This book is concerned with frequency in foreign

language learning, and in particular with

contrastive frequency across languages. The

focus is on the learning of English and Italian,

whether it be English speakers learning Italian

or Italian speakers learning English. Despite

the fact that frequency – whether it be of

lemmas or of word forms within specific lexicogrammatical

environments – lies at the

heart of L2 learning, it is not stressed in any

salient or consistent manner in English / Italian

language-learning materials. This work aims

to redress the balance, offering a corpusassisted

critical analysis of the way frequency

is handled in English and Italian dictionaries,

and bringing out unexpected differences

between the two languages.