Book excerpt: The material in this book reviews work dating back to the vocabulary control movement in the 1930s and also refers to more recent work on the role of lexis in language learning. Two chapters describe the main foundations of lexical semantics and relevant research and pedagogical studies in vocabulary and lexicography; and a further chapter discusses recent advances in the field of lexis and discourse analysis. There is also a series of specially commissioned articles which investigate the structure and functions of the modern English lexicon in relation to its exploitation for classroom vocabulary teaching.