Advanced Searches in COCA: Academic Writing Tutorial

COCA (Corpus of Contemporary American English) is one of the largest English corpora with over one billion word tokens from 1990-2019, covering 8 text categories. Translators use corpora for collocation checking, grammar verification, and stylistic analysis. COCA's interface differs from Russian corpora but becomes intuitive with practice. Searching with uppercase letters retrieves all word forms (lemmatization). The collocation feature displays word combinations with colored rectangles indicating positional preferences. The search is limited to the 60,000 most frequent word types. Three-gram searches using 'word*word' syntax reveal common patterns. The collocation search allows specifying word positions using tags for detailed grammatical analysis.

The Quick Search (Keyword in Context) function in COCA displays search results with the search term centered, allowing users to see what appears before and after the term. COCA automatically color-codes parts of speech: purple for verbs, blue for nouns, green for adjectives, yellow for prepositions, orange for adverbs, and gray for punctuation, articles, and conjunctions. This function is most effective for multi-word phrases, while single words should use the Word Search function. Quick Search helps identify appropriate phrase usage patterns, such as how 'in addition' typically appears with 'to' and functions as a transition. It also aids in determining article usage by showing when 'a' or 'the' appears before nouns, helping learners understand when articles are appropriate for general versus specific references.

This segment covers the complete process of accessing the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA). Users must register by providing name, email, and password, then complete captcha verification. After registration, an email from [email protected] provides a login link. Once logged in, users can access multiple databases including COCA (American English) and British National Corpus. To search for a word, users navigate to the word search function, enter the target word, and access detailed information including audio pronunciation with three video options demonstrating authentic usage. The system also provides translation features, though the instructor recommends learning English through English rather than translation.

This video demonstrates how to search for words in the Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA) using the list function, including searching for word forms by typing the word directly, searching for lemmas by enclosing the word in brackets or capitalizing it to retrieve all grammatical variants, specifying part of speech using underscores (n for noun, v for verb, j for adjective), and searching for phrases by typing the first word followed by a space and the second word in capital letters to find concordance lines.

This section covers the fundamental parts of speech in English grammar. Nouns represent names of persons, places, or things and serve as subjects or objects. Pronouns replace nouns to avoid repetition (I, we, you, he, she, it). Verbs represent actions or states (eat, drive, give). Adjectives describe nouns or pronouns (big, small, new). Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs (slowly, quickly). Conjunctions join words or phrases (and, but, or). Prepositions show relationships between words (in, on, at, for, from). Understanding these basic parts of speech is essential for building grammatically correct sentences.

Parts of speech are grammatical categories classifying words by function. English has 44 sounds but only 26 letters, causing spelling discrepancies. Nouns name living things, non-living things, or abstract concepts. Pronouns replace nouns to avoid repetition. Adjectives describe nouns/pronouns and answer 'what kind?' or 'which?'. Adverbs modify verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs, answering 'how?', 'when?', 'where?', or 'how often?'. Verbs show action, position, or state of being. Prepositions show relationships between words, indicating location, direction, or time. Conjunctions join words, phrases, or clauses, including coordinating (for, and, nor, but, or, yet, so) and subordinating (if, because, although, since, while, when) types.

A preposition is a word placed before a noun or pronoun to show its relationship with another element in the sentence. Prepositions can appear at the beginning of questions (In which shop did you buy the book?) and follow certain words like verbs, adjectives, and negatives. Common prepositions include 'in,' 'at,' 'on,' 'by,' 'from,' 'to,' 'with,' 'for,' 'against,' 'among,' 'between,' 'beside,' 'under,' 'over,' 'through,' 'across,' 'along,' 'around,' 'behind,' 'beneath,' 'below,' 'above,' 'near,' 'next to,' 'till,' 'until,' 'since,' 'for,' 'before,' 'after,' 'by,' 'during,' 'throughout,' 'within,' 'without,' 'among,' 'between,' 'besides,' 'except,' 'regarding,' 'concerning,' 'according to,' 'due to,' 'owing to,' 'with respect to,' 'in favor of,' 'instead of,' 'in case of,' 'on behalf of,' 'by virtue of,' 'by means of,' 'prior to,' 'as a result of,' 'in comparison to,' 'in contrast to,' 'in addition to,' 'on top of,' 'on the basis of,' 'in view of,' 'in accordance with,' 'in the light of,' 'in the course of,' 'in the name of,' 'in the interest of,' 'in the event of,' 'in the course of,' 'in the direction of,' 'in the neighborhood of,' 'in the vicinity of,' 'in the absence of,' 'in the presence of,' 'in the matter of,' 'in the context of,' 'in the field of,' 'in the line of,' 'in the course of,' 'in the name of,' 'in the interest of,' 'in the event of,' 'in the course of,' 'in the direction of,' 'in the neighborhood of,' 'in the vicinity of,' 'in the absence of,' 'in the presence of,' 'in the matter of,' 'in the context of,' 'in the field of,' 'in the line of.'

Prepositions are relationship words that indicate location, time, and abstract relationships between objects and people. They always combine with nouns or pronouns (complements) to show how different parts of a sentence relate to each other. Prepositions join two meaningless segments to create meaningful sentences, connecting subjects with objects and showing the relationship between them. Understanding prepositions is essential for building coherent sentences and is a fundamental skill for English grammar.

A verb is a word that shows an action or a state (e.g., Run, Eat, Play, Read, Write, Jump, Sing, Dance). An adverb modifies verbs, adjectives, or other adverbs, typically ending with the suffix '-ly' (e.g., Quickly, Loudly, Carefully, Always, Sweetly). A preposition comes before a noun or pronoun to show its relationship with other words in the sentence, with the prefix 'pre-' meaning 'before' or 'position' (e.g., at, by, with, from, in, on, to, out, over, down, under, beside, without, for, into, off). These parts of speech work together to create complete and meaningful sentences in English.

Academic writing requires a formal writing style characterized by formal tone and vocabulary. Students should use formal language throughout their academic work, avoiding casual or conversational expressions. Academic writing typically uses the third person perspective rather than first or second person, maintaining objectivity and scholarly distance. Writers must stay focused on their specific issue and topic, avoiding digressions. The content should be relevant and appropriate to the topic, using vocabulary and language that matches the subject matter. Academic writing demands precision, relevance, and adherence to formal conventions.

Formal writing requires: (1) Formal vocabulary and tone, (2) Clear organization with paragraphs, (3) Support for claims with evidence. Key vocabulary: (1) 'formal' - adjective meaning appropriate for official or serious situations, (2) 'argument' - noun meaning a case or reason presented to support a position. Academic writing differs from informal communication.

Formality in academic writing involves using formal language rather than everyday common language. This is achieved through: (1) choosing expanded forms over contracted forms (e.g., 'cannot' instead of 'can't', 'does not' instead of 'doesn't', 'will not' instead of 'won't', 'I have' instead of 'I've'); (2) choosing one-word verb forms over two-word verbs (e.g., 'damage' instead of 'mess up', 'raise' instead of 'brought up', 'return' instead of 'give back'); (3) avoiding colloquial and idiomatic expressions like 'stuff', 'thing', 'a lot of', 'you know what I mean', 'sort of', 'kind of', 'it's raining cats and dogs'; (4) choosing expanded terms over abbreviated equivalents (e.g., 'as soon as possible' instead of 'ASAP', 'romantic comedy' instead of 'romcom').

Academic writing is a formal type of writing characterized by formal language, serious context, and objective ideas, serving educational, occasional, and research purposes. It differs from creative, critical, personal, and research writing. Core principles include honesty (claims require evidence), clarity (writing must be understandable), relevance, and reality. Writers must switch from daily conversation vocabulary to standard academic vocabulary, using formal language and avoiding contractions. Academic writing requires a systematic approach following established rules and structures like IMRAD (Introduction, Method, Result, Discussion). Writers must maintain consistent formatting, use standard vocabulary, employ full forms instead of contractions, and properly quote statements. The audience consists of educated individuals including students, teachers, researchers, scholars, and experts.

Academic writing is writing done by scholars for other scholars, involving reading, thinking, arguing, and writing. It occurs in lectures, classroom tasks, tutorials, journal articles, conference papers, grant proposals, essays, exam papers, theses, and doctoral defenses. A genre is a class of communicative events sharing communicative purposes, with different genres having different purposes reflected in content, style, audience, vocabulary, grammar, and structure. Writing in a second language requires knowledge of the language, cultural conventions, and rhetorical structure. Three key variables are audience, purpose, and style. Audience is critical—writers must know who their audience is and their knowledge level. Audience and purpose are interrelated: if the audience knows less, the purpose is instructional; if the audience is an instructor, the purpose is to demonstrate knowledge. Academic writing requires formal style through vocabulary shift (preferring single verbs of Latin origin over phrasal verbs) and negative form usage (using 'no', 'little', 'few' instead of 'not any', 'not much', 'not many').