IRW/Beck/Winter 12
Using a corpus to learn about vocabulary
A corpus:
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is a collection of texts on a computer.
is a database of real language.
can include written or spoken language (or sometimes both).
can be searched to study how words are used.
has been put together by linguists.
The following links will take you to websites where you can do your own investigation of the
language!
MICUSP is an example of a corpus. It includes university papers written by students in their
3rd and 4th year of college. It has 830 papers (2.6 million words) that were all graded with an A.
*TIP* - This corpus may be best used to look up words from your topic.
http://search-micusp.elicorpora.info/simple/
IRW/Beck/Winter 12
COCA stands for the Corpus of Contemporary American English and is an example of a corpus.
*TIP* - This corpus may be best used to look up general academic vocabulary.
http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/
IRW/Beck/Winter 12
Now it’s your turn!
Become the linguist and investigate the use of some vocabulary!
Directions:
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Choose 3 words (or phrases) from the AWL that you would like to find out more about.
Choose 3 words (or phrases) from your research topic that you would like to find out
more about.
Use the corpora to find out how the vocabulary words work!
1. Word or phrase:
________________________________________________________________________
How many times does the word occur in the corpus? ___________________________
Example sentence:
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Which type of text is the sentence from?
___________________________________________________________
What else did you learn from the analysis? In other words, did you recognize any patterns?
_____________________________________________________________________________
2. Word or phrase:
________________________________________________________________________
How many times does the word occur in the corpus? ___________________________
IRW/Beck/Winter 12
Example sentence:
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Which type of text is the sentence from?
___________________________________________________________
What else did you learn from the analysis? In other words, did you recognize any patterns?
_____________________________________________________________________________
3. Word or phrase:
________________________________________________________________________
How many times does the word occur in the corpus? ___________________________
Example sentence:
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Which type of text is the sentence from?
___________________________________________________________
What else did you learn from the analysis? In other words, did you recognize any patterns?
_____________________________________________________________________________
4. Word or phrase:
________________________________________________________________________
How many times does the word occur in the corpus? ___________________________
Example sentence:
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
IRW/Beck/Winter 12
Which type of text is the sentence from?
___________________________________________________________
What else did you learn from the analysis? In other words, did you recognize any patterns?
_____________________________________________________________________________
5. Word or phrase:
________________________________________________________________________
How many times does the word occur in the corpus? ___________________________
Example sentence:
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Which type of text is the sentence from?
___________________________________________________________
What else did you learn from the analysis? In other words, did you recognize any patterns?
_____________________________________________________________________________
6. Word or phrase:
________________________________________________________________________
How many times does the word occur in the corpus? ___________________________
Example sentence:
______________________________________________________________________________
______________________________________________________________________________
Which type of text is the sentence from?
___________________________________________________________
What else did you learn from the analysis? In other words, did you recognize any patterns?
_____________________________________________________________________________