CONCORDANCER

Muizatul Iman Bte Morsid 0634110

Nabilah Bt Mohd Lokmal 0713498
    Nur Sakinah Bt Mohd Khir Johari
0810358
 Definition
Concordance programs turn electronic texts
into databases which can be searched.
Its uses include; word queries, word
combinations within a specified range of
words, and looking up parts of words
(substrings, in particular affixes, for example).
A more sophisticated program might also
provide its user with lists of collocates or
frequency lists.
 The Scope of Its Use
• There now exist a variety of concordancers, each uniquely designed to
suit different needs.
– The extraction of quotes and references in a text
• Academia http://www.spaceless.com/concordancer.php

– The extraction of random sentences that show how a word may be

used
• Language teaching and learning

– The comparison of potential applications for research, to facilitate in

the detection of plagiarism.
 Examining native speakers’ and learners’ investigation of
the same concordance data and its implications for
classroom concordancing with ELF learners
Passapong Sripicharn, Thammasat University, Thailand

• A study designed to compare observations made and strategies employed

by native speakers and learners when they work on the same concordance
materials.

– Six Thai undergraduate students , and six British undergraduate

students were presented with the same concordance-based tasks.
– They are each called separately to discuss the material with the
researcher, where their discussions were tape-recorded. Their
observations with regards to the material are noted.
 Findings
• Both groups proved to be capable of handling the
concordance tasks- both came up with a number of useful
and sophisticated observations.
• The EFL learners showed more sensitivity to context clues and
more often used data driven strategies to make their
observations, while the native speakers mainly relied on
intuition and knowledge of context.
• The author concludes by pointing to collaboration with a
teacher or native speaker as a means of solving the problem
of over-generalization.
 Lost in parallel concordances
Ana Frankenberg-Garcia
Instituto Superior de Linguas e Administracao, Lisbon, Portugal

• A study designed to examine:

– A) In what language learning situations might parallel
concordances be beneficial?
– B) How might language learners and teachers set
about navigating through a parallel corpus?

The study draws on examples of how Portuguese

learners of English can learn from concordances
extracted from COMPARA, a parallel, bi-directional
corpus of English and Portuguese.
 Findings
• Besides being of great importance in areas
such as translation studies and machine
translation, the concordancer can be utilized
in second language learning.
 The Greater Availability of Free
Online ConcordancersAreas Worth
Exploring
• The potential for using the concordancer in
theological discussions, and Quranic studies.

• http://www.oxfordislamicstudies.com/Public/
book_acq.html
• The potential for the concordancer to become a tool
for students of the Qur'an who are not fully
conversant with the written Arabic language allows
users to find deeper paths into understanding the
text by linking English words and their corresponding
transliterated Arabic terms to passages, chapters and
verses in the Qur'an. In its electronic form it can now
be searched by a wider audience of general users
and browsed by specialists with a newfound speed
and ease.
 A Demonstration of the use of a
concordancer
• http://www.lextutor.ca/concordancers/

• Selection of this program is due to:

– The fact that it is an example of a free online
concordancer that is easy to use.
– It demonstrates a variety of the uses of a
concordancer.