What is SkELL Sketch Engine?

“Sketch Engine is a state-of-the-art cloud tool for building, managing and exploring large text collections in dozens of languages”. Being connected to British Academic Written English (BAWE) Corpus, it helps students find out how words are used in different written academic contexts, e.g. essays, reports, critiques etc. There are many more useful options that students can select in order to analyse words, their meanings, synonyms and collocations.

SkELL Sketch Engine

How to Use SkELL Sketch Engine

In order to log into SkELL Sketch Engine, you need to follow the following steps:

  1. Open https://skell.sketchengine.co.uk/run.cgi/skell
  2. Click on ‘learn more’ and then ‘log in’.
  3. Select ‘institutional log in’ and choose Coventry University.
  4. If this is the first time you are using Sketch Engine, you need to create an account and then log in again.
  5. Select ‘English’.
  6. In the search box, select ‘British Academic Written English Corpus (BAWE).
  7. From the left-hand bar, click on ‘concordance’ or any other options and then type in the word you want to check.

Task: Choose one that you do not know from the Academic Word List* and complete the following steps:

  1. Use a dictionary to see what it means. Take notes of it*.
  2. Log into SkELL Sketch Engine, select BAWE, and check how the word is used by selecting ‘Concordance’. Add a few of the examples to your notes.
  3. Now select ‘Word Sketch’ and find a few collocations for the word.
  4. Click on ‘Thesaurus’. Type in the word and see if you can find any appropriate synonyms.
  5. Now record all the information you found in one place. Do you think you now know how to use this word?

*Click here if you want to learn more about the Academic Word List (AWL).

*If you want to learn an effective way of recording new words, click here.