Shier/Writing with a Corpus
Name ________________________________
Copy and paste your own article or one provided by Laura into the box on the Vocabprofile page:
http://www.lextutor.ca/vp/eng/
A. Fill in the chart. Use the information from the chart analyzing the words:
Word list
Percentage of Words from each Word List
K1 (1 – 1000)
K2 (1001-2000)
AWL
B. Look at the highlighted yellow words. These are from the Academic Word List. In the box below,
write the words that you know the meaning of:
Verb
Noun
Adjective
Adverb
C. Look at the highlighted yellow words. These are from the Academic Word List. In the box below,
write the words that you do not know or do not know how to use in writing.
Verb
Noun
Adjective
Adverb
Shier/Writing with a Corpus
Name ________________________________
D. Choose 5 words from the chart in Activity C: words you do not know. Now open the corpora page:
http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/
1. Write the words
here. Then type
each word into
the “search
string” box on the
left side of the
screen.
Word #1
#2
#3
#4
#5
2. How many times
does the word
appear in the
corpus?
3. Check the
collocate box.
What kinds of
words appear
around the word?
Write 3 or 4 in the boxes:
4. Add prepositions
in the POS (part of
speech) box.
What are the 3
most common
prepositions?
5. Can you discover
which form of the
word (part of
speech) is more
commonly used?
What is it?
E. Write 3 or 4 example sentences here that you find useful from the corpus:
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Shier/Writing with a Corpus
F.
Name ________________________________
Now copy and paste your revised paper, “Freshman Stress” into the Vocab profile. How does your
language compare? Fill in the chart. Use the information from the chart analyzing the words:
Word list
K1 (1 – 1000)
K2 (1001-2000)
AWL
Percentage of Words from each Word List
G. Choose a few vocabulary words in your writing. Reflect on your writing. Do you think you use
common collocations? How about correct prepositions? Evaluate your writing:
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H. Are there any words that you investigated in Activities B, C, and D which you could possibly use in
your writing? Either this essay or another? Write them below, and make an effort to use them in
your writing.
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Please turn in your portfolio. Save this worksheet on your H drive, and then email it to me: shierl@pdx.edu