The studies of students learning together in learning community (LC) programmes have been widely explored. Implementing and evaluating LC programmes challenge teachers considerably. This paper explains how action research was used to design, trial and refine a same-year LC programme to motivate students. The LC programme was successfully integrated into a course of English in 2017 and 2018 about 8 months in span. The paper demonstrates the value of action research for designing the LC programme to increase student motivation. In the meanwhile, the role of transformational teacher leadership and peer leaders played in a successful learning community is elaborated as well. Key elements influencing the success of the pro-gramme were: task-based learning activities; appointment of peer leaders; the provision of structured and unstructured student support; teacher assessment and peer assessment; and the use of interactive tutorials. Achieving the appropriate balance of these factors increased students’ motivation in their English learning.