Corpora: a key part of a materials writer’s toolkit Julie Moore MATSDA, Liverpool 18 June, 2016

Corpus tools for ELT writers What are corpus tools? Using a corpus to help you write What a corpus isn’t very good for Ways of accessing corpora A few other nifty vocab tools

corpus (noun) plural corpora corpus tools

concordance concordance lines KWIC: key word in context enTenTen via Sketch Engine concordance lines KWIC: key word in context

Questions for the corpus How do we actually use must naturally (as opposed to have to)? Do we say keep your temper? Which is most common in British English; beat around the bush or beat about the bush? Would you say ‘listen on headphones’ or ‘listen with headphones’? Do we use the word actor (for a woman) instead of actress now?

Searching for authentic examples enTenTen via Sketch Engine

Searching for authentic examples Find a ready-to-use example that fits perfectly! All entries must include name, phone and email. Adapt/abridge a corpus example To comment, you must log in. Use the corpus examples as a template to create your own example Your application must include your name and email address.

Collocation searches Do we say keep your temper? enTenTen via Sketch Engine

Collocation searches Do we say keep your temper?

Searching for phrases and chunks beat around the bush or beat about the bush? enTenTen via Sketch Engine

Searching for phrases and chunks beat around the bush or beat about the bush? All regions British English only enTenTen via Sketch Engine

Choosing the best search listen on headphones or listen with headphones? 1 A collocation search:

Choosing the best search listen on headphones or listen with headphones? 2 A phrase search:

Choosing the best search listen on headphones or listen with headphones? 2 A phrase search: its easier to pick out stuff when you're listening on headphones I was home and listening to music on headphones in the living room If you are listening to music with headphones, the music should be quiet enough … I strongly suggest you listen with headphones, and listen several times Whether they read it on a Kindle or they listen to it through their headphones I'd discovered the audio recordings which can be listened to through headphones

What a corpus isn’t so good at … Searching for language features that don’t involve specific lexis: e.g. present continuous for future plans, second conditional, etc. Longer examples & complete texts: © copyright and permissions rules apply

A couple of caveats Know your corpus: Don’t follow blindly: spoken vs written genre mix AmE vs BrE expert vs student Don’t follow blindly: question surprising results you only get what you search for there aren’t always clear-cut answers remember your audience & aims

Accessing a corpus Ask your publisher: OUP, CUP, Macmillan, Pearson, Collins Free open corpora: COCA, SkELL, BAWE/BASE … Subscription corpora: Sketch Engine, Collins Corpus*

And a few other nifty tools … Textcheckers English Vocab Profile, AWL, Oxford 3000™

And a few other nifty tools … Textcheckers English Vocab Profile, AWL, Oxford 3000™ Usage trends Ngram, COBUILD online

And a few other nifty tools … Textcheckers English Vocab Profile, AWL, Oxford 3000™ Usage trends Ngram, COBUILD online Dictionaries thesaurus, advanced searches

Links & refs: Corpora: Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA): http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/ Sketch Engine for Language Learning (SkELL): http://skell.sketchengine.co.uk/ British Academic Written/Spoken English (BAWE/BASE): https://the.sketchengine.co.uk/open/ Sketch Engine (subscription): http://www.sketchengine.co.uk/ Other tools: Vocab Kitchen (text checker): http://vocabkitchen.com/ Ngram viewer: https://books.google.com/ngrams Collins COBUILD (usage graphs): http://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english mawsig.iatefl.org lexicoblog.blogspot.com ELTjuleswords @lexicojules