Conventional collocations
Collocations are words which are conventionally used together (e.g. collect data, change dramatically, highly significant, etc.).
Violating conventions
Violating collocation conventions can result in errors (e.g. *depend of something) or awkward, non-idiomatic text (e.g. *a large mistake).
better texts
This affects not only writing, but also reading, since texts with collocation problems are more difficult to process.
?Our research involves investigating user needs, the visualisation of lexicographic data and human-computer interaction. More specifically, the ColloCaid project aims to develop a text-editing tool to help writers choose words that go well together (i.e., collocations) as and when they are needed. While the focus of our research is on supporting users of academic English with collocations like design+system or successfully+achieved, its implications can be broadened to other languages and usages beyond academic. A distinguishing characteristic of ColloCaid is that it is not limited to providing feedback on collocation problems. Its main aim is to feed forward, raising real-time awareness of collocations writers may not remember or know how to look up, in a way that does not disrupt their writing.
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 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.
ColloCaid at The University of Manchester
On Thursday the 15th of November, ColloCaid Principal Investigator Ana Frankenberg-Garcia gave a seminar talk at the Centre for Translation and Intercultural Studies at the University of Manchester. Her talk explained the research on dictionary use, computational lexicography, human-computer interaction and visualization underlying ColloCaid, and reported on results from initial user testing. At the end Read more about ColloCaid at The University of Manchester[…]
ColloCaid at Vis4DH2019
The ColloCaid team presented a paper titled “Co-creating an online learning environment to support academic writing: Lessons learnt in an interdisciplinary setting” at the 2019 Visualisation for Digital Humanities (Vis4DH) workshop that was co-located with the IEEE VIS (visualisation) conference, and held at the Vancouver Convention Centre East. The workshop took place on Sunday 20th October Read more about ColloCaid at Vis4DH2019[…]
ColloCaid at eLex 2019
The ColloCaid team were in Sintra taking part in eLex 2019. On September 30th, at the pre-conference workshop on Collocations in Lexicography, we presented a paper about lessons from Human Computer Interaction (HCI) research for the presentation of collocations in e-lexicography. We drew heavily on examples from the development of ColloCaid to show how concepts Read more about ColloCaid at eLex 2019[…]
ColloCaid at EUROCALL2019
On Thursday 29th of August, Ana Frankenberg-Garcia presented ColloCaid at the 27th EUROCALL conference hosted by UCLouvain in collaboration with KU Leuven, in Louvain-la-Neuve, Belgium. The first part of the presentation focused on the compilation of the lexicographic database underlying ColloCaid using existing academic word lists, corpora and lexical analysis software. It then explained how Read more about ColloCaid at EUROCALL2019[…]
ColloCaid at the 28th PASE Conference
On 28 June 2019, Robert Lew gave a presentation about the ColloCaid tool at the 28th PASE Conference, Poznań, Poland. He talked about the need for ColloCaid, problems inherent in existing resources, and the construction of the lexicographic database which underlies the tool. He also reported on recent usability studies involving the tool. Further information Read more about ColloCaid at the 28th PASE Conference[…]
Academic Writing with ColloCaid in León
From 18 – 21 June, Ana Frankenberg-Garcia and Geraint Rees gave an Academic Writing Workshop at Universidad de León, Spain. A development version of the ColloCaid tool was trialled and was very well received.
ColloCaid at Universidade Europeia
Ana Frankenberg-Garcia gave an invited seminar at the Universidade Europeia Doctoral College in Lisbon, on Friday 21 June. She talked about the evolution of dictionaries and the benefits of integrating dictionaries and text editors. Participants were given the opportunity to try out a beta version of the ColloCaid text editor on their own devices.
ColloCaid at EuroVis2019
On Wednesday 5th of June, Jonathan Roberts reported on a study at the 21st edition of the EuroVis conference in Porto, Portugal. The study, presented as the paper “Multiple Views: different meanings and collocated words“, examined the terminology and phraseology of using ‘multiple views’, ‘many presentations’ and ‘alternative visual depictions’ in the area of visualisation. This research offers insights into how people use these Read more about ColloCaid at EuroVis2019[…]
ColloCaid in the News
An article about the ColloCaid workshops entitled Incentivo à escrita de artigos em inglês (pdf) appeared in Brazilian newspaper Diário da Região.