During the spring break, I participated in a lecture by Professor Kinugasa from Osaka City University. The lecture was about effective ways of using Google search and English Corpus search. He explained how to use these tools for English learning in a way that will be very useful for us. He compared many data bases and taught us how we can use Google's advanced search. Before the lecture, I never used advanced search in Google. When I have something to research on the internet, I used to use just the regular Google search. Since I never knew of such an useful tool, I always had to spend long hours to get the exact information I needed. By using advanced search and little tricks, we can eliminate unnecessary information and get to the information we really need in less time. In university, students have many opportunities to research information especially for research papers. I think those skills we learned in this lecture will help us a lot when we are working on research papers. However, I’m sure it will help us not only for school assignments, but also on every occasion where finding exact information on internet is needed after we graduate and go into society. I was surprised by this lecture since I never knew there were such useful tools. I would like to use as much of the tips I learned today as I can to improve my English learning skills.

by Mei K