Michael McCarthy is Emeritus Professor of Applied Linguistics, University of Nottingham, UK. He holds/has held Visiting and Adjunct Professorships at the University of Limerick, Ireland, Newcastle University, UK, and Penn State University, USA. He is an Honorary Professor of the University of Valencia, Spain. He has been involved in the study and teaching of English for 52 years. Since the 1980s he has worked with computerised corpora, investigating the vocabulary and grammar of present-day English, with a focus on everyday spoken language. He is author of more than 50 books and 112 academic articles. He has lived and taught in the UK, the Netherlands, Spain, Sweden and Malaysia.