Using Concordance to improve vocabulary by The Green

1. Lets define concordance

greengm — 2018-01-18 11:29:45 UTC

Go to google.com and type define:concordance

Read the definition and discuss with your partner what you understand and how you think concordance could be useful to study English vocabulary

2. Lets get Presidential!

greengm — 2018-01-18 11:29:45 UTC

Take a look at this corpus. Have a look at the different types of corpus there are.
Discuss with your partner the different themes and explore the ones that seem most interesting to you.

In this corpus you can search Presidential speeches!

Type in the word 'get', choose the presidential speech corpus and see what results you get.

Discuss your findings with your partner. What does this tell you about the word to get?

3. Lets get 'get'!

greengm — 2018-01-18 11:29:45 UTC

Use any of the concordances we have looked at and type in the word 'get'.

With your partner choose 3 examples of 'get' which are new to you.

Use the google define function to identify the meaning.

Now write your own sentences for each example of 'get'

Post your examples of 'get' with a definition and your example sentences on this wall for the rest of the group to see.

4. What about other common words?

greengm — 2018-01-18 11:29:45 UTC

Again choose any concordance you like to research another delexicalised verb. (google define this if you're not sure what a delexicalised verb is)

Choose from go, take, make, give, do, have.

Follow the same procedure as and post your findings on this wall.

5. Modern day concordance

greengm — 2018-01-18 11:29:45 UTC

So now you've learnt how to use a concordance and you've seen how it can help you see real-life examples of vocabulary. But wouldn't you like to know a bit more about real English the English that people are using right now?

Well Twitter is the answer! You can use Twitter in exactly the same way as a concordance by using the search option. Put the word or phrase you want to use in speech marks like this 'get on with' in the search box and you will see up-to-the-second examples of how people are using this language!

Share your findings on this wall. Feel free to use this wall whenever you like to store your vocabulary findings.