Academic vocabulary and academic word lists
(AWL)
Improving academic vocabulary skills is an important aspect of any language study at university level.
Academic vocabulary can be seen everywhere: in textbooks, journals, lecture handouts, exam papers,
essays, assignments, etc. However, vocabulary skills do not improve simply through a natural,
effortless process; one has to be as 'active' as possible in dealing with vocabulary, right from the
start.
The harder you work on your vocabulary, and the more actively you study, the better your
assignments will be, and the more efficient your reading will be too. So the rewards from studying
vocabulary are considerable.
FAQs
1. What is academic vocabulary? Are there any
academic word lists?...read
2. How can I learn vocabulary quickly?...read
Recommended books
Ten best tips for improving one¡¦s
use of academic vocabulary
(Pop-out table)
What is academic vocabulary? Are there any academic word
lists?
There have been many attempts to define what exactly academic vocabulary is. Many people
think that academic vocabulary is more 'difficult' than general English vocabulary. However,
academic vocabulary is not necessarily 'difficult vocabulary'; using academic words is more a
question of finding appropriate language, in a suitable style, than anything else.
As this web page is essentially a practical one, designed for students rather than researchers, we
will indicate only one piece of research that is likely to be particularly useful. This is the AWL
(Academic Word List); a list of academic words devised by Averil Coxhead, a researcher based in
New Zealand.
In order to build up this word list, Coxhead spent some time placing on computer several
hundred written academic texts (that is, about 3.5 million words in total). She then analysed
them to see which ones were used most frequently.
The 570 words on the Academic Word List are all thought to be important for students preparing
for academic study. If you study these words, and try to use them actively, it will help you to use
English vocabulary more successfully, regardless of your study discipline.
The AWL can be accessed at the following web site :
http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist/
and there are some exercises on the sub-lists here.
How can I learn vocabulary quickly?
It can be very difficult to learn new words or phrases. Academic language can often seem very
abstract and the more abstract it is, the less memorable. In order to improve one's use of
academic vocabulary, it is useful to bear in mind some of the principles of what may be termed
'accelerated learning'.
There are six generally agreed 'stages' of accelerated learning; these are as follows :

Getting into a suitable state of mind.

Using the senses to acquire information.

Understanding what you are trying to learn.

Memorising what you are trying to learn.

Using what you are trying to learn actively.

Providing feedback on what you have learned.
Most of us are very familiar with the first four of these procedures, but in fact, very few of us
may manage to use actively the language that we have learned (or think we have learned), as in
Stage 5. This is a big part of the problem; the words we come across very often stay at a
'receptive' level, and do not quite reach our active vocabulary.
So - what can we do to actively use what we are trying to learn? Some suggestions that have
been made by our students in the past are as follows :

Use mind maps to draw relationships between different words.

Put word families/groups on one page in your vocabulary book.

Listen to classical music (Mozart is best) before you work.

Use mnemonic devices (that is, a word whose first letters give you the key to other
important words).

Put key words into a short story.

Talk to someone else about what you have learned.

Imagine the most absurd scenario to make the information more memorable.

Write words and vocabulary notes using different colours.


Walk around as you are trying to remember; movement helps. I did most of my revision
for my RSA teaching diploma examinations by walking along the beach at Westgate carrying
cue cards (true story!), not sitting at my desk.
In short, never just do nothing- always do something!
Recommended books for developing academic vocabulry
We especially recommend:
David Porter, Check your Vocabulary for Academic English. 2003. Bloomsbury
Publishing.
This book is based on research by I.S.P.Nation (1990), who drew up a wellknown vocabulary list of 800 items ranked according to their frequency,
across a range of academic texts.
David Porter uses this academic word list as the basis for a range of useful exercises : filling in the
gaps, choosing the right word, word substitution, collocations and sentence completion.
This book is ideal for self-study and is widely available from good bookshops.
Ten best tips for improving one's use of academic vocabulary
Learning vocabulary effectively is linked to one's preferred learning style, and so is a very
personal matter; what works for one student may not work for another. Some students like to
stick post-it notes on their door to remind them of the words; others prefer to learn lists of
unconnected words, out of context. One student I remember tried to learn the dictionary from A
to Z, highlighting words that he didn't know. This may seem a very bizarre strategy to some, but
at least it worked, in a sense, for the student concerned. The important thing to remember is
that there is no 'do nothing' option - whatever you do to learn vocabulary is always better than
doing nothing at all and hoping that vocabulary will be acquired 'naturally'.
Here are some further tips:

Read actively with paper and pencil to hand and make a note of academic words and
phrases that seem to be particularly useful and try and learn them.

Note how experienced writers use vocabulary, and try to imitate their use of it if you can
(without copying ideas, of course).

Explore relationships between words. For most people, learning vocabulary remains at a
surface level and simply involves memorising the word or phrase in translation, however, try
to look at relationships between words (e.g. word families) and word formation (e.g. prefixes,
suffixes, etc).

Use Latin-based words in favour of phrasal verbs where you have a choice e.g. 'to get on
with' could be replaced by 'to have a good relationship with'. This is referred to as a 'lexical
shift', and is important in academic writing .

Use a dictionary and thesaurus where appropriate; do not just assume that a word exists
without checking it first.

Make sure you write the word you are using in the correct part of speech; do you need the
noun form, the verb form or the adjective?

Avoid the use of 'boring' words such as 'advantage', 'problem', 'good', 'bad', 'interesting'
and replace these with something more descriptive.

Do not use the same word twice in a sentence or close together in a paragraph or text.

Aim to express your meaning very precisely. For example, note the difference between
apparently similar verbs such as 'suggest', 'indicate', 'emphasise', 'point out'.
And perhaps most importantly of all:

Try to keep good vocabulary records; your records should include, as a minimum, the
word or phrase, a translation, information about how to pronounce the word (word stress,
phonetics, etc), an example of the word or phrase in a sentence, etc. Make a conscious
decision as to whether you want to use the words actively (active vocabulary) or whether you
just want to be able to recognise them (passive vocabulary).
How To Teach The Academic Word List
The Academic Word List is a collection of 570 word families (such as “academic”,
“academically”, “academia” and “academy”) that commonly occur in academic
writing such as journal papers but are not in the list of the 2000 most common words
in the English language. Although students can also benefit from more subjectspecific vocabulary, this general academic list is useful for reading (e.g. of textbooks
and the IELTS Reading paper), writing (e.g. dissertations), speaking (e.g. academic
presentations) and listening (e.g. lectures). There are many paper and online self-study
resources specific to academic vocabulary and the Academic Word List, for example:



Sections of the newest editions of the textbook Focus on IELTS
Academic Vocabulary in Use
The Academic Word List section on EnglishVocabularyExercises.com
The AWL is also worth some class time, be it to do things that students can’t do on
their own at home or to introduce them to extra practice that they can do elsewhere.
There are plenty of general vocabulary games that are suitable for words from the
AWL (e.g. random pelmanism, Call My Bluff, Taboo and the definitions game) and
with careful selection it might even be possible to do more fun vocabulary games like
miming. However, before you set off on trying to teach the whole list this way it is
worth thinking about which kinds of words on the list you most need to teach and
what students need to know about them.
Things you can teach and practise about the Academic Word list include:









Meanings, including different meanings of words (e.g. in different academic areas or
academic and everyday meanings with words like “appreciate”)
Synonyms (including less academic synonyms)
Antonyms
Different parts of speech (including word formation, mainly meaning prefixes and
suffixes)
What prefixes and suffixes in the list mean
Countable and uncountable nouns
Positive and negative connotations (including words that have the same meaning
but different connotations, opposite words that don’t have opposite connotations,
and words with negative prefixes that have positive connotations)
Pronunciation (e.g. shifting stress) and spelling (including typical spelling problems)
Irregular plurals (e.g. appendix/ appendices, medium/ media)









British and American differences
Words from the AWL which show doubt and certainty
Words from the AWL that can be used for describing trends
Words from the AWL that express largeness and smallness
Words from the AWL that can be used as or in linking phrases
Collocations with words from the AWL (including dependant prepositions and fixed
phrases)
Determiners that commonly go with words from the AWL (e.g. in fixed phrases)
Typical confusions (e.g. false friends, words which have similar but different
meanings and minimal pairs)
Greek, Latin and French roots of the words
Which of those you want to focus on will mainly depend on their levels and needs,
e.g. missing out pronunciation entirely in an Academic Writing course.
You could easily and usefully do a whole lesson on just one of the points in the list
above, especially as they illustrate more generally useful things to know about
vocabulary and can easily be extended into useful words that are not on the AWL. I
could write, and have written, whole articles on how to teach and practise each of the
things above, e.g. collocations games and countable and uncountable nouns, and most
of those general activities work fine with EAP (English for Academic Purposes) and
Academic Writing courses such as preparation for study abroad courses too –
including the games! I therefore haven’t attempted to explain how to teach each of
those things into this article.
As well as general vocabulary games and activities for each of the points above, you
can also get students using AWL vocabulary while teaching other academic language
such as typical phrases – and this has become perhaps my favourite of the three
approaches. For example, as well as AWL words which can be used to explain trends
(e.g. “diminish” and “collapse”), there are plenty more that you can put in phrases to
ask students to explain the trends of (e.g. “abandoned pets” and “academic funding”).
Other academic language that you can put the AWL into the practice of includes:





Cause and effect (e.g. explain a good reason why you chose to do something like
“support totally unlimited immigration” or the unintended positive consequences of
doing something like “mocking your lecturer’s hypothesis”)
Comparing and contrasting (e.g. comparing things like “infrastructure” in different
places and/ or times; trying to find similarities between random words from the
AWL; or explaining how similar or different pairs of words which are synonyms, near
synonyms and common confusions are)
Talking about advantages and disadvantages (e.g. looking at both sides of things like
“how difficult it is to get published in paper journals”, trying to find negative aspects
of positive things like “interaction between children from different countries” or
trying to find positive aspects of negative things like “injuries to children in parks”)
Hedging language/ The language of generalisation (e.g. students making statements
about things like “physical labour in your country nowadays” and seeing if other
groups agree with the level of certainty and generalisation that is used)
Phrases for explaining and clarifying meanings (e.g. asking students to explain things
like “one ideology” with their partner asking for more and more clarification)

Phrases for giving examples (e.g. giving more and more examples of things like
“abstract nouns” until their partner guesses what is being described)
You can also obviously put the AWL vocabulary into example sentences used during
the presentation and written practice stages of lessons on such typical academic
phrases.
Related posts:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
Review ~ Instant Academic Skills
Playing With Our Word Bag
Review ~ Delta Academic Objectives: Reading Skills
Review ~ Cambridge Academic English: Upper Intermediate
Current Developments in English for Academic, Specific and Occupational Purpos
The Academic Word List section on EnglishVocabularyExercises.com