COCA to Improve Writing

[Anastasia]

Students can benefit from using COCA website (https://corpus.byu.edu/coca/) when they are working on improving their writing skills. This website helps to find examples and contexts for the vocabulary. When students type in a word and click “find”, they will see many contexts in which this word appeared in texts. The website also helps to identify the style of vocabulary; it indicates the type of the sources for each example.
Students can try and type a phrase if they are not sure that some words can be used together. They could also write a word on its own and see what kind of words go before and after it most often.
Students can learn a lot about new vocabulary by analyzing it in the context. They can use COCA for a specific project, when they are writing a paper and are not sure about the style of a word, or just on a regular basis whenever they learn new vocabulary.