Conventional collocations
Collocations are words which are conventionally used together (e.g. collect data, change dramatically, highly significant, etc.).
Collocation errors
Violating collocation conventions can result in errors (e.g. *depend of something) or awkward, non-idiomatic text (e.g. *a large mistake).
fluent texts
ColloCaid offers thousands of collocation suggestions to help you expand your vocabulary and write more fluently
?The ColloCaid project focuses on the development of a text-editing tool to help writers with collocations, i.e., a text editor that helps writers find words that go well together, such as 'collect data', 'change dramatically', 'successfully achieved', 'entirely appropriate', and so on. Our research involves investigating user needs, the visualisation of lexicographic data and human-computer interaction, and compiling a large database of collocation suggestions using state-of-the-art e-lexicography tools and resources. We help writers by raising awareness of collocations they may not remember to use or know where to look up, in a way that does not disrupt their writing. Collocations typically used by expert writers in authentic texts are integrated into a text editor, so that writers can access them as they write. Although ColloCaid only covers academic English, our proof of concept can be broadened to other languages and usages beyond academic.
Team
Dr Ana Frankenberg-Garcia
Prof. Jonathan C. Roberts
Prof. Robert Lew
DR Geraint Paul Rees
Nirwan Sharma
Peter Butcher
is funded by the UK Arts and Humanities Research Council for a period of 36 months.
Keywords: Applied Linguistics, Computer Graphics & Visualisation, Corpus Linguistics, Human Communication in ICT, Language Acquisition.
The AHRC’s Vision and Strategy
and the AHRC Strategy 2013-2018 the Human World (PDF, 3.6MB)
AHRC grant AH/P003508/1Recent activities
ColloCaid at the “Incorporating Corpora in Teaching” Symposium
On Friday 23 October, Ana Frankenberg- Garcia gave a presentation at the symposium on “Incorporating Corpora in Teaching” organized by the Mid-Sweden University. She talked about the potential of ColloCaid as a Data-driven Learning (DDL) tool which can help writers with academic collocations without the need for corpus training or teacher intervention.
ColloCaid at the WocDit International Webinar
Ana Frankenberg-Garcia took part in the Working with Corpora and Digital Tools in Language and Translation Studies webinar organised by Universidad Complutense de Madrid. She talked about the challenges academic writing presents to researchers and how ColloCaid can help them overcome some of these challenges.
Professor Roberts talks at the Turing Visualisation Interest Group
The second annual symposium of the Alan Turing Institute Visualization Interest Group (#VizTIG) was held virtually on the 8th September 2020. The fields of data science and artificial intelligence are generating outputs that are too complex for humans to understand in traditional ways. This symposium focused on ways that visualisation with data analysis can help Read more about Professor Roberts talks at the Turing Visualisation Interest Group[…]
Keynote at the iCETiC 2020 – Emerging Technologies in Computing 2020
Professor Jonathan C. Roberts gave a keynote at the 3rd International Conference on Emerging Technologies in Computing 2020 (iCETiC ’20). The conference took place on the 19-20 August, 2020. It was originally planned to take place at London Metropolitan University, London, UK, but due to Covid-19 it was moved online. The conference was organised by the International Association Read more about Keynote at the iCETiC 2020 – Emerging Technologies in Computing 2020[…]
Keynote at iCCECE 2020 (IEEE Computing, Electronics & Communications Engineering)
Professor Jonathan C. Roberts gave a keynote at the 3rd IEEE International Conference on Computing, Electronics & Communications Engineering (IEEE iCCECE conference 2020 ’20). The conference was held on the 17 and 18th August, 2020. Originally it was planned to take place at the University of Essex, Southend Campus, UK, but due to Covid-19 the conference went Read more about Keynote at iCCECE 2020 (IEEE Computing, Electronics & Communications Engineering)[…]
ColloCaid at Cambridge ELT
Kirsten Sutton writes about ColloCaid in her blog “Natural-sounding English: how to find the words that collocate” See the post on the Cambridge World of Better Learning blog.
ColloCaid at TaLC 2020
Ana Frankenberg-Garcia and colleagues have a paper at the TaLC 2020 conference which is taking place online this year. This paper reports on a series academic English writing workshops that encouraged researchers and English tutors in Brazil to work collaboratively with corpus tools and resources. This collaborative approach is particularly important in the Brazilian context Read more about ColloCaid at TaLC 2020[…]
ColloCaid Webinar
Ana Frankenberg-Garcia gave a webinar about ColloCaid as part of a series of webinars celebrating the 50th anniversary of the Graduate Program in Applied Linguistics (LAEL), Pontifical Catholic University of Sao Paulo, Brazil. The webinar took place from 9am – 11am (GMT -3) (1300 – 1400 BST). You can find more information and recordings of Read more about ColloCaid Webinar[…]
ColloCaid Guest Lecture at EMLex
ColloCaid Principal Investigator Ana Frankenberg-Garcia gave a guest lecture for the European Master in Lexicography (EMLex). For the academic year 2019-2020, the Faculty of Philology at the University of Santiago de Compostela plays host to EMLex. The guest lecture entitled Assisting Writers with Academic English Collocations: lexical data, text editor integration and user feedback, took Read more about ColloCaid Guest Lecture at EMLex[…]
ColloCaid at The University of Cambridge
On Monday 27 January, ColloCaid Principal Investigator Ana Frankenberg-Garcia gave a talk about the project at the Faculty of Education, University of Cambridge. She talked about the difficulty writers less accustomed to the academic register face when producing collocations, and how ColloCaid can help. More information can be found here.