Negotiation of language form is thought to engage learning processes by helping learners to notice gaps in their developing L2 and find target-like ways of filling them. Self-transcription, where learners work together to find language errors in recordings of their own oral output, is an awareness raising exercise that encourages such negotiation. This paper examines the problem-solving efforts of a class of Japanese students as they worked on a transcription exercise in English. It describes the various resources they made use of while tackling L2 problems and considers some of the cognitive processes underlying their decisions. This small-scale study shows how these learners effectively negotiated form while working independently of the teacher. Recordings of their discussions reveal a depth of cognitive processing thought to be beneficial to language development.