 What is the BNC?  What is Xaira?  How to use the BNC for: › Language teaching and learning › Research

 A 100 million word collection of samples of British English from a wide range of sources (10% spoken, 90% written texts).  Available under licence; latest edition is BNC XML edition (2007) ‏

 Reference Book Publishing  Natural language processing  Language Teaching and Learning › Materials design › Classroom reference › Independent learning  Linguistic Research › BNC as source of real language use › BNC as benchmark

 X ML A ware I ndexing and R etrieval A rchitecture  A text searching tool  Usable with any XML corpus  Provided free with the BNC XML Edition

Word – the different word forms in the corpus Phrase – the multi-word phrase or single word form Addkey – words with additional keys such as POS codes Pattern – word patterns XML – specific XML start- or end- tags Query builder – a complex query CQL – commands in CQL, the language Xaira uses to represent its queries internally

 How Xaira looks  How the solutions are displayed

 Manage the windows on the screen

 Solutions  No solutions  Too many solutions dialogue box

 Page mode/ Line mode  Plain text / XML text  Scope of context  Reference (status bar)

 ‘It's an interesting idea. ‘ It ‘s an interesting idea.

Case studies  1: She’ll (turn/ go) mad!!  2: Men are handsome/ women are beautiful › Language teaching and learning  Materials design, classroom reference, independent learning  3: Words in my corpus vs. ‘standard’ use › Research

 Task: › comparing use of “Turn” and “Go” › Turn + adj. vs. Go + adj.  Language point: Semantic prosody  Xaira functions: › Open the BNC › New query – query builder (word query + Addkey) › Sort

Query = Turn AND Go + Adjective

Link type: - Next - Not next - one-way - two-way

 Go + adj. (a-z)  Turn + adj. (a-z) 2 keys: 1. Examples of ‘go’, then ‘turn’ 2. Adj. (a-z)

Two Three

 Task: › Comparing the frequencies of collocates  Men vs. Handsome/ Beautiful  Women vs. Beautiful/ Handsome  Language point: collocations  Xaira functions: › Word query › Collocation Source: The BNC Handbook (1998)

__ 1

 Men with Handsome 15  Men with Beautiful8  Women with Beautiful 83  Women with Handsome 2

 Data: Bumrungrad and Vitallife websites “Linguistic keywords reflect the content of a particular text (Scott, 1997; 2000) through their high frequency”  Task/ research purpose › Identifying keywords to see which words are used particularly frequently on the websites › Comparing words in a website against ‘standard’ use Source: Watson Todd, R.

Process Collect texts of the websites Conduct word frequency Product A corpus Absolute frequencies

BIH and VitallifeBIH onlyVitallife only andcenterand centerandVitallife aboutato theusabout usthemanagement

WordsFrequenciesCorpus sizeFrequenciesCorpus size andKnown UnknownKnown centre. about. the. …. BNC Websites

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BIH and VLBIH onlyVL only VitallifecenterVitallife Bumrungrad wellness centeroverviewprograms wellnesshospitalnutraceuticals usinternationalmedicine

 Words relating to the hospital itself or its location  Words associated with websites  Words relating to medical priorities  Words relating to promotional priorities  Words relating to non-traditional interpretations of health

KeywordFreq.LLSourceExample Words relating to the hospital itself or its location Vitallife Vitallife At Vitallife we understand Bumrungrad Bumrungrad Bumrungrad serves over a million patients hospital Bumrungrad the largest private hospital international Bumrungrad Bumrungrad International is a complete medical campus Thailand Bumrungrad best quality service in Thailand Bangkok Bumrungrad located in the heart of Bangkok

 Collocation › Definition of the word › Phrase › Semantic prosody  Contrastive studies › Geographical varieties and languages › Categories of users  Language teaching and learning › Word meaning › Grammatical structures Source: The BNC Handbook (1998)

 Aston, G. and Burnard, L. (1998), The BNC Handbook: exploring the British National Corpus with SARA. Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press.  Oxford University Computing services (All About Xaira)  Reference guide for the BNC (XML edition)  The British National Corpus, version 3 (BNC XML Edition) Distributed by Oxford University Computing Services on behalf of the BNC Consortium. URL: