Comment on the Corpus-based Reference Tools

I have used Cobuild Concordance before but I find it hard to be put into use without reading the query syntax in advance. When I was confused about the use of a new or difficult word, I resorted to Cobuild Concordance. The list of sentences clarifies the words that go before or after the word. The clarification enables me to understand how to use the word in a sentence. The program “TOTALrecall”, for example, can help English learners find the English vocabulary or phrase that correspond to the exact or similar Chinese word or phrase. The search results provide the user with possible word s/he is looking for. Overall, I like corpus-based reference tools because they offer many more examples of how to use a word than ordinary dictionaries. Despite the advantage of a large amount of text database, corpus-based reference tools still have some drawbacks compared to dictionaries. Corpus-based reference tools do not inform the definition and part of the speech of the word to the user; rather, it shows the way to use it. On the other hand, a well-written dictionary includes pronunciation, part of speech, definition and even etymology and picture of a word. In my opinion, to fully understand a word, one needs to look it up in a dictionary to know the meaning and then use corpus-based reference tools to familiarize oneself with the use of the word.