The main aim of this book is to discuss the relevance of corpus work for learners of English as a foreign language and this volume is directed to all those who believe that taking the point of view of the learners into consideration may be important for their job: materials’ designers, teachers and applied linguists in general.

I argue that analysing corpora, restricted in the range of the texttypes and topics collected, can be a useful learning activity, particularly for learners of ESP. Corpora are collections of texts in electronic form which can be analyzed to highlight features that are recurrent in the corpus itself. Small, specialized corpora of the type discussed in this book may provide a source to get an access to uses of specialized language.