LibGuides: English language and applied linguistics: Key resources

Key databases for finding journal articles

LLBA (Linguisitics and Language Behavior Abstracts) This link opens in a new window
References to publications covering linguistics and language.
Gives references for journal articles, monographs, recent books, technical reports, occasional papers, dissertations, and book reviews.

Help and guidance
ProQuest LibGuide: LLBA
Education Research Complete [partial full-text] This link opens in a new window
Gives references, and some full-text access, to journals and books in education.
It provides indexing and abstracts for more than 2,100 journals, as well as full-text access to more than 1,200 journals and nearly 500 books and monographs.

Topics covered include all levels of education from early childhood to higher education, and all educational specialties, such as multilingual education, health education, and testing.

The dates available varies between journals – many are indexed and/or full-text back to 2000s, some back to 1990s.

Help and guidance
EBSCOhost Advanced Search Help
Viewing results in EBSCOhost
Google Scholar This link opens in a new window
Google Scholar is the academic version of Google. It allows you to search for scholarly literature (journal articles, books, patents) from a variety of sources, including academic publishers, professional societies, and online repositories.
It is unclear which publishers are included in Google Scholar, so it shouldn't be used as your only source for a comprehensive literature search. For references to reliable, academic sources search our Summon discovery service or databases covering your subject.

Link to our full-text
You can set your preferences on Google Scholar to show links to full-text articles in all of our e-journals.

1) Click on the three lines on the top left of the home screen.
2) Select 'Settings'.
3) Select 'Library Links' on the left of the screen.
4) In the search box type 'Reading' and select the 'Reading University Library - Full-Text @ Reading' option.
5) Save your settings.

When you do a search, look for a 'Full-Text @ Reading' link to the right of references in your results list. This indicates that we have a subscription which will give you access to the article. Click on this link to access the full-text.

If the 'Full-text @ Reading' link does not appear next to a reference it indicates that it isn't covered by our subscriptions and you probably won't be able to access the article.

If you are off-campus you will need to login to access the articles. You will usually be prompted to login as soon as you click on the link to the article. If this doesn't happen you will need to look for an institutional or Shibboleth login link once you reach the journal's website. For more guidance see Accessing e-journals.

Google Scholar Button
Google have produced a plugin for Chrome, Firefox and Safari which allows you to easily search for and cite articles. Highlight the title of an article in the page you are reading and then click the Scholar button and it will search for the article on Google Scholar in a pop up window. To get a formatted reference for a search result press the quote button next to it and the reference will appear in three different styles.

To make the most of this tool set up the University of Reading as a 'Library Link' using the instructions above.
ScienceDirect [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Access to articles in journals published by Elsevier from 1995 to the present, plus access to older articles in some subject areas. Also gives access to Elsevier e-books we have purchased.
Covering sciences, economic and social science, and some arts and humanities titles.

We also have access to older articles from 1896 onwards in the following subjects:

-agricultural and biological sciences
-economics, econometrics and finance
-environmental science
-social sciences

Help and guidance
ScienceDirect help

Additional useful resources

The following databases cover a range of related subjects.

However, if you are looking for information on the use of language in a specific context, you should look at the list of E-resources relating to that subject. For instance, if you are looking for information relating to political language, you should look at the E-resources for politics too. Follow this link to view lists of e-resources for specific subjects

British Education Index This link opens in a new window
References to journal articles and theses relating to all aspects and fields of education from preschool to higher education.
Covers 1975-

Help and guidance
EBSCOhost user guide
British Library Sounds [sound] This link opens in a new window
Over 50,000 sound recordings, includes accents and dialects.
Covers:
- Accents and dialects
- Art and literature
- Classical music
- Nature and environment
- Popular music, including jazz
- Oral history
- Sound recording history
- Society and family
- World and traditional music
- World events
- Work and industry

You may use the sound recordings for teaching, learning and research, but please refer to the Copyright and Usage box on each individual recording to see how you are permitted to use that recording.

For help and more information see the How to use the Sounds website page.
Cambridge Histories [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Provides access to over 300 volumes published in the Cambridge Histories series since 1960, including the Cambridge history of the Romance languages and the Cambridge history of the English language.
Provides full-text access to over 300 volumes published in the Cambridge Histories series since 1960. Subjects range across the humanities and include:
- American history
- British history
- Economic history
- General history
- History of science
- Language and literature
- Literary studies
- Philosophy
- Political and social theory
- Regional history
- Theatre studies and performing arts
- Warfare

All titles are listed on the Library catalogue.
ERIC (Educational Resources Information Center) This link opens in a new window
References to research documents, journal articles, and other materials covering education.
Help and guidance
EBSCOhost user guide
Library Hub Discover (Jisc) This link opens in a new window
Merged online catalogues of many major UK and Irish academic, National libraries and specialist libraries.
Library Hub Discover lists monographs and journal titles. It also includes conference proceedings, audio-visual, multimedia items and other formats listed on library catalogues.

Help and guidance
Library Hub Discover site support
MLA (Modern Language Association International Bibliography) This link opens in a new window
References to publications covering literature, language, linguistics and folklore worldwide.
MLA (Modern Language Association International Bibliography) covers literature, language, linguistics and folklore worldwide.

Gives references to journal articles, monographs, working papers, conference proceedings, indexes and bibliographies, etc.

Covers 1884-. Hosted on the EBSCO platform.

Help and guidance
EBSCOhost user guide
Oxford Handbooks Online [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Oxford Handbooks Online is a collection of review essays covering key issues and exploring major debates across different subject areas.
The University has purchased some titles in the following subjects:

-Archaeology
-Business & management
-Classical studies
-Criminology & criminal justice
-Economics & finance
-History
-Law
-Linguistics
-Literature
-Philosophy
-Political science
-Psychology

Individual titles are listed on the Library catalogue.

Help and guidance
Oxford Academic guides
Project MUSE [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Access to articles in over 500 journal titles in arts, humanities and social sciences. A list of specific language and linguistics titles on Project MUSE is available.
View a list of titles available on Project Muse (you will need to be on-campus or logged in via the off-campus link above to view this list).

Complements JSTOR by providing recent issues of many titles in that archive.

Help and guidance
Project MUSE video tutorials and search guides
PsycARTICLES [full-text] This link opens in a new window
Articles from journals published by the American Psychological Association (APA), the Educational Publishing Foundation, and selected other related publishers.
PsycINFO This link opens in a new window
Gives references to journal articles, books and chapters in psychology and psychological aspects of related disciplines including education, linguistics, medicine, and physiology. Includes links to full-text articles in PsycARTICLES.
Gives references to journal articles, books and book chapters.
Sketch Engine This link opens in a new window
Sketch Engine (SkE) is a Corpus Query System incorporating word sketches, one-page, automatic, corpus-derived summary of a word’s grammatical and collocational behaviour.
To create your own corpus:

1. Click on the 'Log in' option
2. Click on the link to 'Authenticate using a single sign-on (SSO) service'
3. Search for 'University of Reading' and 'continue'
4. Login with your University username and password
5. You will then see the 'Create corpus' option in the menu on the left

Help and guidance
Guides to using Sketch Engine
Web of Science This link opens in a new window
Use to search across a number of databases covering a range of subject areas. Provides references to journal articles, books, conference papers, patents, research data and other materials.
Web of Science gives access to a range of databases which can be searched individually or simultaneously:

-BIOSIS Previews - biological sciences
-Current Contents Connect
-Data Citation Index - research data from international repositories
-Derwent Innovations Index - patents in engineering
-FSTA (Food Science and Technology Abstracts)
-Medline - biomedical sciences
-Web of Science Core Collection - made up of the Arts and Humanities, Science, and Social Sciences Citation Indexes, plus a number of other databases

The cross-search also includes open access journals and open archive repositories.

Also available via Web of Science:

-JCR (Journal Citation Reports)

Help and guidance
Web of Science Training Portal
WorldCat This link opens in a new window
Essentially a vast Library catalogue. Gives references to books, theses, and other published materials in all subjects.
Covers ca.1000 BC to the present.

Useful websites

British National Corpus
The British National Corpus (BNC) is a 100 million word collection of samples of written and spoken language from a wide range of sources, designed to represent a wide cross-section of British English, both spoken and written, from the late twentieth century.
Corpus of Contemporary American English (COCA)
Contains 450 million words, currently covers 1990-2019.
The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA)
The Corpus of Historical American English (COHA) is a structured corpus of historical English and contains more than 475 million words of text from the 1820s-2010s.
WebCorp Live
Produced by the University of Liverpool this site offers a suite of tools which allows access to the World Wide Web as a corpus. It can aid research on how particular words and phrases are used, especially ones which are too new or too rare to appear in any dictionary or standard corpus.

Resources in language testing
Guide to language testing related resources on the Internet. Each resource is reviewed in the Language Tester's Guide to Cyberspace section, which is updated regularly. Other useful features include a searchable index of articles published in the journal Language Testing, conference news page and the Articles and Reviews section.

The Linguist List
A site dedicated to providing information on language and linguistics, it contains over 2000 pages listing resources and links. It also runs a mailing list which provides a forum for exchange of information and discussion.
Linguistics resources compiled by University of York
A well-maintained listing of useful websites relating to language and linguistic science.
The World Atlas of Language Structures (WALS)
A large database of structural (phonological, grammatical, lexical) properties of languages gathered from descriptive materials (such as reference grammars).
bab.la dictionary
Free multilingual online dictionary offering translations from colloquial and regional expressions to more technical or field-specific vocabulary.

Videos: doing your literature search

This playlist of two videos shows you how to prepare for and perform a literature search. The first video introduces literature searches and their role. The second video covers using the search operators AND and OR to create a search statement, and explains the role of wildcards and truncation in constructing a comprehensive search. This information is also available in written guides - see the links below.

Related guides

Literature searching
A guide to finding articles, books and other materials on your subject
Literature reviews guide
Advice in this guide will help you navigate both the research process and the production of the final literature review.

Create your search

Getting items not held at Reading

Our Inter-Library Loans service can get articles, books and other publications not held at Reading from other libraries (usually from the British Library).

For more information see our webpages:

Inter-library loans service
Use this service to get publications not held at the University of Reading.