How Can Corpora Help Me To Be Successful in CO150?

 Corpus (singular)  corpora (plural)  A collection of texts that are used to study language  Texts can be written language (books, newspaper articles, magazines, etc.)  And/or oral language (lectures, daily conversations, speeches, etc.) that are transcribed to writing Note: ‘To transcribe’ is to write something down exactly as it was said.

 Nowadays corpora are electronic, which makes it easy for us to access and use them for free  Researchers use corpora to look at patterns in language  English grammar textbook authors use corpora to be sure of what patterns in English actually occur in writing and speech  Teachers can use corpora for the same reason, to make sure that the English you are learning matches the English that native speakers use  Students can use corpora, which shows them how native English speakers use grammar/sentence structure/vocabulary.

 There are many types of corpora:  Big and balanced (texts from different genres: COCA- 450 million words)  Small and specialized (business letters, engineering research journal articles, legal essays)  Spoken only (MICASE)  Other languages (Academia Sinica Balanced Corpus, Chinese)  Multilingual (comparing two or more languages in 1 corpus)  Free vs. not for the public (Longman corpus)  Learner (created with language learner, not native speaker, texts)  We will explore a few free, big, and balanced corpora: COCA, BNC, Lex Tutor (uses both)

 Two of the goals in this class, according to your syllabus, are to:  Locate and evaluate pertinent source material, including library and Internet-based sources.  a) Understand the principles of revising and editing and (b) be able to revise for focus, structure, style, purpose, and audience.  The corpora I show you in class will help you edit your writing yourself, which should help you in CO150 and other classes

 We will learn about different corpora resources throughout the semester.  Corpora can help us with editing our papers, so we will use it during our second drafts.  Today we will look at the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)  COCA is free  Has a large selection of different genres like spoken, fiction, magazine, newspaper, academic  We will focus on academic, since we use American Academic English in college