Help with searching
Introduction to the OASIS website
Contents of the Video
(0:25) What is an OASIS summary?
(0:55) Searching the database
(2:37) Viewing and downloading a summary
(3:46) Guidance on writing a summary
(4:23) Collections
Find everything and then refine your search with search filters
First, find everything on OASIS. To do this, you can either click "see everything in OASIS" in the search box on the homepage, or type * in the search box, or click on the 'Search' tab across the top. Then, use filters on the left to narrow down your search. For example, you can use Research Area filter to refine your search results. You can combine two or more search terms to refine your search even further. Combined search terms are searched for using the 'AND' principle; that is, each summary matches all of the search terms selected.
Please note that in the past, not all summaries had to be tagged by the three fields 'proficiency', 'age of learners', or 'language being learned/used'. This means that you may find additional relevant summaries by typing specific terms relating to 'proficiency', 'age of learners', or 'language being learned/used' in the free text search box. However, since January 2026, all summaries have had obligatory metadata for these three fields, meaning that searches for these categories are fully comprehensive for materials submitted from January 2026 onwards.
Using the free text search
Start by entering some search terms into the search box. OASIS automatically performs an OR search and searches for any words entered. For example, the following
- word1 word2
will bring search results including word1 OR word2 OR both.
You can also use quotation marks around a search term or phrase to find summaries that contain the exact words or phrases.
You can enter terms related to characteristics of the participants and languages featured in the research. By using the terms below, the search results will show you the summaries that have been tagged with that metadata by the uploader, or, summaries that have the term in their title.
context of language use: academic, "higher education", home, "residence abroad", school, friends, family, work
educational stage: preschool, "primary / elementary school", kindergarten, "secondary / high school", tertiary, university
gender: male, female, mixed
feature being learned: animacy, figurative language, grammar (morphosyntax), lexis (vocabulary), nonwords, phonetics, phonology, pragmatics, semantics, syntax)
institutional characteristics: "adult education", "Bi-multilingual education", "charter school", "ethnoculturally affiliated", "non-formal", "supplementary", "privately-funded", "publicly-funded", rural, "special needs", "teacher education", "urban", "vocational"
You can also search for more than one term by using the + symbol. For example, preschool+Germany .
It is worth noting, however, that this will not return all summaries relating to those key terms, because not all uploaders tag their summaries with these optional fields.
Refining the search with search filters
Refine your search results with the filters down the left of the screen. For example, you can search for all OASIS content with * and use Research Area filter to refine your search results.
Please note that, in the past, not all summaries were tagged by proficiency, age of learners or language being learned/used. This means that other relevant summaries for these categories may be found by using the free text search box.