investment in English medium interaction, 18 (1), 71-90.
• Bandura, Albert. (2001). Social Cognitive Theory: An Agentic Perspective. Annual Review Psychology, 52, 1-26.
• Bandura, Albert. (2005). The evolution of social cognitive theory. In K. G. Smith & M. A. Hitt (Eds.), Great Minds in Management (pp. 9-35). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Bandura, Albert. (2006). Toward a Psychology of Human Agency. Perspectives on Psychological Science, 1(2), 164-180.
• Braun, Virginia, & Clarke, Victoria. (2006). Using thematic analysis in psychology. Qualitative Research in Psychology, 3(2), 77-101.
• Davies, B. (1990). Agency as a form of discursive practice. A classroom scene observed. British Journal of Sociology of Education, 11(3), 341-361.
• Gu, M. (2008). Identity construction and investment transformation: College students from non-urban areas in China. The Asia Pacific Communication: Special issue Chinese students: Perspectives on their social, cognitive, and linguistics investment in English medium interaction, 18 (1), 49-70.
• Kettle, M. (2005). Critical discourse analysis and hybrid texts: Analysing English as a second language (ESL). Melbourne Studies in Education, 46(2), 87-105.
• Lantolf, James P. (2000). Introducing Sociocultural Theory Sociocultural Theory and Second Language Learning (pp. 1-26). Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Lantolf, James P, & Pavlenko, Aneta. (2001). (S)econd (L)anguage (A)ctivity theory: understanding second language learners as people. In M. P. Breen (Ed.), Learner Contributions to Language Learning: New Directions in Research (pp. 141-158). Singapore: Pearson Education Asia Pte Ltd.
• Noor Saazai, M.S, Yunus, M.M, Embi, M. A, & Yasin, M.S.M. (2014). Conducting online posting activity on a social networking site (SNS) to replace traditional learner diaries. In M. Orleans (Ed.), Cases on Critical and Qualitative Perspectives in Online Higher Education (pp. 489-508). USA: IGI Global.
• Norton, B. (1997). Language, identity and the ownership of English. TESOL Quarterly 31: 409-487.
• Oxford, R. L. (2011). Strategies for learning a second or foreign language. Language Teaching, 44(02), 167-180. doi: 10.1017/s0261444810000492
• Pavlenko, A. & Blackledge, A. (2004). Negotiation of Identities in Multilingual Contexts. Clevedon: Multilingual Matters Ltd.
• Pierce, B.N. (1995). Social identity, investment, and language learning. TESOL Quarterly, 29(1), 9-31.
• Scovel, Tom. (2001). Learning New Languages: A Guide to Second Language Acquisition. Canada: Heinle & Heinle.
• Tran, L.T. (2007). Journeys of Adaptation to Institutional Academic Practices: International Students in Higher Education. Melbourne: The University of Melbourne. PhD.
• Trent, J. (2008). Promoting investment by Chinese learners in classroom discourse: Integrating content and language in the undergraduate classroom. The Asia Pacific Communication: Special issue Chinese students: Perspectives on their social, cognitive, and linguistics investment in English medium interaction, 18(1), 30-48.