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Focus on Language Study:
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New word of the month
New phrasal verbs


Corpora tips
The Web as corpus:
using media sites to present
new or unfamiliar words

Corpora tips
The Web as corpus: using media sites to present new or unfamiliar words
by Mairi MacDonald

• Using media sites
• Searching
• New words not in the dictionary
• Meanings not in the dictionary
• Suggested uses of the data
• Useful links

Corpora are large collections of (mainly) written material used by lexicographers to analyse frequency, word patterns and meaning. They usually have sophisticated search tools to glean as much information as possible from the data. Unfortunately access to corpora is often restricted. This short series of articles looks at ways in which teachers and students can explore words using corpus resources available on the Web.

Using media sites

The Web is a great source of raw data. However exposure to a large amount of unedited material can be at best a bit daunting or at worst misleading for the learner. Media websites present a safer option: with a little digging around you can come up with enough authentic data to enable students to explore a word in some depth. As well as giving students a real feel for a word, they can practice the all important skill of getting meaning from context.

Broadsheet newspapers such as The Guardian and The Telegraph are an up-to-the-minute source of new words, often including examples of words that have yet to reach the dictionaries. The BBC website is also a valuable source of both spoken and written material.

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Searching

Many newspapers charge a fee for searching their archives, although at the time of writing, the BBC, The Times, Telegraph, Scotsman and Guardian websites are free, although you have to register for some of them. The Guardian website includes an archive search where you can sort results in date order. The Times, Telegraph and Scotsman sites have simple search boxes on their homepages.

1 Simply type in the word you want to investigate. This will generate a list of articles containing your chosen word.
2 Click on the link to the article. If your word isn't immediately obvious, use Ctrl + F to find the sentence containing the word.
3 Highlight the sentence and copy and paste it into a worksheet.

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New words not in the dictionary

The most popular new word of 2004 on the Macmillan English Dictionary resource site was metrosexual. The Guardian's archive search (with Sort by Date selected) shows the last use was as recent as 27 March 2005, suggesting that it is still very much in use.


There are 61 instances of metrosexual which provide plenty of examples to help research a word that isn't in current dictionaries. To find a sentence containing metrosexual, click on the link to the relevant article and use Ctrl + F:


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Meanings not in the dictionary

Groundhog Day is a phrase whose meaning is clarified by some media research. Most dictionaries describe it as an American tradition that takes place every 2nd February. Tradition has it that the groundhog emerges from hibernation on this day. If it sees its shadow, (i.e. if the weather is sunny) it returns to its burrow and six weeks more winter is forecast. If it doesn't see its shadow, then an early spring is predicted. A search of the BBC and Guardian websites suggests that an alternative meaning – based on the 1993 film about a weather forecaster trapped in the mind-numbing routine of the same day – is more widely used. There is even an example of Groundhog Day used as a verb:

I'm afraid my reports are beginning to sound a little like Groundhog Day because all I can tell you is that what happened last night is what happened every night – which is intermittent and increasingly heavy bombing raids and raids on the Republican Guard to the south of the city.

Will winter linger? Candlemas and the US Groundhog Day both have weather lore associated with them …

We saw a Groundhog Day reprise of last year's first stage pile-up, with the bulk of the field held up and the finish turned into a grisly charade, this time won by the Belgian Tom Boonen.

This wasn't so much a false dawn, more a case of Groundhog Day. Waking to find the same story repeating itself.

The tradition of Groundhog Day was established in the north-eastern United States in the mid-18th century, by German immigrants known as the Pennsylvania Dutch.

In the USA, this time of year is known as Groundhog Day as it is when the little groundhogs start popping out of their holes!

Hilary Armstrong, the usually tranquil chief whip, was incensed by days of hostile media coverage which worsened every day despite Mr Blair's increasingly categorical denials – a virtual Groundhog Day routine during his foreign trip.

According to an old American tradition, winter will last six more weeks after the groundhog came out of his hole and saw his own shadow.

… there is a danger that the Chelsea experience will turn into groundhog season if the hierarchy see fit to bring in a new manager and give him new money to buy new players every summer if the side is not ground breakingly wonderful.

… it was tempting to see England as a bunch of cursed Bill Murrays, doomed to Groundhog Day their way through a lifetime of cruel penalty shoot-outs.

"This document doesn't just represent spin with no substance – it is relentless re-spin," Mr Salmond said. "It is endless recycling – a 'groundhog programme'."

Will winter linger? Ask a groundhog.

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Suggested uses of the data

Once you have a selection of sentences, as in the example above, get your students to answer questions like:

What does the word mean?
How many meanings can you find?
Does the word have positive or negative connotations?
How many parts of speech are there?
How would you label the word – is it an abbreviation, slang or formal? Is it a technical or literary word?
Would you use it in everyday conversation?

Students then work together to provide a definition, or a number of definitions, complete with register labels and an example sentence.

While features such as collocation are not immediately obvious, this is an effective way to present new vocabulary. It is important that students focus on the word in question, get a feel for it and not worry about understanding every word in the extract.

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Useful links

Links to UK media sites with free search facilities:
www.bbc.co.uk
www.guardian.co.uk/Archive
www.scotsman.com
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.timesonline.co.uk

News Voyager – links to newspaper websites around the world:
www.newspaperlinks.com

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