Over the past decade there has been a huge increase in the power
and abilities of computers to digitise, store and analyse text.
This has enabled linguists to create and analyse huge corpora
(collections of authentic language text) and to reassess the
assumed rules regarding the way we use language and especially
words. With the spread of the Internet, these corpora are now
becoming available to any teacher or student with an Internet
connection, opening up a vast resource for language learning. -
What is a concordancer? - How can concordancers help us? - Ideas
for using concordancers with students - Some possible problems
What is a concordancer? A concordancer is a piece of software,
either installed on a computer or accessed through a website,
which can be used to search, access and analyse language from a
corpus. They can be particularly useful in exploring the
relationships between words and can give us very accurate
information about the way language is authentically used. - A
typical concordancer allows