What is the Academic Word List?

The Academic Word List was devised to meet the need of all universities teaching through the English language, or teaching students working with English as a second language. It is a word list used by undergraduates in the UK and many other countries. Learn more on the Academic Word List.

English for Academic Purposes

English for Academic Purposes is a subject area that has grown in recent decades. It is taught as part of an introduction to academic writing to many first year undergraduates in England. A variant of it is taught in option courses for students for whom English is a second language.
Academic vocabulary At each stage of education, the breadth of vocabulary is increased and the depth of meaning expressed increases. Many students struggle with the quantities of new vocabulary that they must deal with on arrival at the university. There is the specialist language for their subject area to learn, and the academic standard use of words encountered in academic reading. This vocabulary is put into practice in essay writing and research writing.

The Academic Word List

An academic at the School of Linguistics at the University of Victoria, Wellington, New Zealand has devised the Academic Word List to assist undergraduates in developing usage of academic terms. It is not the same as a dictionary, this word list organises academic words into family groups but it does not offer definitions for the words. The AWL does not include the 2000 most commonly used words in English. Research vocabulary The corpus of academic words was researched and the data divided into ten lists of word families. There are sixty families in each list except for list 10, which has thirty. The use of the term 'families' for words and their variants, together with the simple alphabetical list format, make the AWL very accessible to users.

Vocabulary building

The AWL is available for free download at Victoria.ac.nz, in either PDF or RTF format. It is in fact a set of lists. Users browse the list or directory of headwords, then go to the numbered sub-list for the selected headword. The list begins with the most commonly used academic words, the first being 'analyse', and each sub-list increases in sophistication. How to use the AWL Although learners are advised to use the AWL in conjunction with a taught course in Academic Writing or English for Academic Purposes, it can be used by a student working alone. The student is advised to work through one list at a time, in numerical order. Students vocabulary building like this should engage in academic reading while learning the list, to gain understanding of the words in context.