Academic Word List (AWL):
570 Word Families

By Vocabulary Test Editorial Team · Updated September 11, 2026

What Is the Academic Word List?

The Academic Word List was compiled by Dr Averil Coxhead of Victoria University of Wellington and published in 2000. Coxhead analysed a 3.5-million-word corpus of written academic English spanning 28 subject areas across four broad disciplines: arts, commerce, law, and science. Her goal was to identify vocabulary that appears frequently across all academic disciplines — not the specialist terminology of individual fields, and not the common everyday words that everyone already knows.

The result is 570 word families organised into 10 sublists by frequency. Each family consists of a head word (e.g. "analyse") plus its morphological derivatives (analysis, analytical, analytically, analyst). Learning one head word in the AWL gives you access to an entire family of related forms.

Two conditions had to be met for a word family to be included in the AWL: the head word had to appear in at least 15 of the 28 subject areas (breadth condition), and with a minimum frequency across the corpus (frequency condition). This ensures that AWL words are genuinely cross-disciplinary — they appear in biology textbooks, economics papers, history journals, and legal documents alike.

How Much Academic Text Does the AWL Cover?

The often-quoted figure of about 10% coverage refers to running words in Coxhead's academic corpus. It describes a collection of texts, not a guaranteed proportion of every textbook or exam. A word family's repeated appearances count towards this coverage.

Knowing a list does not by itself establish reading proficiency. Technical vocabulary, the subject you study, grammar and the meanings used in context also matter. Read the original AWL study (Coxhead, 2000) for the research behind the list.

The AWL's 10 Sublists

The AWL is divided into 10 sublists by frequency. Sublist 1 contains the 60 most frequent word families in the corpus; Sublist 10 contains the 30 least frequent. The first six sublists contain 360 families. All ten together contain 570: nine groups of 60 and a final group of 30.

Follow the links to RMIT University's complete word-family lists and practice activities. The table shows how the families add up; examples from Sublist 1 follow below.

Sublist 1: the first 60 headwords

analyse, approach, area, assess, assume, authority, available, benefit, concept, consist, constitute, context, contract, create, data, define, derive, distribute, economy, environment, establish, estimate, evident, export, factor, finance, formula, function, identify, income, indicate, individual, interpret, involve, issue, labour, legal, legislate, major, method, occur, percent, period, policy, principle, proceed, process, require, research, respond, role, section, sector, significant, similar, source, specific, structure, theory, vary.

Sample AWL Words: Sublist 1 in Depth

Sublist 1 is the highest priority. Below are eight Sublist 1 words with their definitions and usage notes — the kind of depth that produces durable learning, not just passive recognition.

Word Families: Learning Related Forms

The AWL is organised by word families rather than individual words. This is not a technicality — it fundamentally changes how you should study. The headword "analyse" belongs to a cluster of related forms with overlapping meanings. Each form still needs practice in its own grammatical context:

When studying AWL words, always learn the full word family. Use a word web: put the head word in the centre, add all family members around it, and write one example sentence for each. This produces active knowledge (the ability to use words in writing and speaking) rather than passive recognition alone.

AWL and Tier 2 Vocabulary

The AWL overlaps significantly with what vocabulary researchers Isabel Beck, Margaret McKeown, and Linda Kucan call Tier 2 vocabulary — words that are: high-frequency in mature language use; low-frequency in everyday conversation; and cross-disciplinary rather than domain-specific. Examples: "apparent," "significant," "contrary," "establish," "maintain."

Tier 2 words are contrasted with Tier 1 (basic everyday words: house, run, happy) and Tier 3 (domain-specific technical terms: mitosis, jurisprudence, depreciation). Tier 2 words are the most productive study target because they appear across reading and listening contexts — every academic subject, every quality newspaper, every formal correspondence. The AWL is effectively a curated Tier 2 list calibrated for academic English specifically.

For SAT vocabulary study, the AWL is directly relevant to the SAT's focus on "words in context" in academic passages — see the SAT & GRE Vocabulary guide for how Tier 2 vocabulary maps to the current SAT test format.

AWL and Exams: IELTS, TOEFL, SAT, GRE

Use the AWL as one source of vocabulary practice alongside the tasks and materials for your exam. It is not an official exam syllabus, a band-score checklist, or a guarantee that particular words will appear.

• IELTS vocabulary practice: use unfamiliar families in reading summaries and your own example sentences.
• TOEFL vocabulary practice: practise recognising meanings in context.
• SAT vocabulary and GRE vocabulary: combine general academic vocabulary with practice appropriate to your test.

AWL for University Study

University reading requires not just knowing AWL words but using them correctly in written work. Academic writing is assessed partly on vocabulary range and precision — and AWL words are the vocabulary of precision in academic writing. Understanding the difference between "significant" and "major," or between "indicate" and "prove," is the difference between a student who sounds academic and one who merely recites information.

AWL in different disciplines

The AWL's cross-disciplinary design means the same words appear in every field, but their collocations and usage patterns vary by discipline:

• Science: "data indicate," "results suggest," "hypothesis was tested," "the sample consists of"
• Social science: "the study found," "analysis reveals," "participants were drawn from," "factors contribute to"
• Humanities: "the text implies," "the author argues," "the period is characterised by," "the approach is evident in"
• Law: "the statute provides," "the court held that," "the principle is established," "liability may arise"

How to Study the AWL Effectively

1. Work through sublists in order

Start by checking which of the 60 Sublist 1 families you already know. Choose a manageable set of unfamiliar words, practise them in context, and return to them later. Work through subsequent sublists while also adding vocabulary you meet in your own course materials.

2. Learn word families, not just head words

For each AWL entry, identify all the word family members (noun, verb, adjective, adverb) and write an example sentence for each form. This is how you develop the grammatical flexibility that IELTS and TOEFL Writing tasks require — knowing when to use "analysis" versus "analytical" versus "analyse" in the same argument.

3. Learn collocations alongside definitions

Academic vocabulary has strongly patterned collocations that are different from everyday collocations. Common combinations include "conduct research," "conduct a survey," and "conduct an experiment." "Significant" can modify "difference," "increase," "proportion," "effect," or "issue"; choose the combination that expresses your intended meaning. An Oxford Collocations Dictionary or academic corpus tool (like the Corpus of Contemporary American English) will help you learn these patterns.

4. Use the AWL in your own writing immediately

Reading exposure alone produces slow AWL acquisition. Using the words in your own writing is one way to practise active recall. Set yourself the task of writing a 200-word academic paragraph on any topic and deliberately incorporating five AWL words from Sublist 1. This forces you to engage with the words' grammatical behaviour and collocational patterns rather than just their definitions.

5. Read academic text regularly

Each AWL word you encounter in authentic academic reading deepens your knowledge of it — its typical context, its most common collocates, its register. Reading one academic article per week, in any discipline, provides hundreds of AWL encounters per session. OpenStax textbooks, PubMed abstracts, and JSTOR accessible articles are all appropriate sources at IELTS/TOEFL preparation level.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Academic Word List (AWL)?

The AWL is a set of 570 word families developed by Averil Coxhead for academic English. It excludes families in the General Service List and is organised into 10 sublists.

How much of academic text does the AWL cover?

The AWL accounted for about 10% of running words in Coxhead's academic corpus. Coverage varies with the text and subject; knowing the list does not guarantee comprehension or a particular exam score.

Is the AWL still current and relevant?

The AWL is still available as a study resource, including through RMIT University. Gardner and Davies offer a separate Academic Vocabulary List (AVL) of 3,000 lemmas based on a different corpus. Lemmas and word families are different counting units; the two lists are not interchangeable.

Should I learn all 570 AWL words?

Use the sublists to prioritise unfamiliar families and words relevant to your course. Sublists 1–6 contain 360 families. Knowing one family member does not mean you can already use every related form; practise meaning, grammar and collocations in context.

How is the AWL different from general English vocabulary lists?

General English word lists (like the General Service List) are based on frequency in all English usage — newspapers, fiction, everyday conversation, as well as academic writing. The AWL is specifically calibrated to academic writing, excluding both common everyday words (already in the GSL) and subject-specific technical terms. This makes it uniquely useful for academic preparation: it is precisely the vocabulary that academic texts assume you know beyond the basics.

Sources and complete lists

• Coxhead (2000), A New Academic Word List — original research.
• RMIT University: Academic word list tool — complete lists and practice activities.
• Gardner and Davies: Academic Vocabulary List — a separate list of 3,000 lemmas.

Related Reading

• IELTS Vocabulary Guide — vocabulary study for academic reading and writing
• TOEFL Vocabulary Guide — vocabulary practice for academic tasks
• SAT & GRE Vocabulary Guide — how Tier 2 / AWL vocabulary maps to the SAT and GRE verbal sections
• GRE Vocabulary Guide — the AWL as a foundation for GRE verbal preparation
• CEFR Vocabulary Levels Guide — where AWL mastery fits on the A1–C2 scale
• Most Common English Words — the high-frequency core that the AWL builds on top of
• How to Improve Your Vocabulary — 12 science-backed methods for academic vocabulary acquisition
• English Vocabulary Test — free adaptive vocabulary assessment