Before I learned about those corpus-based tools, such as concordancers and colocation retrieval systems, I was really unaware of them and only used some dictionaries online. After I got more acquainted with them, I found they are not only useful but also powerful for some particular purposes. For instance, if I want to know which word to collocate with or the frequency of its showing up, I can just look it up through those systems.
As far as I am concerned, I think that I may use them as second assistant tools. That's because I more often look words up through dictionaries so far. However, I still consider them excellent assistant tools to use. If I can't find the information I need in dictionaries, then it's just good time to turn to them.
The two main difficulties I have encountered in using them are the large information to orgenize in the right way and the differences between various corpora. For the third assignment, I apparently made many mistakes in analyzing, and it may make me misunderstand them in the future. So it will take me a lot of efforts to master it. Secondly, it is also important to know exactly where the data come from. If I don't know that, I might make the sentences inappropriate.
Generate rules could be time-consuming. However, when you get used to it, you may gradually develop some strategies to quickly locate the info. you need.
ReplyDeleteRight, collocation retrieval system is indeed quite powerful.