This book grew out of a collaboration that stretches back over more than 25 years. It has its origin in classroom practice that has sought to maximize language learning outcomes in mixed-ability groups (Leni Dam); empirical research designed to throw light on the learning processes that produce those outcomes (Lienhard Legenhausen and Leni Dam); and an effort to derive pedagogical principles from successful practice (David Little) in order to facilitate replication in other contexts. It is important to emphasize that the several books and many articles we have published, individually and jointly, have always taken successful practice as their starting point.

We had four aims in writing the book. First, we wanted to give a thoroughly practical account of the autonomy classroom that would nevertheless be firmly anchored in theory. We wanted to explain in detail how to engage learners' interests and identities in the L2 learning process; how to promote reflection on learning; how to give learners control and involve them in evaluation; and how to do these things as far as possible in the target language. At the same time, we wanted to provide our account with a clearly articulated theoretical underpinning. Those considerations explain the structure and content of the Introduction and the first part of the book. Chapters 1–4 describe Leni Dam's classroom practice from four intersecting perspectives: target language use, interaction and collaboration, putting the learners in charge, and evaluation. We were aware of the limitations inherent in basing our account on the practice of a single teacher, albeit over several decades, but we judged that this was a price worth paying for the theoretical and practical coherence it offered. In any case, it is fundamental to our theoretical beliefs that the approach we describe can be adapted to the needs of learners in any context.