An Online English Learning Community for College Students Based on Community of Inquiry Framework

Establishing an online English learning community based on Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework provides an effective way to cope with problems existing in collegiate English teaching and learning in China. By participating in designed activities and discussing learning issues with other learners, participants can not only enhance their overall competences, in particular, productive competence, but also receive timely and effective feedback from their peers. This paper discusses the feasibility and practicality of building such an online English learning community by using WeChat group and Xiaodaka mini-program as the platform and following the elements of social presence, cognitive presence and teaching presence of CoI as the theoretical guidelines. Our pilot study shows that the established community received generally positive feedback from the participants who appreciated its effectiveness in improving their integrated English skills and acknowledged that the community helped with their motivation and self-regulation in English learning.