This page is set up to help students explore the use of the BAWE corpus as a tool for informing vocabulary choices in academic writing. The examples below come from either common errors in student writing or questions my students have asked about specific lexicogrammar features of English. If you search for words or phrases and get results that you think might be useful to other students, you could add to this list using the comments section below.
For help using the SketchEngine tool, please refer to my ‘walkthrough’.
Search item (Word/Phrase): As we all know
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 0
Notes on usage: This expression isn’t used so don’t use it.
Why isn’t this expression used in academic writing? Well, consider these two questions: Who are ‘we’? Does the writer really mean ‘all’?
Search item (Word/Phrase): we / us
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 1,885.50 per million words
Notes on usage:
We is used a lot! But it is worth looking carefully at how.
It is often used as writer acting as a guide for the reader, going on the journey through the paper together. This is clear in the frequent collocation of can and see (i.e. we can see) referring to data/argument presented in the paper which has therefore become a shared frame of reference between writer and reader. It is also used, of course, to refer to a defined group of researchers carrying out their study.
Search item (Word/Phrase): In recent decades
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 1.2 per million words (only ten times in whole corpus)
Notes on usage: Best avoided. If you do use it, better make sure that your paper is dated 😉
Search item (Word/Phrase): At the same time
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 60.9 per million words
Notes on usage:
I chose to search for this phrase because students often use it as an inappropriate cohesive device intended to mean something like furthermore or similarly at the start of a sentence. I admit to being surprised this phrase occurred so frequently, but on closer examination of the concordance lines, it is noticeable that many of the instances unsurprisingly refer to two or more phenomena occurring at the same time. It is less often used as a lazy cohesive device (meaning furthermore or similarly) where the time reference is irrelevant.
Search item (Word/Phrase): With the development of the
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 1.56 per million words (only 13 times in whole corpus)
Notes on usage:
This does not appear at the start of an essay. It is only used (infrequently) with a specific entity/phenomenon that is being shown to be developing in some way, as shown in the screen shot below:
Search item (Word/Phrase): Nowadays
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 17.63 per million words
Notes on usage:
This is not used at the start of an essay. Indeed, it is only infrequently used at the start of a sentence (see screenshot below). It is always used in reference to specific entity/situation as shown in the screenshot below:
Search item (Word/Phrase): I / me
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 1,567.70 per million words
Notes on usage:
Not long ago, using the first person singular was often taught as being ‘unacademic’, maybe it still is on some writing programmes. However, the BAWE results clearly show that I is used a lot in successful student writing at university.
I is often used to state what the writer will do in the essay/section, e.g In this essay I will…
Search item (Word/Phrase): you
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 398.50 per million words
Notes on usage:
I was expecting this to result in 0 hits or at least very few so I was a little surprised at how often you appears in academic writing. However, there are two main explanations that cover most of the instances: 1. quotes from literature or spoken English and, 2. direct addresses to known people (e.g. the student via essay questions or participants in a survey).
My recommendation is to avoid using the word you in academic writing unless it is in a quote.
Search item (Word/Phrase): In contrast vs. By contrast
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE:
60 per million words (in contrast)
8.76 per million words (by contrast)
Notes on usage:
This search resulted from a student’s question. The answer in British academic English is clear: both are acceptable but in contrast is far more commonly used than by contrast. I checked this in Google Books Corpora too and found that in both UK and US English, in contrast is more frequent than by contrast at a ratio of around 3:1.
Search item (Word/Phrase): Research on vs. Research into
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE:
20.39 per million words (research on)
19.91 per million words (research into)
Notes on usage:
This was another question posed by a student. My own intuition was that the two would be used at about the same rate with research into perhaps a little more common, but the BAWE results show research on is slightly more commonly used. I checked this on Google Books Corpora and the difference is much more marked, research on is used far more often. This highlights a major benefit of using corpora – we can check teacher’s intuition 🙂
Search item (Word/Phrase): both of vs both
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 37.8 per million words
Notes on usage:
It is how both of is used that is important. It is different to both X and Y… (i.e. without of) and if you do not understand the difference, it is worth checking yourself. Both of strongly collocates with these and them, referring to previously defined entities.
Search item (Word/Phrase): long term
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 55.34 per million words
(the frequency isn’t important here as it is necessary terminology for some academic subjects, it is the grammar I was looking at with this one)
Notes on usage:
I had always used the definite article (the) with this expression but having read so many student reports where the was omitted, I wanted to know if this was typical in the writing on certain subjects. The results show that this noun phrase usually takes the definite article. Where the is not present, long term is functioning as an adjective as in ‘long term approaches to…’
Search item (Word/Phrase): mention
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE: 165.66 per million words
Notes on usage:
This word is mostly used to refer to something the writer has already mentioned in the text (As mentioned above…), not as a reporting verb to introduce source material (Professor Jones mentioned, “Blablabla”).
Search item (Word/Phrase): Pay attention on vs Pay attention to
Frequency of Occurrence in BAWE:
0.36 per million words (Pay attention on)
5.40 per million words (Pay attention to)
Notes on usage:
Pay attention to clearly occurs far more frequently than Pay attention on. In fact, there were only 3 instances of pay attention on in the entire corpus and all three instances were written by Chinese students. I suppose this is an example of Chinglish. Pay attention to is clearly the correct collocation.