A Tale of Blue Rain cafe



My talk on ‘A tale of Blue Rain Café’ was the last presentation on the day but I guess that it relates very well to the talk preceding to it (Hugh’s talk on poetics and autonomy). The paper I presented is a heartwarming story of autonomous Chinese learners of English in an English club held at a café called ‘ Blue Rain’ in my hometown. I happened to know these people, the English club and their story because I was an online wanderer longing to be related to my sweet hometown. And these learners were not only active in attending English club activities but also willing to talk about these activities spontaneously in a webforum. My paper analyzed a strand of online discussion messages entitled ‘a Tale of Blue Rain Café’ from this online community of English learners. The strand of messages was part of the collective reflection made by the learners on their participation after they decided to move the club to another site. I used sociocultural learning theory to explore how these 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. I found that all these activities somehow helped maintain their participatory learning in the community. Therefore, I believe that 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.

    I was very happy to see that the paper was well received and was also encouraged to do more on the issue by the participants. I want to express my deep gratitude for those who listened to my talk. You made me feel that I was a member of a supportive community of autonomy researchers. Someday, I hope to write an article about the autonomy researcher community itself. Maybe I shall call it ‘ A Tale of Worms’!



Andy

Sandie Mourao and Carol Everhard and, um... a worm looking for a home....

Zeynep Urkun and Jo Mynard doing their shift.