Introduction
When you find a word you do not know, it is important to decide how much it is necessary
to know about the word. You may need some or all of the following. A good dictionary will
help.

pronunciation - how to pronounce the word

spelling - how to spell the word

grammatical patterns - whether the word is a noun, verb, adjective etc and which
patterns it occurs in

collocations - which other words it typically occurs with - particularly useful is
Oxford collocations dictionary for students of English (2002) and Hill & Lewis
(Eds.) (1997)

frequency - how common the word is

register - which type of language the word is used in, letters or reports, spoken or
written biology or business etc?

meaning - what the word means

formation - how the word is made up e.g. What other words or affixes are part of the
word? Which other words is it related to?

connotations - what other meanings a word has, as well as its main meaning e.g. Is it
a positive or negative word?
In order to improve your vocabulary in English, you need:

a good general vocabulary, for example:
o

a good general EAP vocabulary, for example:
o

General Service List
Academic Word List
specific vocabulary for use in your academic area, for example:
o
geography
o
tourism
o
business
o
science & technology
o
music
o
environmental science

knowledge of some less-frequent words

vocabulary building skills, for example:

o
use of prefixes, suffixes and roots to produce words;
o
knowledge of construction of compound nouns and adjectives;
o
ability to change word forms (nouns to verbs etc),
o
information about families (synonyms, antonyms, hyponyms etc)
vocabulary learning techniques, for example:
o
dictionary use
o
ways of dealing with meaning
o
recording of new words
o
remembering new words
o
working out meaning of unknown words.
Selecting vocabulary to learn
In 1953 Michael West (West, 1953) published his well-known General Service List of English
words. This was a list of the 2000 most useful word families of English. Although the list has
been criticised for many reasons, research into academic texts by Averil Coxhead (Coxhead,
2000) has shown that the General Service List (GSL) covers almost 80% of the academic texts
she studied. It would seem essential for any EAP student to know these word families.
Coxhead studied over 3.5 million words of academic text from 28 subject-areas and identified
another 570 word families that were commonly used in academic texts from all subjects. Her
words cover 10% of the academic texts she studied. She called these words the Academic Word
List (AWL). It would also seem necessary for any EAP student to know these words also.
Therefore the General Service List plus the Academic Word List cover nearly 90% of academic
texts. As well as these general academic words, EAP students would also need to know the
specific words related to their subjects - around 5% of the words in an academic text (Nation,
2001, p. 12) and some of the less frequent words used in English - again about 5%.
How many words do you know?
General Service List Academic Word List Specific Subjects Less Frequent
Learning vocabulary
Vocabulary learning techniques, for example:




dictionary use
ways of dealing with meaning
recording and remembering new words
working out meaning of unknown words