Lost in the Forest

Recent work on data-driven learning manifests concern for the level of complexity that the use of corpora can entail, a complexity which – it is feared – may ultimately turn learners away from corpus interfaces in favour of the more discursive and user-friendly query strategies offered by AI. With this in mind, the primary aim of this paper is to trace the “journey of experience” of a hypothetical, relatively inexperienced, university-level user of the corpus management and analysis software Sketch Engine, in order to evaluate its plausibility as a resource for this type of user. Particular focus will be devoted to the Word Sketch option, following an analysis of the main differences between the query types Simple Query, Lemma Query, Phrase Query and Word Query. In this regard, it would seem that the issue of lemmatisation merits particular attention.