The Survey of English Usage

Survey Seminars

The Survey of English Usage organises a number of seminars each year for staff and students from the Faculty of Arts and Humanities and beyond. They are generously sponsored by the English Department.

We had two speakers for the Spring term. On Tuesday 11 February, Amanda Thompson from the OED spoke about lexicography in 2025. On 4 March, we were pleased to welcome Kingsley Ugwuanyi from SOAS, who discussed the codification of Nigerian English.

Online Courses

Bas Aarts and Luke Pearce have created two new courses on the FutureLearn platform. Note, if you are a UK teacher, our course English Grammar for Teachers will be more suitable for you.

English Grammar: All You Need to Know

English Grammar: All You Need to Know is a six-week course for anyone who is interested in the topic which takes an in-depth look at the nuts and bolts of English grammar. The course has already attracted over 3,000 participants from 156 countries. It discusses the following topics:

• The building blocks of English sentences: word classes, phrases and clauses
• Grammatical functions and semantic roles
• Using words and phrases to build clauses
• Talking about time: tense and aspect
• Talking about what is possible, probable and necessary: mood and modality
• How to communicate effectively: presenting information

Teaching English Grammar in Context

Teaching English Grammar in Context is a follow-on course for our FutureLearn course English Grammar for Teachers. 

It helps teachers to teach English grammar effectively and enjoyably using real texts, such as novels, poems and songs. On this five-week course, teachers will discover methods for teaching English grammar in context throughout primary and secondary education. With this approach, they can employ grammar in other aspects of their teaching for a more unified experience. This technique has also been shown to have positive impacts on students' creative writing and analytical reading.

English Grammar Day 2025

The tenth annual English Grammar Day took place on 7 July 2025 in the British Library.

This public event is jointly organised by the Survey of English Usage, the University of Oxford and the British Library.

English Grammar Days are frequently fully booked and attract a great number of teachers and school children, as well as members of the public and the press.

• More information

This year’s speakers were

• Beth Malory (UCL)
• Zarah Shah (Author and KS4 Coordinator, @LitDriveUk) and Holly Wimbush (Head of English, NW Regional Lead, @LitDriveUK)
• Simon Horobin (Oxford)
• Sarah Kirk-Brown (British Library)
• Rob Drummond (Manchester Metropolitan University)
• Billy Clark (Northumbria University)

Summer School in English Corpus Linguistics 2025

This year's Summer School took place from 25 to 27 June 2025.

Our online Summer School in English Corpus Linguistics takes place in a time slot designed to make it internationally inclusive from Europe to Asia. We cover grammar, discourse, corpus methodology and statistics in one unique three-day event.

• More information

Recent Publications

Statistics in Corpus Linguistics Research

Statistics in Corpus Linguistics Research

An original book on statistics for researchers in corpus linguistics, written by Sean Wallis. The book draws on decades of collaborative corpus linguistics research at the Survey with colleagues around the world, and ten years of independent research in statistics.

• Outlines and develops the ‘Survey Methodology’ in Corpus Linguistics
• Promotes a perspective of linguistics research driven by theoretical frameworks and analysis, not merely what the data allows us to see
• Explains statistical inference from first principles
• Argues for a focus on confidence intervals rather than ‘p values’ to understand your data, what you are testing, and what your results might mean
• Presents a series of novel statistical methods motivated by Corpus Linguistics analysis problems
• Shows how to reinstate logical reasoning into statistical claims

This book is written for researchers and students of linguistics from undergraduate level upwards.

• More Information
• Resources: Further reading, data and calculators

Handbook of English Linguistics

The Handbook of English Linguistics (2nd Edition)

The second edition of the popular Handbook of English Linguistics brings together stimulating discussions of the core topics in English linguistics in a single, authoritative volume. Edited by Bas Aarts, Alice McMahon and Lars Hinrichs, the chapters cover syntax, methodology, phonetics and phonology, lexis and morphology, variation, stylistics, and discourse, and also provide discussions of theoretical and descriptive research in the field.

This revised edition:

• Presents thirty-two in-depth, yet accessible, chapters that discuss new research findings across the field, written by both established and emerging scholars from around the world
• Builds upon the very successful first edition, published in 2006
• Incorporates new trends in English linguistics, including digital research methods and theoretical advances in all subfields
• Suggests future research directions

This book is an essential reference work for researchers and students working in the field of English language and linguistics.

• More Information

Oxford Handbook of English Grammar

Oxford Handbook of English Grammar

An authoritative, critical survey of current research and knowledge in the grammar of the English language. Edited by Bas Aarts and Jill Bowie of the Survey of English Usage with Geri Popova of Goldsmiths, it contains 31 chapters by linguists from Aarts to Ziegler.

• Addresses foundational areas of research methodology
• Explores a range of theoretical approaches to English grammar
• Covers all the core subdomains of grammar, including morphology
• Examines the relationship between grammar and other areas of linguistics
• Explores grammatical variation across genres and dialects, and change over time

The handbook's wide-ranging coverage will appeal to researchers and students of English language and linguistics from undergraduate level upwards.

• More Information

English Grammar for Schools Resources

We have published a set of Englicious grammar resources for teachers and children in UK primary and secondary schools.

Written by Bas Aarts and Ian Cushing, using simple language and practical examples, these classroom resources explain the key grammatical terms in the English National Curriculum that primary and secondary school teachers are expected to teach. Prices start from £4.95 for a knowledge organiser, with savings for bulk purchases.

The resources are a spin-off from our Teaching English Grammar in Schools project and are published by UCL Business. Income helps to support the Englicious project.

• Knowledge organisers
• Flash cards of key terms
• Classroom posters

Free Grammar Resources for School Teachers — the Englicious Website

We are pleased to see our Englicious website going from strength to strength, with more teachers signing up every day. Englicious (www.englicious.org) is an online resource for improving the teaching of English grammar and literacy in UK schools. Our site uses the latest UK National Curriculum grammar terminology and spans both the primary and secondary sectors.

We run two courses for school teachers, in conjunction with the UCL Institute of Education, Grammar for Teachers and Teaching English Grammar in Context, both of which use Englicious.

• Englicious website
• English Grammar for Teachers course
• Teaching English Grammar in Context course

In the following video, school teachers at St Aidan's Primary School, North London, talk about their experience using Englicious in the classroom.

Parsed Corpora of English

Two major parsed corpora of British English are available to order from the Survey of English Usage.

Both corpora are released with the latest ICECUP 3.1 software.

• More information, free sample downloads and order forms