Blog #5: Corpora, Concordance, Collocations, Word Frequency

Check out the following sites:
Compleat Lexical Tutor: http://www.lextutor.ca/
Corpus of Contemporary American English: http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/
Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/

1. Compleat Lexical Tutor: http://www.lextutor.ca/

This site is Amazing. Though the site design is somewhat humble and cheap, it gives a lot of  high quality information. Just like a billionaire lives in a small apartment having full of high-end compartments, this site is composed with several precious features.

- The vocabulary level assessment: Many ESL/EFL degree holders know that Nation is a famous figure in vocabulary. His test is very reliable for the level assessment and accessible in this site.

 

- Sentences using target vocabulary: If I search the word "like", it give lines of sentences used in the context in the order of frequency.

- Collocations: The search engine determines the possible collocations based on 'the frequency of use'.

  

2. Corpus of Contemporary American English: http://corpus.byu.edu/coca/
Most words have more than a single meaning. In other words, each has different meanings in different contexts. This site finds the possible variations of meanings in different contexts.
Students can learn many uncommon usage of a word using this site.

 
3. Wordle: http://www.wordle.net/
This site is simple and powerful in showing word importance or usage frequency. It differenciates the words in size and color, so we can identify which words are prior to learning.

However it is not easy to determine between the words that has the similar difficulties.