Looking for
the right word
A guide to the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
ABOUT THE COCA
Why would writers need a corpus?
How can a corpus help?
What is the COCA?
HOW TO…
•
Register
•
Conduct a basic search
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Search within different genres
Genre description
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Look for words that occur together
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Compare words
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Explore synonyms
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See how the use of a word has changed over time
ADDITIONAL RESOURCES
Davies, Mark. The Corpus of Contemporary American English as the First Reliable Monitor
Corpus of English. Literary and Linguistic Computing 25.4 (2010): 447-64. Web.
Davies, Mark. More than a peephole: Using large and diverse online corpora. International
Journal of Corpus Linguistics 15. 3 (2010): 405–11. Web.
Davies, Mark. The advantage of using relational databases for large corpora: Speed, advanced
queries, and unlimited annotation. International Journal of Corpus Linguistics 10.3 (2005):
307–334(28).
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This handout was created by Clara Colombatto as part of her final research project for EDU 155 Literacy,
Writing, and Tutoring in Spring 2012.