IMPROVE

IMPROVE

a) Keyness

The lemma ‘improve’ was the three hundred and seventieth most significant key word in the BEC corpus.

N	Word	bec freq.	bec.lst %	bnc freq.	bnc.lst %	Keyness	P
370	IMPROVE	250	0.02	215	0.01	73.8	0.000000

b) Semantic Prosody

Left: One small group of adverbs can be noted - see also colligation section below.

semantic prosody

frequency/ 132 & %

example

nature of improvement

8 - 6.06%

continuously improve

hugely improve

dramatically improve

incrementally improve

significantly improve

steadily improve

Right: No major groups detected here, but many of the collocates were concerned with business, efficiency, money and products.

c) Three-word clusters

d) Macro-generic distribution

e) Colligation

COBUILD Sense 1 (something gets better)

Patterns: Verb (erg)/verb/verb-noun

125 instances - 94.69% of sample

improve business, improve liquidity, improve numbers, improve performance, improve quality

COBUILD Sense 2 (a skill you have improves or you get better at something)

5 instances - 3.78% of sample

Patterns: Verb (erg), verb-noun

improve my knowledge, improve the creativity of their thinking, improve your reporting accuracy

COBUILD Sense 4 (improve on a previous achievement)

Patterns: Verb-on-noun

2 instances - 1.51% of sample

little scope to improve on budgeted tonnage, improve on the 12 week availability

Other patterns:

i) verb + to + improve/verb + noun + to + improve

44 instances - 33.33% of sample

seeking to improve, taking actions to improve

ii) noun + to + improve

22 instances - 16.66% of sample

potential to improve, little scope to improve, business acumen to improve

iii) adverb + improve (as in semantic prosody section above)

8 instances - 6.06% of sample

continuously improve, hugely improve, dramatically improve, incrementally improve

significantly improve, steadily improve

f) Associates

The word ‘improve’ was key in 3 files. No associates of frequency > =5 were found.