ABSTRACT
This chapter begins with a brief survey of spoken corpora available for learner spoken corpora and ESP spoken corpora respectively. The review of research findings discusses the implications of spoken corpus research for ELT materials and methodology. It considers three types of spoken corpus, spoken components of large general corpora; spoken corpora; and genre-specific spoken corpora. The chapter considers specific proposals for syllabus, materials and methodology for teaching spoken language. While methodology is not the primary focus it needs to consider whether syllabus recommendations from corpus research can actually be implemented successfully in the classroom, particularly when such recommendations present a challenge to orthodoxy. The importance of spoken language research in relation to contemporary language teaching is summed up by McCarthy and Carter thus language pedagogy that claims to support the teaching and learning of speaking skills does itself a disservice if it ignores what one knows about the spoken language.
