The topic of this book – group dynamics – may sound like one of those very scientific terms that are impressive but which no one understands. This is not surprising: before we came across the concept, almost by accident, we had had only a very vague idea about what it could mean. And although now both of us are convinced that group dynamics is probably one of the most – if not the most – useful subdisciplines in the social sciences for language teachers, it is still virtually unknown in second language (L2) research.

Therefore, we believe that before we embark on our exploration of the field, we owe you some initial explanation. In this introductory chapter we would like to address three questions that we would ask if we were readers of this book. These are:

• What is group dynamics and why is it important for language teachers?

• Why is ‘group dynamics’ such an unknown concept in L2 studies and where can we find more information?

• What will be learned in this book and how will it help our teaching?

Invitation to participate

Before we answer these questions, let us briefly talk about you, the ‘reader-thinker-reflective teacher’. We have written this book for a relatively wide audience that would include would-be and practising teachers, methodologists, teacher educators and applied linguists, but we would expect everybody who decides to spend some time with this book to share one thing in common: an interest in the language learning/teaching process within a classroom context. So we assume that whatever your current position, you consider yourself (at least partly) a language teacher at heart.