ABSTRACT
This introduction presents an overview of the key concepts covered in the subsequent chapters of this book. The book is about vocabulary research in English for Specific Purposes (ESP) - that is, technical or specialised vocabulary. ESP vocabulary research includes a broad base of quantitative research, mostly drawing on large-scale, corpus-based analyses of written and some spoken texts in ESP, and a less well-established, but no less important, focus on qualitative research. Nation points out that Medicine and Botany are fields with large technical vocabularies. Second and foreign language learners need a large vocabulary to cope with their studies in academic or professional environments. Technical vocabulary in a field may or may not be shared with other technical areas, and learners do not tend to meet this specialised or technical vocabulary outside the discipline of their studies. Medical vocabulary, for example, is typically not included in everyday conversations in English.
