This book brings together a number of separate studies by the author, all based on the Cambridge and Nottingham Corpus of Discourse in English spoken corpus, and weaves them together to illustrate the central role the study of spoken genres, with corpus and its make-up, McCarthy lays our the main components of a theory of spoken genres, with corpus examples. There then follows a broad discussion of what can/should be taught about the spoken language, followed by chapters on discourse grammar and on the sometimes parallel,sometimes different, grammatical patterning of spoken and written texts. The author then turns his attention to lexis, with a general overview of the vocabulary of spoken language,plus a specific study of idioms in the CANCODE,corpus. The book closes with a look at another central area of language teaching, speech reporting. All the chapters are amply illustrated with real corpus examples, and McCarthy brings to bear his more than 30 years' experience in language teaching to atgue for putting spoken language right at the centre of the syllabus.