Explorations of Grammar
in the BAWE corpus of Academic English
Grammar and EAP: BALEAP PIM St Andrews, June 2015
Sheena Gardner
sheena.gardner@coventry.ac.uk
www.coventry.ac.uk/BAWE
1. The BAWE Corpus
Level 1
Arts and Humanities (AH)
Applied Linguistics (115),
English (106), Philosophy (106),
History (96), Classics (82),
Archaeology (76), Comparative
American Studies (74), Other inc
MFL & Theatre Studies (50)
Life Sciences (LS)
Biological Sciences (169),
Agriculture (134), Food Sciences
(124), Psychology (95), Health
and Social Care (81), Medical
Science (80)
Physical Sciences (PS)
Engineering (238), Chemistry
(89), Computer Science (87),
Physics (68), Mathematics (33),
Meteorology (29), Cybernetics &
Electronics (28), Planning (14),
Architecture (9), Other (1)
Social Sciences (SS)
Business (146), Law (134),
Sociology (110), Politics (110),
Economics (96), Hospitality,
Leisure and Tourism,
Management (93), Anthropology
(49), Publishing (30), Other inc
Education (9)
Level 2
Level 3
Level 4
Total
Students
Assignments
Texts
Words
101
239
255
468,353
83
228
229
583,617
61
160
160
427,942
23
268
78
705
80
724
234,206 1,714,118
Students
Assignments
Texts
Words
74
180
188
299,370
71
193
206
408,070
42
113
120
263,668
46
233
197
683
205
719
441,283 1,412,391
Students
Assignments
Texts
Words
73
181
181
300,989
60
149
154
314,331
56
156
156
426,431
36
225
110
596
133
624
339,605 1,381,356
Students
Assignments
Texts
Words
85
207
216
371,473
88
197
198
475,668
76
166
170
447,950
64
313
207
777
207
791
704,039 1,999,130
Total students
333
302
235
169
1039
Total assignments
807
767
595
592
2761
Total texts
840
787
606
625
2858
Total words 1,440,185 1,781,686 1,565,991 1,719,133 6,506,995
The British Academic Written English (BAWE) corpus was developed at the Universities of Warwick,
Reading and Oxford Brookes under the directorship of Hilary Nesi and Sheena Gardner (formerly of the
Centre for Applied Linguistics [previously called CELTE], Warwick), Paul Thompson (Department of
Applied Linguistics, Reading) and Paul Wickens (Westminster Institute of Education, Oxford Brookes),
as part of the project An investigation of genres of assessed writing in British Higher Education which
was funded by the Economic and Social Research Council (project number RES-000-23-0800) from 2004
to 2007. We are indebted to the students who contributed their work, and enabled the corpus to exist.
© Sheena Gardner
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St Andrews June 2015
2. Accessing the BAWE corpus:
The BAWE corpus can be downloaded for research purposes via the Oxford Text Archive
(http://ota.ahds.ac.uk/headers/2539.xml) for use, with WordSmith Tools, AntConc et al.
It can be freely accessed using the open version of the corpus query tool SketchEngine at
http://the.sketchengine.co.uk/open/ or register for the full version for greater capability.
Information about the corpus, ranging from wordlists to academic publications is
available at www.coventry.ac.uk/BAWE The guide Using Sketch Engine with BAWE
(Nesi and Thompson) is also available there.
Writing for a Purpose Materials based on the project research are available for
learners and teachers on the British Council Learn English website
http://learnenglish.britishcouncil.org/en/writing-purpose/writing-purpose
5 Writing Purposes and 13 Genre Families in the BAWE Corpus
Explanations,
Exercises
……………………………………………..
Literature Survey,
Methodology Recount,
Research Report
………………………………………….
Essay
Critique
……………………………..
Empathy Writing
Narrative Recount
………………………………
Case Study
Design Specification
Problem Question
Proposal
© Sheena Gardner
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St Andrews June 2015
Data is or Data are?
Do a simple search for data. How many instances (hits) are there in the corpus?
Which is more frequent, this data or these data? ______________________
Hint: sort by the left
Which is more frequent, data is or data are? __________________________
Hint: sort by the right
Table 1 shows the proportion of instances of data with singular forms (e.g. this data is …) compared to
that with plural forms (e.g. these data are ...) in texts ranging from published scientific research
through to American student writing (MICUSP is the Michigan corpus of upper level student papers).
What does this table suggest about the use of data?
Data with
singular%
Plural%
Nature-Johns
10
90
Swales-Hyland
20
80
Google scholar
22
78
New Scientist-Johns
26
74
Newspaper
Guardian-Johns
60
40
WWW
Google
67
33
Student assignments
BAWE
79
21
Academic science writing
Academic journal articles across ten
disciplines
Academic books, reports and
journal articles
Popular Science magazine
Student assignments
MICUSP
82
18
Table 1: data across registers
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
Johns (1996) suggests that “the (traditional) meaning "evidence used in experimental procedures" is
most often plural, while the (more recent) meaning "digital information stored or manipulated by a
computer" is most often singular.” Swales (2002) concurs with this distinction in his study of data in
academic research articles.
Alternatively, consideration of these examples from a recent article in the journal Applied Linguistics
suggests it is important to look at the unfolding text; or maybe to consider what is ‘countable’..
Data for the project was collected over a five year period …The data included videos
and transcripts of … The data were analysed using …
Look again at the BAWE concordance lines. Does the Johns-Swales distinction between different
senses of data still hold? Or could you formulate an alternative rule of thumb to help students?
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
________________________________________________________________________________
Or perhaps we should be asking another question. In most instances data is not marked for singular or
plural. What happens instead? Based on the concordance lines, what strategies could you suggest to
help student writers avoid using either singular or plural forms with data?
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
___________________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
As this exercise suggests, it is important not only to know what sort of corpus data you are searching
(published research, general English, proficient student writing), but also to go beyond narrower
grammatical questions such as ‘should data be used with a singular or plural verb’ to explore different
senses of the search term, different contexts, and whether it is usually used in ways that do not require a
singular vs plural form.
© Sheena Gardner
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St Andrews June 2015
REFERENCES
(more at www.coventry.ac.uk/BAWE)
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