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The turn of the 21 century also marks the turn in Second Language Acquisition in which socio-cultural approach has enriched this trans-disciplinary field of study which had been dominated by cognitive approach. This new approach has opened not only a new direction in terms of theoretical framework but also more diverse methodological elements of research. A novel breakthrough of research design in SLA is Self-study (Bullough and Pinnegar, 2001) in which a learner interrogates his/her process of acquiring a second language. This study invited 11 (eleven) graduate students of English teaching program to reflect their journey of learning English. Each of them was required to write an auto-ethnography (Canagarajah, 2005) by connecting their lived experiences with SLA theories. The analysis of the participants- autoethnographies reveal the diversity of cultural background of the participants who come from monocultural to pluricultural backgrounds has shaped the way they encounter English as a foreign language. While many participants support the role of motivation (Gardner, 2010) in learning a second language, some of them also start to embrace the construct of identity (Norton, 2010) as a significant factor. The critical moments that the participants experienced that mark their awareness to reach their goal to be a competent speaker of English are explored to reveal the complexity of how a second language is acquired. The diverse settings from Islamic boarding school (pesantren) to living abroad contrast how , sociocultural sociocultural approach in SLA has opened a new horizon of both theoretical and practical consequences.