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  Oxford University Press announced today that it is going on a word hunt to provide language research to BBC Radio 2 and BBC Learning to support the children’s writing competition ‘500 Words’ run by the Chris Evans Breakfast Show.
Now in its second year, 500 Words asks children aged 13 or under to compose an original work of fiction of 500 words. The entries are judged by leading authors David Walliams, Dame Jacqueline Wilson, Charlie Higson, Lauren Child and Andy Stanton, with the winning entries read out by celebrities from a live broadcast on The Chris Evans Breakfast Show from the Hay Festival in June.
Oxford University Press will collect and analyse all the words in the stories entered into the 2012 BBC 500 Words Short Story competition, launched on today’s BBC Radio 2 Breakfast Show. With the help of the Oxford Children’s Corpus, they will explore the way children use language today; pick out their favourite words, discover new words, and even look at how they use punctuation for dramatic effect! In addition, they will also look at age, gender and regional language differences.
The research will be provided to the BBC and will also assist Oxford University Press with their on-going language research and dictionary compilation programme.
Susie Dent, Language Commentator and TV presenter said:
“What a fantastic opportunity to learn more about the ways in which children understand and use their language. I can’t wait to see to what the Oxford Children’s Corpus uncovers – there may well be some surprises coming our way!”
The Oxford Children’s Corpus is a large electronic database of real, authentic children’s language. It provides evidence for language theorists and practitioners of how children’s language behaves and identifies patterns in language, looking specifically at grammatical structures, child-related vocabulary and is an ideal resource for statistical frequency analysis of words.
The Oxford Children’s Corpus is used by lexicographers and linguists as part of OUP’s on-going language research and dictionary compilation programme. Currently, the Oxford Children’s Corpus contains language written for children (31 million words) and also language written by children (1 million words). For more details, click here.
For more information about the 500 Words children’s writing competition, click here.
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