2. Staff
3. Software and IT

Following a request from Professor Urszula Clark, Aston now has an institutional licence to Sketch Engine, a linguistic analysis tool. Our licence is funded by the EU Elexis project and therefore sadly ends on Brexit day, 29 March 2022. After that, individual paid subscriptions will be available at low cost (e.g. €20 for 3 months access) provided you can fund them.

Sketch Engine is the ultimate tool to explore how language works. Its algorithms analyze authentic texts of billions of words (text corpora) to identify instantly what is typical in language and what is rare, unusual or emerging usage. It is also designed for text analysis or text mining applications.

Sketch Engine is used by linguists, lexicographers, translators, students and teachers. It is a first choice solution for publishers, universities, translation agencies and national language institutes throughout the world.

Sketch Engine contains 400 ready-to-use corpora in 90+ languages, each having a size of up to 20 billion words to provide a truly representative sample of language.

Accessing Sketch Engine

To use Sketch Engine, go to https://the.sketchengine.co.uk and select the link to Authenticate using your institution account (Single Sign On).

You will be asked ‘which organisation would you like to sign in with?’ so type Aston and click the Sign In link for Aston University OpenAthens.

Sign in with your Aston Account (usual username and password).

The first time you sign in you will be asked to type in your email and name, and to choose a username (simply type over the unmemorable username offered with something simpler, like urszulaclarke or sofiasiddique1).

The next time you sign in using your Aston Account, you will go straight to the Sketch Engine home screen:

User Guides

To learn to work with Sketch Engine, please refer to the User Guide at https://www.sketchengine.eu/user-guide/

You will be able to use all the main features within a few minutes with the Quick Start Guide.

The User Manual contains details on both basic and advanced functionality. Video guides are also included.

Support

If you have any questions about the Sketch Engine functionality, please contact https://www.sketchengine.eu/contact-us/

Note that there is no local support for Sketch Engine – either ‘how to use it’ or technical problems.