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