#4: Please comment on the corpus-based reference tools.

• How do you like these tools?
  They are really useful for us who are non-native speakers. These tools can help non-native speakers to use a word certainly. Especially lextutor had a more friendly interface for me. There are a clear corpus downlist and a option to find keyword(s) with associated word within 4 words to right/left/either side. The most sweet thing is the statistic in the end of the search. But lextutor without an alphabet sorted. Furthermore, Collocation retrieval system is very nice for non-native speakers. Sometimes there was no reasons to use a word that was connected with a specific word. With these tools, Non-native speakers can speak and write more fluently.


• What are their strength and weakness, in comparison with a dictionary?
  
Dictionary's :
strength
1. Organize a word's attributes, phrases and idioms.
2. Use a monolingual dictionary can make you more english thinking.

weakness
1. Sometimes words are in same meaning, It's puzzling to use correctly.

Concordancer's :
strength
1. There are lots of sentences of a word. Maybe you can find a similar sentence that you want.
weakness
1. Need to find the rules of a keyword by yourself.
2. Not easy to use for a tyro.



• What are the difficulties you encounter when you used these tools?
  At beginning in concordancer, I don't know how to classify types that keyword belongs to . I just confirm my words whether they are used like I think. It might be a vocabulary problem. However, It says "Skill comes from practice", I am doing better now.
  

"pull up to the bumper, and get out of the car"

is a part of a lyric, now we can use Google to find the whole lyric.

I use a double quotes around the phrase and put it into Google search engine, as following:

It's very easy and correct to find the lyric even song's name and artist.

• Artist: PINK


• Song: Get This Party Started


• Lyric:
  
  

Google is awesome!!~

#3-Q: Is there any rule governing the use of "big" and "large"?

A: Yes.
When you use a ditionary to find the define of "Big" and "Large", you may confuse about how diffirent they are, they both describes by each other.But, through searching corpora, you can know how to use them better.

"Big"

• is often used to describe the shape of an object.
  => big car, big house, big TV, etc.
• sometimes to emphasize the important of things
  => a big difference, the big challenges

"Large"

• is often used to describe the amount of objects.
  => large number of books, large quantity of documents, large sums of money, large classes, etc.
• usually used in standard things.
  => large coke, large fries

#2-Dictionary- Love vs. Like

• Love(verb)

1. [vn] (not used in the progressive tenses) to have very strong feelings of affection for sb.
2. to like or enjoy sth very much.
3. would love: used to say that you would very much like sth .

• Like(verb)

1. to find sb/sth pleasant, attractive or of a good enough standard; to enjoy sth.
2. [no passive] to prefer to do sth; to prefer sth to be made or to happen in a particular way.
3. [vn] [no passive] to want.
4. used in negative sentences to mean ‘to be unwilling to do sth’
5. would like: used with would or should as a polite way to say what you want or to ask what sb wants

I didn't sure how to use the words 'love' and 'like' sometimes . I didn't know what's 'like' different than 'love' in some aspects. After searching Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary, I think they are really different to be used.

Introduce you an awsome bolg~

Why I want to introduce U this, because it's created by my favorite star Daniel Wu and his friends. I've been a Daniel fan since I was a senior high student. I love him very much, not only he is so cute, especially he is an awsome actor! He got the Golden Horse for the Best Supporting Actor in "New Police Story" , 2004 .



How did the blog happened? Daniel Wu and his freinds, Conroy Chan, Andrew Lin, Terence Yin created a boyband Alive. I was surprised at the news. Daniel's going to sing! That's so cool he!

(The fist music vdeio of Alive)

Actually, all of the alive was fictitious! This is another movie "The Heavenly Kings"! They wanna provid a behind-the-scenes look at the challenges facing artists in Hong Kong. Some of Alive fans felt bed when they heard the turth. However, he is exactly an awsome actor! I still crazy about him.

(It's a mockumentary movie.)

Now, alivenotdead.com is an online community dedicated to helping artists. Their goal is to strengthen artist communities worldwide and to help connect these communities together. Through their website, artists can connect with and grow their audience, share their creative works, and meet and collaborate with other artists.

I think you can find artists who attract you from the bolg and there are three language to choose. It might could help your reading.