Understanding language in context

There are some wonderful learning tools on the Internet for students of English. One I can highly recommend is an Online Concordancer. If you want to know how to use a word or phrase in context, or if you want to see language patterns, visit this site.

For example, if you type in the words MUST HAVE, you will see about 200 examples of these two words followed by Past Participles in sentences which have nothing to do with obligation. What you will see are very clear Verb Patterns and with so many examples, you will soon work out the meaning.

You know the word ADVANTAGE but do you know which prepositions, adjectives, and verbs collate with it? Look and you will see collocations such as … added advantage …, … advantage over …, … full advantage of …, … take advantage of …, and many more.

Check-out the Online Concordancer site here. First, click on ‘English’. Next, choose a ‘corpus’. Then, type in the ‘Keyword(s)’. Lastly, click on ‘Get concordance’

Have fun!

This entry was posted in Advanced (Level 6+), Grammar, Intermediate (Level 4), Reading, Upper Intermediate (Level 5), Vocabulary, Writing and tagged . Bookmark the permalink.

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