The Academic Word List: A Foundational Resource for Academic English

The Academic Word List (AWL), developed by Averil Coxhead at Victoria University of Wellington, is a crucial tool for students, educators, and researchers seeking to enhance their proficiency in academic English. The AWL provides a structured vocabulary framework that bridges general English and specialized disciplinary language, making it a fundamental resource in higher education and English for Academic Purposes (EAP) instruction.

Composition and Structure of the Academic Word List

The AWL consists of 570 word families that appear frequently in academic texts but are not included in the most common 2,000 words of English. These words were identified through a comprehensive corpus-based analysis of 3.5 million words from academic texts across four broad disciplinary categories: Arts, Commerce, Law, and Science. The goal of the AWL is to provide learners with a lexicon that is applicable across disciplines, supporting both comprehension and production of academic discourse.

To facilitate learning and usage, the AWL is organized into 10 sublists ranked by frequency. The first sublist contains the most commonly occurring words in academic writing (e.g., analyze, concept, section), while the final sublist includes less frequent but still significant terms (e.g., adjacent, forthcoming, persistent). By structuring the list in this way, Coxhead’s work provides learners with a gradual and systematic approach to acquiring academic vocabulary.

Significance and Pedagogical Applications

The AWL has had a profound impact on academic writing, reading comprehension, and language instruction. For non-native English speakers, mastery of AWL vocabulary can significantly enhance their ability to engage with complex academic texts and articulate their ideas more precisely in written assignments. Additionally, for native English-speaking students, a strong command of AWL vocabulary contributes to the clarity and formality of academic writing.

The AWL is widely used in EAP programs, where it serves as a foundation for vocabulary instruction. It also informs curriculum development, assessment design, and self-directed learning strategies. For instance, learners preparing for high-stakes language proficiency exams such as IELTS and TOEFL benefit from explicit instruction in AWL vocabulary, as these words frequently appear in reading and writing sections of such assessments.

Potential Limitations

In their 2020 study, “Word lists and the role of academic vocabulary use in high stakes speaking assessments,” Smith, Kyle, and Crossley examined the effectiveness of various academic vocabulary lists, including the Academic Word List (AWL), in predicting performance on TOEFL speaking tasks. Their findings indicated only weak associations between the use of words from these lists and speaking scores, suggesting that the AWL and similar lists may not fully capture the lexical demands of academic speaking assessments. The authors recommend developing specialized vocabulary lists tailored to the specific requirements of academic speaking contexts.

https://www.wgtn.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist

Coxhead, A. (2000). A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34(2), 213–238. https://doi.org/10.2307/3587951