A tale of Blue Rain Café: A study on the online narrative construction about a community of English learners on the Chinese mainland

The study analyzes a strand of online discussion messages entitled ‘a Tale of Blue Rain Café’ from an online community of English learners on the Chinese mainland. The strand of messages was part of the collective reflection made by members of an English learning club on their participation. Using sociocultural learning theory, the paper explores how individual learners collaborated to create images of their own English learning community, enhance their feelings of belonging to this learning community, and effect subtle changes in their self-identities, all of which potentially help maintain their participatory learning in the community. Similar inquiries into learners’ construction processes of their learning communities will inform language teachers’ pedagogical endeavours to organize and sustain learners’ autonomous language learning efforts beyond the classroom.