Textual Patterns introduces corpus resources, tools and analytic frameworks of central relevance to language teachers and teacher educators. Specifically it shows how key word analysis, combined with the systematic study of vocabulary and genre, can form the basis for a corpus informed approach to language teaching.

The first part of the book gives the reader a strong grounding in the way in which language teachers can use corpus analysis tools (wordlists, concordances, key words) to describe language patterns in general and text patterns in particular. The second section presents a series of case studies which show how a key word/corpus informed approach to language education can work in practice. The case studies include: General language education (i.e. students in national education systems and those following international examination programmes), foreign languages for academic purposes, literature in language education, business and professional communication, and cultural studies in language education.

Table of contents

Preface vi–x

1. Texts in anguage study and language education 3–10

2. Word-lists: Approaching texts 11–32

3. Concordances: The immediate context 33–53 4. Key words of individual texts: Aboutness and style 55–72 5. Key words and genres 73–88

6. General English language teaching: Grammar and lexis in spoken and written texts 91–108

7. Business and professional communication: Managing relationships in professional writing 109–129

8. English for academic purposes: Building an account of expert and apprentice performances in literary criticism 131–159 9. What counts in current journalism: Keywords in newspaper reporting 161–177

10. Counting things in texts you can't count on: A study of Samuel Beckett's Texts for Nothing, 1 179–193

References 195–198

Index 199–203

"The keyword is a powerful tool for assessing and understanding texts; this book gives a clear and detailed description of its possibilities, mainly through a series of convincing applications to a wide range of texts. Language learners and teachers should find full practical support here for their own investigations, provided by two pioneers of the harnessing of computer corpora to language learning." John Sinclair, The Tuscan Word Centre

"This book is a delight to read. It is not only an exceptionally clear and cogent account of the procedures of corpus analysis in general, but a convincing demonstration of how revealing these procedures can be when applied to particular texts, literary and non-literary, by focusing attention on features of potential significance for interpretation. Anybody working with texts should make it a priority to read this one." Henry G. Widdowson, University of Vienna