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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>I received some excellent responses to my query on
rare words and I would like to thank all the respondents. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Just to provide some context for those who are
interested. My colleagues and I are working on a corpus of children's writing in
which each script has been graded for writing quality. We want to find out
if the use of rare words contributes to the grade awarded to each script.
Previous research in this area has defined a rare word as any word that does not
occur within the set of the first two thousand most frequent words. This
definition does seem to discriminate between 'good' and 'poor' writing, though
it is clearly problematic. We are trying to arrive at a clearer understanding of
the issues surrounding word rarity. </FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial size=2>Ngoni</FONT></DIV>
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<DIV><FONT face=Arial
size=2>***********************************************************<BR>Dr Ngoni
Chipere
<BR>Research
Fellow
<BR>School of Education, University of
Reading
<BR>Bulmershe Court, Earley, Reading, RG6 1HY, UK <BR>tel 0118
9875123 ext
4943
<BR>***********************************************************</FONT></DIV>
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