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Lesson 1: How to use the COCA corpus WORD AN PHRASE: Step-by-step instructionsRegistering with COCA WORD AND PHRASE Once you are on the Word and Phrase homepage, look in the upper right-hand corner. Click on LOG IN and then REGISTER.Register by creating your own account: type in your user name and password. Complete the table with your personal information.Once you are done, an email will be sent to the email address you provided.Open the e-mail message from COCA and click on the link provided in the message.Now go back to the Word and Phrase homepage and log in with your user name and password.II. Learning about COCA WORD AND PHRASEA. What information can I get about the word?Look at the frame (section) on the left under WORD AND .Click on FREQUENCY LIST.Type the word ‘diversity’ in the WORD box.Ignore everything else and click SEARCH.In the basic frequency list (shown in the top right frame), you see the rank (1-60,000), the part of speech, the overall frequency of a word, and its frequency in each of the five genres (spoken, fiction, magazines, newspapers, and academic). Fill in the missing information:Rank #PoSWordTotalSpokenFictionMagazineNewspaperAcademic2547Diversity13032688Which genre has the greatest frequency? ______________B. What can I learn about the word use in different genres?The page in the lower frame provides lots of information. You can see the definition(s) You can also see the frequency by genre, this time in chart form. In the chart, you can clearly see that ‘diversity’ is most frequently used in the academic genre and least in the fiction genre. Click on the SPOKEN bar. What happens to the concordance lines?______________________________ Click on the ACADEMIC bar. What happens to the concordance lines? ______________________________________What differences can you find in the way the word is used between spoken and academic English? ___________________________________________________C. How is this word used in context (For example: in a sentence)?Now we want to see the search phrase (‘diversity’) in context. In the lower half of the screen, you will see concordance lines, which represent examples to illustrate the use of ‘diversity’ in context. The concordance lines provide up to 200 samples of the word in context, from the corpus. Write down four concordance line examples, one from each genre listed below:NEWS__________________________________________________________ACADEMIC______________________________________________________MAGAZINE______________________________________________________SPOKEN________________________________________________________D. How can I find word collocations (frequent and typical word combinations)?Now we would like to learn more about the context of usage of the word ‘diversity.’ To do this, look at the concordance lines.Look at the bottom right frame. You may notice that each part of speech has a color of its own. For example, look at the words highlighted in green – adjectives. Click on the SPOKEN bar on top of the page. Then, look at the concordance lines below. What are some of the adjectives that go with ‘diversity’ in SPOKEN English? List four of them below:a. ___________________________b. ___________________________c. ___________________________d. ___________________________3. Click on the ACADEMIC bar on top of the page. Then, look at the concordance lines below. What are some of the adjectives that go with ‘diversity’ in ACADEMIC English? List four of them below:a. ___________________________b. ___________________________c. ___________________________d. ___________________________4. What differences can you find in the way adjectives are used between spoken and academic English? ___________________________________________________E. Where can I find word synonyms?To the left, you can see a list of the synonyms, which are grouped by word sense/meaning (indicated in blue) and then listed in order of frequency in the corpus. 1. Find the synonyms for ‘diversity.’ List the four synonyms below: a. ___________________________b. ___________________________c. ___________________________d. __________________________2. You can click on any of these words in the synonyms list to see the entry for that word. In this way, you can easily and quickly follow a "chain" of words that are related in meaning. PRACTICE: Which word should I use: ‘diversity’ or ‘variety’?Now we would like to compare ‘diversity’ to ‘variety.’At the top of the page, click on RESETType ‘variety’ in the WORD box and click on SEARCH.Answer the following questions about ‘variety.’Which genre has the greatest frequency? ______________Write down four concordance line examples, one from each genre listed below:NEWS______________________________________________________ACADEMIC__________________________________________________MAGAZINE__________________________________________________SPOKEN_____________________________________________________Find the bar chart. Click on the SPOKEN bar. What happens to the concordance lines?______________________________ Click on the ACADEMIC bar. What happens to the concordance lines? ______________________________________What differences can you find in the way the word is used between spoken and academic English? ___________________________________________________Look at the words highlighted in green – adjectives. Click on the SPOKEN bar. What are some of the adjectives that go with ‘variety’ in SPOKEN English? List four of them below:a. ___________________________b. ___________________________c. ___________________________d. ___________________________6. Click on the ACADEMIC bar. What are some of the adjectives that go with ‘variety’ in ACADEMIC English? List four of them below:a. ___________________________b. ___________________________c. ___________________________d. ___________________________What differences can you find in the way adjectives are used between spoken and academic English? ___________________________________________________You can see a list of the synonyms, which are grouped by word meaning (indicated in blue). Find the synonyms for ‘variety.’ List the three senses below: a. ___________________________b. ___________________________c. ___________________________10. List two synonyms for each meaning below: a. ___________________________a. ___________________________b. ___________________________b. __________________________c. ___________________________c.____________________________11. What differences do you find between ‘diversity’ and ‘variety’ and how they are used in English? ................
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