This document discusses how online corpora can be used as a tool by literacy teachers. It begins by defining what a corpus is - a large database of representative language samples used for linguistic research. It then provides examples of free online corpora like COCA that teachers can use to answer questions about language patterns and usage. The document outlines how to effectively search corpora and interpret results, as well as limitations to be aware of. It also provides ideas for how teachers can incorporate corpora into classroom activities and lessons.

1. Online Corpus
Literacy Teachers’ Best Friend
Dominik Lukeš
dlukes@dyslexiaaction.org.uk @techczech

2. Outline
http://www.flickr.com/photos/adactio/3563832656
What is a corpus
Answering questions
with a corpus
The language of corpus
searches
The corpus and the
classroom
Practice

3. Corpus / Corpora
????

4. of about
language
knowledge
http://www.flickr.com/photos/missturner/3029700617/

5. Prescriptivism
… how language should be used
Descriptivism
… how language is used
v

6. “Most of the prescriptive
rules of the language
mavens make no sense on
any level. They are bits of
folklore that originated for
screwball reasons several
hundred years ago… For as
long as they have existed,
speakers have flouted
them…”

7. “intellectual abdication”
“should be ashamed”
“current around 1900”
“a perversion of
grammatical education”
“blind to textual evidence
even when he himself
exhibits it”
“dishonest and stupid”
“vile little compendium
of tripe about style”
Grammarian
Geoffrey K Pullum on …
“More passives in
Orwell's pompous essay
with the warning about
how you mustn't use
them than in any
periodical you can lay
your hands on! “

8. This usage stuff is not straightforward and
easy. If ever someone tells you that the rules
of English grammar are simple and logical
and you should just learn them and obey
them, walk away, because you're getting
advice from a fool.
http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=2790

9. Corpus
Key modern tool for finding out
about how language works…

10. Corpus
… is a large database of
representative language
samples …

11. Corpus
… 100s of millions of words
from (mostly) written language
in different genres in small
samples (~2000 words) …

12. Corpus
… used for linguistic research,
making dictionaries, writing
grammars, …

14. Corpora available for teachers
http://corpus.byu.edu

15. BYU corpora available
COCA (contemporary Am English)
COHA (historical Am English)
GloWbE (global web English)
Wikipedia
Google Books (BrEng/AmEng)
BNC (British National Corpus)
Hansard (British parliamentary speeches)
Spanish/Portugese

16. Access to COCA and related BYU
corpora is free…
…but free registration
required for more than
~10 queries a day

18. Other resources derived
from BYU corpora
WordFrequency.info
WordAndPhrase.info
AcademicWords.info
Collocates.info

19. http://www.webcorp.org.uk

20. http://corpus.leeds.ac.uk

21. http://www.flickr.com/photos/atoach/3900591006/
Searching a corpus early on in the
process of making a generalization
can save you a lot of unpleasant
surprises later.

22. How do we use the word
dyslexia?
We speak more often of dyslexic
children than adults.
We speak more often of dyslexia than
any other dys- word.

23. Concordance
BNC:
dyslexic [n*]
COCA:
dyslexic [n*]
http://www.americancorpus.org/
http://corpus.byu.edu/bnc

24. COCA:
dys*

25. Suffixing
rules
*yed
*ied

26. Suffixing
rules
*yed
*ied
played
stayed
portrayed
enjoyed
unemployed
surveyed
died
tried
married
worried
identified
applied

27. The Corpus Magic
*
[ ]
?
Different corpora use slightly
different codes. Read the
manual.
[n* ]

28. The Corpus Magic
*
[ ]
?
Any one character
Any number of
characters (incl 0)
Lemma
(all inflectional
forms of a word)
Different corpora use slightly
different codes. Read the
manual.
[n* ]
Part of speech tags
(e.g. nouns)

29. *each each, reach, beach, teach,
outreach, …, impeach, …
teach* teachers, teaching, …,
teachable, teacher-librarians, …
t*ch touch, teach, tech, torch,
trench, twitch, …, three-inch, …
teach * teach the, teach us, teach
students, …

30. ?each reach, beach, teach, peach,
leach, keach, …
each? each- (1), each# (1) [ie nothing]
?each? peachy, bleachy, teacha, reachs
(2) [ie spelling error], …
t?ch tech, tach, toch, tuch, tsch, tich
t??ch touch, teach, torch, tisch, …

31. [Lemma]

32. Part of speech tags
[run].[n*]
[run] [n*]

33. Common tags
[n*] noun
[NN2] plural nouns
[v*] verb
[VVD] verb past tense
[aj*] (BNC) / [j*](COCA) adjective
[av*] (BNC) / [r*](COCA) adverb

34. Help

37. You can also
cats and dogs search for idioms
?each*s combine wildcards
[=pretty] search for synonyms
car|bike|horse search for alternatives
used -car exclude searches
For more details see:

38. Concordance + KWIC
*ies.[N*]

39. KWIC – Key-Word In Context
*ies.[N*]

40. Limit searches by genre

41. Other questions corpus can answer
Are there more nouns or verbs ending in -ies?
*ies.[V*] vs. *ies.[N*]
Are there four-letter verbs ending in -ed in the present
tense? ??ed.[VVB]
What are the most common adjectives describing students
vs. pupils. [j*] [student] vs. [j*] [pupil]
What do we say teachers do most often?
[teacher] [vvb]

42. Corpus, rules, and regularity
http://www.flickr.com/photos/51505078@N00/352492687
pre*
*ed
*ies.[V*]

43. Collocations
Limits on variability
See also Kennedy, p. 80-23

44. Collocations
Limits on variability
See also Kennedy, p. 80-23

45. Collocations (cont)
[teacher] must [v*]

46. Idioms and set phrases
275 results
359 results

47. Google as a Corpus
"put the search text in quotes"
use * for the search item

48. training.dyslexiaaction.org.u
k

49. Google as a Corpus
PRO: rare, low frequency usage,
up-to-date usage
CON: no sampling, no frequency
sort, no genre limit, no part
of speech tags

50. Google results counts are only
rough estimates…
http://searchengineland.com/why-google-cant-count-results-properly-53559
Different people searching in different geographic
locations can get different numbers
Sometimes searching for A gives fewer results
than searching for A without B

51. …but Google fights can be fun

52. WebCorp is makes Google search
results linguist-friendly

53. Avoid Common
Corpus Errors
http://www.flickr.com/photos/andreassolberg/433734311

54. Be aware of limitations:
sampling, coverage, size,
presence of typos and errors,
bad part of speech tagging
Beware of low frequency
results
Beware of homographs

55. Check results come from
multiple sources
Check KWIC to confirm
relevance
Limit search by genre

56. Check examples and sources
training.dyslexiaaction.org.u
k

57. Always check low frequency results
must [v*] [n*]
…sometimes they come from the
same source

58. False roots
http://etymonline.com
corner, silly, preface,
cockroach, protest, stable …

59. Make your own corpus with
TextSTAT
http://neon.niederlandistik.fu-berlin.de/en/textstat

60. Make your own corpus with
AntConc
http://www.antlab.sci.waseda.ac.jp/software.html

61. Corpus in the
classroom
teacher preparation
student discovery

62. Teacher preparation
find relevant, common examples
prepare worksheets
check for exceptions
find out answers to student
questions about rules and usage

63. Student discovery
show search results to students to
work out rules or word meanings
teach students how to search for
questions
ask students to give each other
puzzles for searching

64. For heavy classroom use…
register for
group access
to prevent
spam lock out

65. Corpus v dictionary

66. Non-classroom corpus
use
supplement dictionary
cross-word puzzles
check typical usage
when writing

67. Where to go next?
http://www.corpora4learning.net

68. Thank you
Contact dlukes@dyslexiaaction.org.uk