High frequency words, which are key to a text, must be mastered to achieve minimum levels of reading proficiency. However, knowledge about the frequency of items in a language is very limited. Given this consideration, WordSift (www.wordsift.org), a word cloud tool based on high frequency and key words can assist English as a Foreign Language…

The words in a language or language variety are often rank ordered in lists that are meant to reflect the relative importance of those words to language users and learners of a language. This rank ordering is done on the basis of the relative prevalence of words in a corpus. Lexical prevalence is often operationalized as measures of frequency,…

Jeff McQuillan offers case studies of intermediate level language learners who read young adult and adult fiction successfully as an argument against explicit vocabulary instruction. Case studies provide useful insights into whatever is being investigated but may not always be generalizable. However, McQuillan's reference to case studies has made…

This article provides introductory, step-by-step explanations of how to make a specialized corpus and an annotated frequency-based vocabulary list. One of my objectives is to help teachers, instructors, program administrators, and graduate students with little experience in this field be able to do so using free resources. Instructions are first…

With the advances in technology, wordlists retrieved from computer corpora have become increasingly popular in recent years. The lexical items in those wordlists are usually selected, according to a set of robust frequency and dispersion criteria, from large corpora of authentic and naturally occurring language. Corpus wordlists are of great value…

By now we've all seen examples of Wordle, the technology app that converts chunks of text into a word cloud featuring words of different sizes according to their prevalence in the text. But you haven't seen the real power of Wordle until you've seen Lee Ann Spillane's high school students use it to analyze patterns and symbolism in The Great…

Despite the central role of the computer in corpus research, programming is generally not seen as a core skill within corpus linguistics. As a consequence, limitations in software for text and corpus analysis slow down the progress of research while analysts often have to rely on third party software or even manual data analysis if no suitable…

Describes the International Corpus of English Corpus Utility Program (ICECUP), a computer-based text retrieval program designed to search a tagged corpus for words, word elements, and their grammatical roles. Explains the search, display options, concordance, and subcorpus selection features of the ICECUP program. (MDM)

Describes the International Corpus of Learner English (ICLE), a project at the University of Louvain in Belgium that collects written work from, and analyzes the usage of, advanced adult English as a Foreign Language learners. Recurring combinations and concordances in ICLE are examined. (Contains five references.) (MDM)

CORDON is a computerized system for tracing and documenting changes in the use and frequency of word forms within textual language corpora. In its new form currently under development, CORDON will address the emergence of neologisms, both new words and new terminology within special areas (generally new uses of existing words). The system detects…

Compares the success of lexical statistics, content analysis, and function words in determining the true author of "The Federalist." The function word approach proved most successful in attributing the papers to James Madison. Lexical statistics contributed nothing, while content analytic measures resulted in some success. (MJP)