          ! " #  $%& ’ ’ "  ( )*+ ,&! # $!  -’( ".! /! 01! "! 2%02! 1                   Email: ns_dash@yahoo.com  I argue here for teaching English as a second language to Bengali learners with close reference to English language corpora. The proposed method is assisted by computer and based on information obtained from English corpora developed with text samples of various types used by native people in their daily discourse. This empirical method for English Language Teaching (ELT) is proved successful in various parts of the world where English is used as a second language or ‘lingua franca’. There is no reason to be sceptical about its success in Bengali if the methods are used with careful manipulation of techniques and resources tagged with advices of the experts.   In recent years English corpora are used as a primary resource in English Language Teaching (ELT). Corpora are considered indispensable, since they provide reliable, authentic and diversified information hardly obtained from other sources. In fact, the idea of ELT without reference to corpora appears unscientific, because corpora give various opportunities to the learners to acquire the language from multiple directions. In essence, information obtained from corpora provides valuable complementary perspectives towards traditional linguistic principles of ELT (Biber 1996). Although there are numerous ways in which corpora can be utilised in ELT (Botley, McEnery and Wilson 2000; Granger, Hung and Tyson 2002), most often, these are accessed for the following reasons: (a) Intuition3based ELT materials are misleading. They contain intentionally invented examples, which generally overlook important aspects of usage or foreground less frequent stylistic choices at the expense of more frequent ones. (b) Corpus3based ELT is reliable and authentic, since teaching materials made from corpora are explicitly empirical including examples and descriptions of real life language. Here common choices of linguistic usage are given more attention than those, which are less common (Kübler 2002). (c) Empirical evidences compiled from corpora are used to train learners the kinds of language they will encounter when they practically interact in real life situations. For instance, citations to actual use of words, idioms, collocations, phrases, and sentences, etc. obtained from corpora enable learners to realise the patterns of use of these properties in the language they are learning. (d) Apart from being a source of data for empirical teaching, corpora are used to look critically at existing ELT materials. It is found that there are considerable amount of difference between what textbooks teach and how native speakers actually use the language (Ghadessy, Henry and Roseberry 2001). (e) Most textbooks used in ELT contain a few sets of invented examples descriptions of which are based on intuition of second3hand accounts. But in principle, ELT materials should be explicitly empirical including examples and descriptions from corpora. Corpora may be presented directly to the learners for class3work or may be used in preparation of teaching materials. (f) Corpora can reveal not only the range of patterns of a language that the learners assimilate, but also present frequency of these patterns, which is important in ELT materials development and syllabus design. Corpora have potentials to radically alter the design of ELT materials (Barlow 1996).