WordieWhat Is the Academic Word List?
Academic Word List (AWL): A list of 570 word families, compiled by Averil Coxhead (2000), that occur frequently across academic texts in many subjects but are not among the most common general English words.
Also known as: AWL, Coxhead's Academic Word List
The Academic Word List (AWL) is a list of 570 word families that appear again and again in university-level texts regardless of subject. Words like analyze, concept, significant, framework and hypothesis show up in economics papers, biology textbooks and law reviews alike. Averil Coxhead published the list in 2000, and it remains one of the most widely used vocabulary lists in English for academic purposes.
How the AWL was built
Coxhead assembled a corpus of about 3.5 million words of academic writing from four broad areas (arts, commerce, law and science) across 28 subject areas. She then excluded the 2,000 most common general English word families from West's General Service List, since learners should already know them, and selected the families that met three criteria:
- Range: occurring in all four areas and in at least 15 of the 28 subjects.
- Frequency: appearing at least 100 times in the corpus.
- Spread: used reasonably evenly, not concentrated in one field.
The result covered about 10 percent of the running words in the academic corpus, but only about 1.4 percent of a similar-sized fiction corpus. That contrast is the point: these are words that belong to academic register.
Sublists and examples
The AWL is divided into 10 sublists, from most to least frequent. Sublists 1 to 9 hold 60 families each; sublist 10 holds 30.
| Sublist | Example headwords |
|---|---|
| 1 (most frequent) | analyze, approach, assess, concept, data, define, establish, factor, identify, indicate, method, significant, source, theory |
| 2 | achieve, acquire, affect, appropriate, category, conclude, consequent, construct, distinct, element, evaluate, impact, perceive, positive |
| 3 | alternative, coordinate, core, emphasis, framework, hypothesis, justify, maximize, negate, outcome, promote, rely, sequence, technique |
| 10 (least frequent) | adjacent, albeit, colleague, compile, convince, encounter, forthcoming, integrity, intrinsic, notwithstanding, ongoing, straightforward, undergo, whereby |
Each headword stands for a whole family. The family analyze includes analysis, analyses, analyst, analytic, analytical and analytically.
Why the AWL matters for learners
Academic reading demands high lexical coverage. The 2,000 most common families plus the AWL together cover a large majority of the words in typical academic texts, so for a student who already knows general English, the AWL is one of the most efficient next steps. It is especially useful for IELTS, TOEFL and university entrance, where writing tasks reward a clear academic style.
The AWL also helps writing. Many AWL words are formal alternatives to everyday words: obtain for get, require for need, sufficient for enough, demonstrate for show.
Limitations and criticisms
- Meaning varies by field. Hyland and Tse (2007) showed that many AWL words are used differently across disciplines: volume in chemistry is not volume in publishing.
- It depends on an old base list. The GSL dates from 1953, so some common modern words were excluded or included oddly.
- Word families are generous. Knowing proceed does not guarantee knowing procedure.
- Alternatives exist. Gardner and Davies (2014) built the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) of 3,000 lemmas from the Corpus of Contemporary American English, without excluding general high-frequency words.
How to study the AWL
- Check your general base first. The AWL assumes you know the most common 2,000 families. The vocabulary size estimator gives a rough picture.
- Work through sublists in order, perhaps one sublist every two weeks, learning the headword and its key family members.
- Meet the words in real academic text. Read articles in your field and notice AWL words with their collocations: conduct an analysis, play a significant role. Saving them with Wordie means they get highlighted the next time they appear in an article you read.
- Use them in writing. Rewrite a paragraph, replacing informal words with accurate AWL alternatives.
Our Academic Word List guide has a full study plan and practice ideas.
Sources: Coxhead, A. (2000), A new academic word list, TESOL Quarterly; Hyland, K. & Tse, P. (2007), Is there an academic vocabulary?, TESOL Quarterly; Gardner, D. & Davies, M. (2014), A new academic vocabulary list, Applied Linguistics.
Frequently asked questions
How many words are in the Academic Word List?
570 word families, divided into 10 sublists by frequency. Sublists 1 to 9 contain 60 families each and sublist 10 contains 30. Counting all family members, that is roughly 3,000 individual word forms.
What percentage of academic text does the AWL cover?
Coxhead (2000) found that AWL words made up about 10 percent of the running words in her academic corpus, compared with only about 1.4 percent of a fiction corpus of similar size.
Is the Academic Word List still useful?
Yes, especially for IELTS, TOEFL and university preparation, though it has known limitations. Newer lists such as the Academic Vocabulary List (Gardner and Davies, 2014) address some of them.
What are examples of words on the Academic Word List?
Sublist 1 includes analyze, approach, assess, concept, data, define, establish, factor, identify, indicate, interpret, method, significant, source and theory.
Related terms
High-Frequency Words
The most common words of a language, usually defined as the first 2,000 to 3,000 word families, which together make up the large majority of the words in everyday speech and writing.
Word Family
A base word together with its inflected forms and its common derived forms, treated as one unit when counting vocabulary, for example develop, develops, developed, developing, development and undeveloped.
Lexical Coverage
The percentage of the running words (tokens) in a text that a particular reader knows. At 98 percent coverage, about one word in fifty is unfamiliar.
Register
The variety of language a speaker chooses for a particular situation, audience and purpose, especially its level of formality, as in kids (informal), children (neutral) and offspring (formal or technical).
Vocabulary Size
The number of words a person knows, usually measured in word families or lemmas and usually referring to receptive knowledge, meaning words recognized when reading or listening.
Articles about Academic Word List (AWL)
Academic Vocabulary for Non-Native Researchers: Read Papers Faster and Write With Confidence
A practical academic vocabulary system for non-native researchers: general academic words, hedging language, discipline terms and a weekly paper-reading plan.
Teaching Vocabulary in ESL: A Research-Based Guide for Teachers, With Lesson Ideas
How ESL teachers can teach vocabulary using research: choose words by frequency, recycle them, assign extensive reading, use retrieval practice, and pick tools.
How to Learn 10 Words a Day: A Realistic System, Schedule and Workload Math
How to learn 10 words a day and keep them: a 25-minute daily system, review schedule tables, workload math, and what 10 words a day adds up to in a year.
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