Concordancing and the teaching of the vocabulary of academic English

The project described in this article has used the concordancing program, Microconcord, with the Microconcord Corpus of Academic Texts (1993) to introduce students unfamiliar with the language of academic discourse to some of the most important, frequent and significant items of the vocabulary of academic English. The project has developed materials for classroom use and independent learning intended for native speakers of English as well as students of non-English speaking backgrounds. The materials deal in detail with frequently used words which are common to all fields of academic learning, not attempting to include specialized or technical vocabulary items associated with specific disciplines. Those working on the project are convinced of the value of concordancing in the development of teaching materials focusing on vocabulary and grammar and the line between them. This article describes the approach used and deals with the rationale behind that approach.