Bite-size TD: using wordandphrase.info/academic (with students) Lizzie Pinard

Bite-size TD Talk Aims Explore www.wordandphrase.info/academic and how it works Investigate how it can be used to improve academic writing Model an approach to use with students

Exercise A - What What is www.wordandphrase.info/academic? What does it do?

Exercise B - How Go to www.wordandphrase.info/academic Click on “Analyse academic texts” Type “demonstrate” into the search box Click search What do you learn about the word “demonstrate”? That it is in the top 500 most frequent words in academic writing

Exercise B Click on “demonstrate” (in yellow, on the right) What information do you see? What does all the coloured highlighting in the examples mean? Definitions, collocates, synonyms, frequency information, examples Different word types – pink=verbs; grey=articles/determiners ;blue=nouns; yellow=prepositions; orange=adverbs

Exercise B What is useful about the collocates? What two things are useful about the synonyms information? You can click on them and see how they are used with your target word Divided up by meaning; Clickable so you can see how they are used - structure may differ e.g. subject + demonstrate that + verb phrase but subject + validate + noun phrase

Exercise C Type “research” into the search box Click on “research” (in yellow, on the right). What do you have to choose between?) Look at the examples. Click the “sort” for the left-hand side column. What happens to the words? How is this helpful? Can you see any examples with the article “a”? If yes, what do you notice about the word after “research”? What do you learn from this? “Exact”, “Noun”, “Verb”, “Phrase” - select “noun” They are organised alphabetically; any identical words are grouped another noun = compound noun; no verbs. Research IS NOT COUNTABLE!

Exercise D Type “concentrate” into the search box Click on it (in red, on the right) Select “verb” Click on “sort” at the top of the right-hand column. Which two prepositions are most commonly used after concentrate? What do you notice about the structure of each? to be concentrated in (+ location) to concentrate on

Exercise E Type “impact” into the search box Click on it (in red, on the right) Select “noun” Click on “sort” at the top of the right-hand column. Which two prepositions are most commonly used after “impact”? What do you notice about the structure of each? (the) impact of something on something else (have an) impact on something

Exercise E e.g. powerful, problematic, profound, positive, negative, Click on “sort” at the top of the left-hand column. Look at the adjectives (green) used with impact. Which are evaluative? e.g. powerful, problematic, profound, positive, negative, major, significant (NOT e.g. environmental, humanitarian, social)

Exercise F play a role + in + verb-ing Type “role” into the search box Click on it (in yellow, on the right) Select “noun” You want to use the structure “play a role” with a verb phrase and don’t know what preposition and verb form to use after it. Use the examples to find out. *Remember, verbs are pink and prepositions are yellow. play a role + in + verb-ing

Exercise G Click on “sort” at the top of left-hand column. Look at the adjectives (green) used with role. Which are evaluative? e.g. essential, crucial, central, courageous, indispensable, pivotal NOT e.g. peacekeeping, public

Summary You can use www.wordandphrase.info to: look at definitions of your target word find (clickable) common collocates for your target word and see them used with your target word see examples of your target word or phrase in use, with surrounding punctuation and words colour-coded by word-class focus on the words that follow your target word or phrase (e.g. prepositions) focus on the words that precede your target word or phrase (e.g. evaluative adjectives, find synonyms (according to definition) of your target word click on synonyms of your target word to investigate all the above features in relation to that synonym.