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

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

3. Exercise A - What
What is
What does it do?

4. 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

5. 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

6. 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

7. 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!

8. 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

9. 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

10. 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)

11. 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

12. 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

13. 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.