Academic Word List

An Introduction to

the Academic Word

List

Averil Coxhead, Massey University, New Zealand The Academic Word List (AWL) is a list

of 570 word families that are commonly found in academic texts. This list was selected by examining a large corpus

(or collection) of written academic

texts and selecting the

words that occurred:

1In texts from all four academic faculty sections: Arts, Commerce,

Law and Science.

2Over 100 times in the corpus overall. 3At least 10 times in each

academic faculty section.

4Outside the 2000 most frequent

words on Michael West’s General

Service List (GSL). The GSL

includes everyday words such as I,

house and do.

These principles ensured that only words that occurred reasonably frequently in a variety of study areas were selected.

The AWL targets vocabulary that occurs most often in written academic texts. These words also occur in newspapers but not as often as they do in textbooks. The AWL words appear even less in fiction. If your focus is learning academic vocabulary, you need to make sure you read academic textbooks so that you encounter these words in context.

The AWL is organized into Word

Families. Word families are made up of the ‘parent word’

and ‘f amily members’. Take for example the word maximise. Its family members include inflections of the verb such as maximised,maximises and maximising as well as the noun maximum. The word family also includes the British spelling of the noun maximisation, as well as maximization, the US spelling.

to recognise other family members such as maximised when you encounter them

in your reading. These words are

closely related and the meaning is

likely to be the same or similar. When you are looking for words in this dictionary, think about other word

family members too.

Finally, there are some academic

words that do not have a word family. These words occur on their own and

do not have any inflections.

Examples include nonetheless, so-

called and behalf.

The AWL is intended as a reference for students who are studying or preparing to study at a tertiary level in English. As a university lecturer,

I was aware of the difficulties that students had in mastering the vocabulary necessary for written

assignments. The AWL does not include

‘content’ vocabulary for particular subjects which students obviously need to learn as well. The AWL focuses instead on the non-subject-specific vocabulary that students of any discipline will need to master in order to produce coherently-structured written assignments.

The AWL covers up to 10% of the vocabulary covered in written academic texts. This means that, on average, one word in 10 in an academic textbook is

in the AWL. Look at the following

extract from an academic text:

EUROPEAN ENVIRonMENTAL POLICY

Environmental issues are truly

global. Many of the problems,

like the releasing of CFCs into

the atmosphere, have global

effects and require global action.

Some problems link to the

exploitation of global commons –

the resources shared by the

international community such

as ocean beds and the atmosphere.

Sometimes small local problems,

such as poisonous gases leaking

from landfills and water pollution,

are multiplied so many times in

any local contexts that they

become major world hazards.

The

environment is a global concern

requiring global policies.

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