The purpose of this study was to gain an understanding of what kind of student benefits most from studying under the flipped learning method. A total of 43 Japanese university students studying in a language pedagogy course participated in this quasi-experimental study. Qualitative data was taken from 385 study journal entries and interviews with 15 of the participants. The language (i.e., English or Japanese) used by students in the journals and interviews was used to measure their linguistic self-confidence. The results suggested that students with high linguistic self-confidence perceive the videos used for the flipped class as beneficial for their learning but that they preferred to challenge themselves by reading the textbook without scaffolding from the videos. Students with medium and low linguistic self-confidence, however, indicated that they found the videos were beneficial for increasing their understanding of the content of the textbook and thus participate actively in discussions held during class.