Check a word or phrase against a corpus of real English sentences: see examples, the words that go with it, which of two phrasings is more common, and feedback on your own writing.
Open WordLab See all classroom tools
Free. This link opens the tool straight away, with no sign-up.
How it works
- Examples: type a word or phrase to see how often it appears per million words, up to 30 example sentences and its top collocations. British and American spellings are matched together.
- Compare A / B: type two phrasings to see which is more common, with examples of each.
- Fill the gap: type a phrase such as interested ___ music to see the words people put in the gap.
- Check writing: paste a text and its two- and three-word combinations are marked common, rare or not found.
- Exam writing: word count against the target, sentence length and word variety for IELTS (Academic and General), B2 First, C1 Advanced or a general CEFR level, with an indicative level.
- Define and more: definitions, translations into eight languages and paraphrases from Otto, the site’s AI assistant.
Ideas for your lesson
- Settle a make or do question in class with Compare A / B.
- Before handing in an essay, run it through Check writing and look again at every not found.
- Build a collocation list for a topic from the Examples tab.
Good to know
- The corpus combines sentences from Tatoeba and a filtered web-text dataset, screened for classroom use.
- The interface is in English or Italian.
- Searches run on this site. Otto’s feedback, definitions, translations and paraphrases send the text you type to the site’s AI service, which runs on Hugging Face, so do not paste anything confidential. AI answers are labelled and should be checked.
- It is a writing aid, not an exam authority: band and grade hints are indicative.
- It needs only www.abcwebsites.online.
Frequently asked questions
Is WordLab free?
Yes. It is marked Free in the ABC toolbox, and this link opens it in your browser with no sign-up.
Does it mark IELTS or Cambridge writing?
No. It shows word counts, sentence length, word variety and an indicative level. Band and grade hints are indicative, not official.
Is my text sent anywhere?
Searches run on this site. The Otto features send the text you type to the site’s AI service, hosted on Hugging Face, to produce the feedback.
Where do the example sentences come from?
From Tatoeba and a filtered web-text dataset, screened for classroom use.
Related tools
- Gap-Fill Maker: a cloze exercise from any text
- CEFR Placement Quiz: estimate an English level from A1 to C2
- Lesson Plan Generator: a full English lesson plan from a topic and level
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