Welcome to my website
I retired from my university job at the University of Nottingham on September 1, 2020, and am now Emeritus Professor. Therefore I am no longer supervising PhD students or teaching at the university. But I intend to stay active in the field, including writing books, journal articles, attending conferences, and consulting internationally. I would be very open to teaching short courses while a visiting professor at other universities. So I basically retired from the day job to free up the time to pursue these other professional interests.
NEWEST BOOKS
I have written a book about language
to help the general public understand
language better and use it more
effectivley. The book is called
Language Power.
I have also co-authored a book
describing how our research team
developed the Knowledge-based
Vocabulary Lists. These lists show the
words which are the best-known by
learners of English as a Second
Language.
But where did it all start? I began my career as an EFL teacher in Japan in 1988 and quickly became interested in how language learners acquire vocabulary in their second (or more) languages. I began researching vocabulary in earnest during my PhD years at Nottingham (1994-1997). Since then, my interests have broadened to all aspects of lexical study, including vocabulary testing, phraseology and formulaic sequences, corpus-based research, and the interface between vocabulary knowledge and the ability to read and listen in English. Also, writing Language Power gave me the chance to explore a very wide range of language use issues.
On this website, you can find most of my research in downloadable format. There are also vocabulary tests and word lists available on the Resources page. I hope you find something that will be interesting and useful!


Contact Information
Now that I am retired, I will not be checking my email so regularly. However, I will continue to monitor my old Nottingham email address, and if you want to contact me, you can try it:
Email: norbert.schmitt@nottingham.ac.uk
I will also be dropping into my old department occasionally, and you could also contact me via the post:
Prof. Norbert Schmitt
School of English
University of Nottingham
Nottingham NG7 2RD
United Kingdom