What is the Longman Spoken American Corpus?

The Longman American Spoken Corpus is a brand new initiative and comprises 5 million words of text. The gathering of recordings was undertaken for Longman by the University of California at Santa Barbara. It represents the everyday conversations of more than 1000 Americans of various age groups, levels of education, and ethnicity, and includes speakers from over 30 US States. The recorded speech is transcribed onto a computer database and analyzed by our lexicographers to determine frequency of use, precise meanings and typical phrases that students need to study.