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This video is brought to you by eapfoundation.com, the website for all your academic English needs
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So this video looks at concordances for academic English study. There are two parts. First we'll see what a concordance is
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And then we'll look at four online concordances. Namely, Legstuter, the BNC concordance, myCUSP and SCEL
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First then, what is a concordance? A concordance is a computer program which is used to search through a corpus
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A corpus is a collection of texts. The plural of the word is corpora
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These texts can be grouped according to many different classifications. So we could have a corpus for newspaper articles, a corpus for fiction, a corpus for non-fiction texts
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a corpus of web pages, as well as corpora for academic English
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which could be spoken academic English, presentations, lectures, discussions, or written academic English, essays, reports and so on
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And corpora vary in size. Some contain just a few thousand words
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Some may contain millions of words. Very large corpora may even contain billions of words
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A concordance functions very much like a search engine. But instead of a list of websites, it provides a list of sentences containing the search word
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And this is useful in order for you to look for patterns, to see how common a word or phrase is
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and to understand how a word or phrase is used. This video is going to be very practical
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So I'm going to show you how to improve writing using concordances
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To do this, we're going to start with this short example of a student piece of writing with some errors in it
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Different from green energy, energy from coal will make many bad effects to the environment
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Figure 1 is showing some of these effects. So the errors here are different from make, bad, to, and is showing
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And we'll use each of those concordances to see how we can correct these errors
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So let's begin by looking at the Legstuter concordance. So this is the Legstuter homepage
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It has many different vocabulary tools, including a highlighter for the academic word list, which I reviewed in another video
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So what we're interested in is the concordance. And you can see it has concordances for other languages besides English
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So this is the interface for the Legstuter concordance. One of the great things about the Legstuter concordance is that there are many different corpora that you can use
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So it defaults to the BAWE, the British Academic Written English corpus, which has 8 million words
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There's also the BASE, the British Academic Spoken English corpus. There's a corpus of Academic Abstracts
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There's the BNC, COCA, the corpus of Contemporary American English. There's a corpus for Jane Austen's works, Presidential Speeches, Shakespeare's works, and Wikipedia
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The BAWE, which it defaults to, is a very nice corpus and the one I normally use, so we'll just leave it on that one
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So let's start off by searching for the word effect and pressing Enter
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There are other settings that we can change, but my experience with students is it's easier to change the settings after the first search
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So that's what we'll do here. So we need to wait while it's assembling the data
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OK, so here are the results. These are the concordance lines with the word effect
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There are 2,788 in total. At the moment, these results are not sorted in any way
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One thing I'm interested in is adjectives which can be used with effect. So let me search again, and this time sort by words to the left
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So here are the results. We can see adverse effect is quite common
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An effect. And effect. If we scroll down to the end of the page, we can actually see the relative frequencies of words which occur to the left of effect
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This is one negative of the site, because this information would be much more useful at the top of the page
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The most common adjective is negative, which occurs 63 times. And that has the same meaning as the word bad
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There's also the word detrimental 26 times, and adverse 15 times. So those three adjectives might be a better alternative to the word bad
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Something else we can do is we can look for pairs of words. In this box where it says plus a sock, which means associated with, I'm going to put the word negative
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And next to that it says on left, and that's what we want. Words which are associated on the left with the word effect
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So here you can see all the examples of negative with the word effect. And this should actually give us more information
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So we can see here had a strong negative effect. Have the negative effect
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Has a profound negative effect. Have some negative effect on, and so on
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So we can now see that the correct verb to use with effect is have
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Have an effect. How about the preposition which goes to the right
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Well this time I'll keep the same search, but I will sort by words which occur to the right
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We can see that of occurs a few times, but that's not the right sentence structure
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The negative effect of. If we look for examples with a verb, we see the verb have a negative effect on
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So in addition to have being the correct verb, we can see that the correct preposition is on
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You can see the example extract is rather short. We can actually click on the keyword to see it in its full context
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So how about the other problems that we had in the student writing? Well let's search this time for different from
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And this time it needs to be associated on the right. Let's wait for the results
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Okay, so here are the results. So scroll down to different from
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The keyword, in this case different, is all in capitals, which makes it a little bit difficult to see the punctuation
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But if we look at the example sentences closely, we can see that different from always occurs in the middle of a sentence
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It never occurs at the beginning of a sentence. So that's the problem with that student's use of that transition
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It doesn't occur at the beginning of a sentence. Let's also look for figure
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Let's try searching for figure one. And this time it's a bit difficult to see the results
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So let me change that search. Instead of searching for figure one, let me search for figure show
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Because one of the good things about the LexTutor Concordance is it will match word forms, not just the exact word
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So here we can see examples of figure with show. Figure one, nineteen, shows
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Figure one, one, shows. Figure ten, shows. So we can see very quickly that we need to use the present simple tense here, shows
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Not present continuous, it's showing. One other thing which I'll show you here very quickly is that we can also sort words according to the sub-corpus
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In this case the frequency information is presented at the top of the page with better formatting, so this is much more useful
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So these results are again for figure associated on the right with the word show
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We can see this occurs most commonly in the engineering sub-corpus, 77 times
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But also quite frequently in physics, 70 times, biology, 50 times, meteorology
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So we can deduce from that that the word figure associated with the verb show is more common in science subjects than other disciplines
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Next let's look at the BNC Concordance. BNC is short for British National Corpus and this was created by Oxford University Press
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It's a corpus that contains 100 million words. This corpus covers a wide range of genres including spoken text, fiction, magazines, newspapers and academic texts
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In order to use the BNC Concordance you first need to log in, which is a very simple process
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To use the BNC Concordance you first need to log in, which means you first need to register for an account
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Registration is free and fairly straightforward. So this is the registration page where you need to fill in some details such as your name, email address and so on
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The free account has some limitations, the main one being you can only make 50 queries a day compared to 200 queries for a paid account
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But for ordinary use this is going to be enough. So this is the homepage of the BNC Concordance
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You can see the search area on the left and some information about it on the right. There are different things we can do with this concordance
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You see a list, chart, collocates, we can compare words and KWIC which is Keyword in Context Display
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So let's start off with list. Let's begin by searching again for the word effect
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And you can see that this occurs 22,887 times. But this is in all the corpus and not just the academic section
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If you want to conduct searches in the academic section then we need to choose that
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So we click on section here and select academic. And then if I search again we see that there are now fewer results, 8099
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If I click on the word effect here we can see some examples of the word in context
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Next I'm going to look at the collocates tab. So this is useful for finding collocations of the keyword
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And we can search up to four words to the left or four words to the right
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For this search I'm just going to choose one word to the left
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Again it's still on the academic section. So let me search. And these are the results
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Here it shows frequency in the academic section as well as frequency overall
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You can see this is very visual so it shows very quickly the relative frequency of these different collocates
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Some of these are just simple words. It's no, give, into. But we can also see some adjective and noun collocations
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Direct effect, significant effect, adverse effect. The adjective negative is actually quite low down, number 35, with a frequency of 18
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That compares to adverse which is 8th in the list, a frequency of 50
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So the collocation adverse effect is more frequent in the BNC than it was in the BAWE using LexTutor
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And if I click on the word adverse I can see some examples of that collocation in some sentences
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So now I'm going to do a keyword in context search. Let's sort the results by the word one to the left because I'm interested in adjective collocations with effect
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So let me search and wait for the result. And this shows some rather interesting information
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So it's colour coded with blue being the nouns, pink for verbs, yellow for prepositions
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So I can see fairly quickly that the word have goes with the word effect
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Can have an adverse effect on. And it's often followed by the word on which is shown in yellow
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Having the desired effect on. Have the desired effect. Have a dramatic effect on
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And so on. The chart tab is really useful for showing comparisons across different sections of the corpus
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So let me show you an example for the word bad. OK, we need to wait a while
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This is one of the features I don't like about this site. Which is unless you have a premium account it will sometimes pause and ask you to upgrade your account for a fee
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So we need to wait a little while here. OK, let's continue
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So here you can see that the word bad has the lowest frequency in the academic corpus
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It's used much more frequently in non-academic text, newspapers, magazines and especially spoken English
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Now let's see what adverse looks like in the different sections. So you can see that adverse is used most frequently in academic text
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Much less frequently in non-academic text. And very rarely in fiction or spoken English
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There are some other options that you can change here but I won't go into those because they are a bit technical and some of them need a premium account in order for you to change them
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What you will do though is to look at some of those other examples. So let's look for the word different
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Again a keyword in context search. This time I'll sort by words to the right
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Because I'm interested in the phrase different from. So here you can see that unlike lextutor the formatting of the original is retained
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So we have a small d if the word is in the middle of a sentence and a capital d if it's at the beginning of a sentence
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So if I scroll down to different from. These examples here. You can see it's always a small d. It's always in the middle of a sentence
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Is very different from. Are very different from. Let's look at the other example I had
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So let's search for figure. Again one word to the right. Okay it's asking me to upgrade the account again
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Let's try that again. Okay so here we are
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So here we're interested in the verbs which follow. Which remember are in pink
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So figure one shows. Figure one illustrates. Depicts. Shows. Illustrates. Presents. So again we can very easily see here that the present simple tense is used with the word figure
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We can also see some interesting alternatives to the word shows. For example illustrates
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Next let's look at the MICASP concordance. This concordance is used as a corpus of 2.6 million words from 829 student papers submitted to Michigan University
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So it goes without saying that this is an academic corpus. As with the other concordances I'm going to begin by searching for the word effect
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So this concordance gives us some very interesting information. The first thing it shows here is how often it occurs in different disciplines
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This is the raw data. It's much more useful to show frequency per 10,000 words
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We can see very clearly that the word effect occurs most commonly in the economics discipline
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11.89 times per 10,000 words. It also occurs very commonly in physics
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10.49 per 10,000 words. That's more than double the frequency of the next discipline
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Which is 4.66. Something else which is unique to this corpus is showing the distribution across paper types
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So we can see the word effect occurs most commonly in research papers, 39%, and reports, 37%
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Something else which is different about this concordance is that instead of concordance lines it shows a very extended example
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This definitely makes it more difficult to look at patterns and to find collocations
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Nevertheless we can see that the word effect goes with the verb have and the preposition on
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Have had a great effect on. If we search for the word figure we don't get any good results, at least not on the first page
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Something we can do with this concordance though is to search for more than one word
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So let's search for the phrase different from. And here we have lots of examples which all show that this is used in the middle of a sentence with the verb to be
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This is quite different from. Can be very different from. Are different from
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To be significantly different from. And so on. This corpus remember is made up of upper level student papers, in other words very good student writing
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And we can actually filter our search in many different ways. So we can change the student levels from undergraduate to first, second and third year graduate
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We can look for native or non-native speaker use. We can look for language in the abstract, definitions, literature review and so on
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We can limit to just certain paper types like argumentative essay or report or research paper
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And we can also limit our search to different disciplines, biology, economics and so on
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So although this concordance has some drawbacks, it definitely has some features which the other ones lack
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Finally let's look at the scale concordance. So scale is short for Sketch Engine for Language Learning
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This is a free simplified interface of the more advanced and subscription only corpus tool Sketch Engine
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The scale concordance uses its own corpus which comes from a range of genres
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News, books, blogs, Wikipedia which accounts for 39%, other web pages which account for 31% and also the British National Corpus at 9%
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And although this includes the academic corpus of the BNC, this is not an academic corpus
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But it's still very useful for academic study as we'll see. So scale is definitely the easiest of the concordances to use
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Again let's search for the word effect. So it immediately brings up examples of the word in context
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These examples are very different from the ones that we've already seen because they're all very short
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And there is always exactly 40 of them. So on the one hand this makes the examples very simple
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On the other hand it makes them a bit limited. If we click on the Similar Words tab we have words which are similar to effect
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Maybe the most useful part of scale is the word sketch area. So here we can see different words which associate with the keyword effect
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So we have verbs with effect as the subject. So effect occurs
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And if we hover over that word we can see more examples. Over here we have verbs with effect as object
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And the one at the top the most frequent is have. So this shows us that have is the most common verb that goes with effect
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Although interestingly it doesn't have the structure have an effect on. And then down here we have modifiers of effect
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In other words adjectives which could be used with effect. So you can see that adverse is very high up in the list
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Adverse effects. Negative is actually third in the list. Negative effects. Here you can see some other words which associate with effect
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The main one being cause. Cause and effect. The difficulty lies in separating cause and effect
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Let's try searching this time for figure. So this time we're interested in verbs with figure as a subject
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So you can see show at the top. Figures show. Illustrate is also high in the list
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The figure below illustrates operations of dynamic logic. So present simple again is the tense that's used
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And at the end a verb we saw before. Depict. If I try searching for different I don't actually get any information that's useful
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Even if I look at the example sentences I can't see the phrase different from
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So scale is not so useful for finding that particular problem. And remember it's not an academic corpus
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So let me now summarise some of the things that we've learned. I'll begin with a language summary
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So we've seen that the phrase different from can't be used at the beginning of a sentence
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It combines with the verb to be. To be different from. We've seen that the noun effect goes with the verb to have
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To have an effect. And the preposition on. To have an effect on
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We also saw that bad is not an academic word. Negative is a more academic adjective
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To have a negative effect on. But we also saw that adverse and detrimental can be used instead
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To have an adverse effect on. To have a detrimental effect on
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And we also saw that verbs following figure one should use the present simple
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Figure one shows. Although again we saw some possible alternatives. Illustrates. Figure one illustrates
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Or depicts. Figure one depicts. So with that information we should now be able to correct the errors in the student writing
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The first one is a bit difficult because although we saw that different from can't begin a sentence we didn't see any alternatives
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The word unlike can be used here. Unlike green energy. But we did see how to fix the other problems
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So instead of make we should use the verb have. Have many adverse effects
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Or we could also say negative effects. On the environment. Figure one shows some of these effects
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Or we could also say illustrates. Finally let's summarise the different features of these concordances
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Lake Stuta. The BNC. MyCusp. And Skel. The good news is that all of these are free to use
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The BNC requires registration first before you can use it but the other ones don't
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Lake Stuta is maybe the most powerful because it has more than one corpus
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Whereas the other ones use their own corpus. All of them use an academic corpus except for Skel
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If you want to see how words are used in different disciplines. For example biology, engineering, economics, psychology
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Only Lake Stuta and MyCusp will do that for us. If we're interested in looking at how words and phrases are used in different writing types
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Like reports, argumentative essays and so on. Only MyCusp will do that
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And all of them are useful for collocation study with the possible exception of MyCusp
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Because the extracts are rather too long to do that simply. In short all of the concordances have features which make them useful for academic English study
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For more information on concordances and other aspects of academic English. Please visit the website eapfoundation.com
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As well as more detailed information about concordances. You can find a worksheet for use with this video and others on the channel
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Visit eapfoundation.com Finally if you're interested in exploring corpora in more detail to improve academic writing
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There's a great book on this topic. It's called Academic Writing with Corpora
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A resource book for data-driven learning. This was written by Tatiana Karpenko-Sikkim and is published by Routledge
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You can find a link in the description below. And there's also a review of the book on the eapfoundation.com website
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And there's also a review of the book on the eapfoundation.com website