Through the looking glass and into the land of lexico-grammar

This article describes two complementary research projects into lexical patterning and frequency in general and academic English. The research suggests that treating current popularly used wordlists such as the General Service List (GSL) and the Academic Word List (AWL) as distinct constructs is of questionable merit. Rather, there are strong arguments for revising general lists of word frequency in order to ensure maximum utility to any language learner, regardless of specialization. In this respect, the construction of a new general list of word families is described. The article then proceeds to illustrate the difficulties involved in isolating specifically academic lexis and describes corpus-informed research which strongly indicates that what ESP practitioners require in addition to general frequency lists are complementary banks of lexico-structural items and collocates with genre-specific attributes and functions. Consideration of this data then leads to conclusions concerning the types of lexico-grammatical elements that might best serve different types of learners, and also the kind of methodology that might be appropriate, particularly for those involved in the teaching of English for general and specific academic purposes.