After reading my last post on “What is a Sketch Engine?”, you probably jumped straight onto Google to search for and try out this useful tool. When on Sketch Engine, after you searched for whatever language pattern you were looking for, you would have come across a clear and useful synopsis of how the word you searched for behaves in a language. This is known as a Word Sketch. Typically, a Word Sketch will include information about the collocations, grammatical patterns, and semantic properties of a word, demonstrating how it can be associated with other words in various linguistic contexts.
This tool can be handy if you are a visual learner and like to see all the information you need in one area. As a visual learner, I find this utility great as it transforms abstract ideas in language into visual representations. It allows me to view these complex ideas into visuals that are simple to understand. It has helped me to understand words that I may not have known how to correctly use before. This in turn helps me with writing my academic essays and even these blogs! If you are also a visual learner and enjoy seeing all your information laid out clearly for you, then you should definitely try making use of this tool to enhance your linguistic learning experience!
Kilgarriff, Adam, et al. “The sketch engine.” Practical Lexicography: a reader (2008): 297-306.