Corpus Lab 1

Basic Concordancing

Author

Masaki EGUCHI, Ph.D.

Modified

August 3, 2025

Assignment Overview

This assignment aims to help you practice the following skills:

Articulating linguistic research questions for corpus-driven research
Explaining corpus choices and analysis approach for basic corpus search
Interpreting and describing the basic concordance search results

Assignment Details

In a word file, complete the following three tasks. Submit the finished assignment through Google Classroom.

Submission

A word file (.docx) that includes all the points below.

Task 1: Constructing corpus-search research question and hypothesis

In this task, you are asked to articulate your research question and hypothesis for your first corpus assignment. Use the following information as guideline.

Research question:

Research questions should be answerable. Follow the class material to construct a intruiging research question that you can answer with basic corpus search skills you learned.
Write one or two research questions you would like to answer through this assignment.

Hypothesis:

Once you decided on research question, state your hypothesis.
Use the course material to help you articulate research hypothesis.
Write a short paragraph stating your hypothesis and why you think your research hypotheses may be true.

Task 2: Methods

In this task, you are asked to describe the methods choice of your corpus search. This should include justifications for the corpora used, type of corpus search used.

Corpora

Which corpora or sub-section of a corpus would you conduct a search on? Why? Justify your choice in a paragraph.

Search Methods and Plan

What corpus search methods would you choose and why? In this assignment, search methods mainly include methods available through English-Corpora.org, including LIST, Chart, Collocates, Compare and KWIC.
In what way are you planning to conduct the search and what kind of information are you expecting from it?

Task 3: Result

In this part of the assignment, you are asked to describe the search results and provide interpretations on the findings.

Corpus search results: Provide some numbers or discourse samples based on your corpus search. This can be frequency list, table with frequency counts, or a copy of KWIC results.
Interpretation: Write a paragraph, providing some interpretations of your findings.

Success Criteria

Your submission …

includes one or two research questions
articulates hypotheses
include a list of corpora used
justifies the selection of corpus
outlines the search plan (key phrase, regular expression, sorting, filtering, etc.)
includes results of your search
provides interpretation of the findings.

--- title: "Corpus Lab 1" subtitle: "Basic Concordancing" --- # Assignment Overview This assignment aims to help you practice the following skills: - Articulating linguistic research questions for corpus-driven research - Explaining corpus choices and analysis approach for basic corpus search - Interpreting and describing the basic concordance search results # Assignment Details In a word file, complete the following three tasks. Submit the finished assignment through Google Classroom. ::: {.callout-note} ## Submission - A word file (`.docx`) that includes all the points below. ::: ## Task 1: Constructing corpus-search research question and hypothesis In this task, you are asked to articulate your research question and hypothesis for your first corpus assignment. Use the following information as guideline. ### Research question: - Research questions should be answerable. Follow the class material to construct a intruiging research question that you can answer with basic corpus search skills you learned. - Write one or two research questions you would like to answer through this assignment. ### Hypothesis: - Once you decided on research question, state your hypothesis. - Use the course material to help you articulate research hypothesis. - Write a short paragraph stating your hypothesis and why you think your research hypotheses may be true. ## Task 2: Methods In this task, you are asked to describe the methods choice of your corpus search. This should include justifications for the corpora used, type of corpus search used. ### Corpora - Which corpora or sub-section of a corpus would you conduct a search on? Why? Justify your choice in a paragraph. ### Search Methods and Plan - What corpus search methods would you choose and why? In this assignment, search methods mainly include methods available through English-Corpora.org, including `LIST`, `Chart`, `Collocates`, `Compare` and `KWIC`. - In what way are you planning to conduct the search and what kind of information are you expecting from it? ## Task 3: Result In this part of the assignment, you are asked to describe the search results and provide interpretations on the findings. - **Corpus search results**: Provide some numbers or discourse samples based on your corpus search. This can be frequency list, table with frequency counts, or a copy of KWIC results. - **Interpretation**: Write a paragraph, providing some interpretations of your findings. ::: {.callout-important} # Success Criteria Your submission ... - [ ] includes one or two research questions - [ ] articulates hypotheses - [ ] include a list of corpora used - [ ] justifies the selection of corpus - [ ] outlines the search plan (key phrase, regular expression, sorting, filtering, etc.) - [ ] includes results of your search - [ ] provides interpretation of the findings. :::