On this page
- What Is the Academic Word List?
- How Much Academic Text Does the AWL Cover?
- The AWL's 10 Sublists
- Sample AWL Words by Sublist
- Word Families: Why You Learn 4 Words for the Price of 1
- AWL and Tier 2 Vocabulary
- AWL and Exams: IELTS, TOEFL, SAT
- AWL for University Study
- How to Study the AWL Effectively
- Frequently Asked Questions
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.
The AWL does not include the most frequent 2,000 word families in English (the General Service List). Those are assumed to be known. The AWL starts where everyday vocabulary ends.
How Much Academic Text Does the AWL Cover?
Despite containing only 570 word families, the AWL covers approximately 10% of all words in academic text. This is a remarkable concentration of utility for a relatively small list. To put it in perspective:
| Vocabulary resource | Word families | Coverage of academic text |
|---|---|---|
| General Service List (most frequent 2,000) | 2,000 | ~80% |
| Academic Word List (AWL) | 570 | ~10% |
| GSL + AWL combined | ~2,570 | ~90% |
| Next 3,000 most frequent words | 3,000 | ~4–5% |
| Full coverage (95%+ of academic text) | ~8,000–9,000 | 95%+ |
The 90% coverage provided by the GSL and AWL together means that a learner who knows these ~2,570 word families encounters one unknown word every 10 words in academic text — workable, but requiring significant inferential effort. Reaching the 95–98% coverage needed for comfortable academic reading requires an additional 6,000+ word families beyond the AWL.
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 — 390 word families — account for the vast majority of AWL encounters in academic text and should be mastered before the later sublists.
| Sublist | Families | Priority | Example head words |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 60 | Highest — master first | 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 |
| 2 | 60 | High | achieve, acquire, administrate, affect, appropriate, aspect, assist, category, chapter, commission, community, complex, compute, conclude, conduct, consequent, construct, consume, credit, culture, design, distinct, element, equate, evaluate, feature, final, focus, impact, injure, institute, invest, item, journal, maintain, normal, obtain, participate, perceive, positive, potential, previous, primary, purchase, range, region, regulate, relevant, reside, resource, restrict, secure, seek, select, site, strategy, survey, text, tradition, transfer |
| 3 | 60 | High | alternative, circumstance, comment, compensate, component, consent, considerable, constant, constrain, contribute, convene, coordinate, core, corporate, correspond, criteria, deduce, demonstrate, document, dominate, emphasis, ensure, exclude, framework, fund, illustrate, immigrate, imply, initial, instance, interact, justify, layer, link, locate, maximise, minor, negate, outcome, partner, philosophy, physical, proportion, publish, react, register, rely, remove, scheme, sequence, sex, shift, specify, sufficient, task, technical, technique, technology, valid, volume |
| 4 | 60 | Medium-high | access, adequate, annual, apparent, approximate, attitude, attribute, civil, code, commit, communicate, concentrate, confer, contrast, cycle, debate, despite, dimension, domestic, emerge, error, ethnic, goal, grant, hence, hypothesis, implement, implicate, impose, integrate, internal, investigate, job, label, mechanism, obvious, occupy, option, output, overall, parallel, parameter, phase, predict, principal, prior, professional, project, promote, regime, resolve, retain, series, statistic, status, stress, subsequent, sum, summarise, undertake |
| 5 | 60 | Medium | academy, adjust, alter, amend, aware, capacity, challenge, clause, compound, conflict, consult, contact, decline, discrete, draft, enable, energy, enforce, entity, equivalent, evolve, expand, expose, external, facilitate, fundamental, generate, generation, image, liberal, licence, logic, marginal, medical, mental, modify, monitor, network, obvious, occupy, option, orientate, perspective, precise, prime, psychology, pursue, ratio, reject, revenue, stable, style, substitute, sustain, symbol, target, transit, trend, version, welfare |
| 6–10 | 270 | Medium-low | abstract, accurate, acknowledge, aggregate, bias, bulk, cease, cite, colleague, compile, contradict, currency, denote, detect, deviate, displace, exhibit, exploit, fluctuate, format, ideology, infer, innovation, input, integrity, invoke, levy, likewise, mediate, motive, neutral, norm, orient, overlap, passive, plus, practise, predominant, preliminary, protocol, qualitative, so-called, submit, supplement, terminate, theme, trigger, ultimate, unique, visible, voluntary… |
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: Why You Learn 4 Words for the Price of 1
The AWL is organised by word families rather than individual words. This is not a technicality — it fundamentally changes how you should study. When you learn the head word "analyse," you are not learning one word; you are learning a cluster of related forms that all derive from the same root and carry overlapping meanings:
| Form | Example | Typical context |
|---|---|---|
| analyse (verb) | "We analyse the data using regression methods." | Methodology sections |
| analysis (noun) | "The analysis reveals three key patterns." | Results and discussion sections |
| analytical (adj) | "The report takes an analytical approach." | Descriptions of method/approach |
| analytically (adv) | "The text can be read analytically or emotionally." | Comparisons of approach |
| analyst (noun) | "Market analysts predict continued growth." | News, economics, policy texts |
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
The AWL is relevant to every major academic English exam:
| Exam | AWL relevance | Priority sublists |
|---|---|---|
| IELTS Academic | Very high — AWL words appear directly in Reading passages and are expected in Writing Task 2 essays. Lexical Resource scoring rewards AWL usage. | Sublists 1–6 (all essential) |
| TOEFL iBT | Very high — TOEFL Reading passages are drawn from academic textbooks where AWL density is 8–12%. Explicit vocabulary questions often target AWL words. | Sublists 1–6 |
| SAT (current) | High — SAT Reading passages are academic non-fiction where Tier 2 / AWL vocabulary is common. "Words in context" questions often target AWL words. | Sublists 1–4 |
| GRE | Medium — GRE vocabulary extends beyond the AWL into rarer, more Latinate words. The AWL is a necessary foundation but not sufficient for high GRE Verbal scores. | Sublists 1–3 as a base; then GRE-specific word lists |
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 with Sublist 1 (60 word families) and master it before moving to Sublist 2. The frequency ordering means that Sublist 1 words will appear more often in every academic text you read — every new AWL word you encounter in reading will reinforce a word you have already studied. Do not skip to later sublists because specific words there interest you.
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. "Conduct" collocates with "research," "survey," "experiment" — not with "work" (in formal academic writing). "Significant" collocates with "difference," "increase," "proportion," "effect" — not with "issue" (which is informal register). 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. The fastest route to active AWL knowledge is using the words in your own writing. 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.
Test Your Academic Vocabulary Level
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Take the free vocabulary test →Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Academic Word List (AWL)?
The AWL is a list of 570 word families compiled by Dr Averil Coxhead (2000) from a 3.5-million-word corpus of academic texts. These words appear frequently across all academic disciplines and are rarely found in everyday English — making them the most important vocabulary for university study, IELTS, TOEFL, and academic reading.
How much of academic text does the AWL cover?
The AWL covers approximately 10% of all words in academic text. Combined with the most frequent 2,000 word families (the General Service List, which covers ~80% of academic text), knowing the AWL brings total coverage to ~90%. Comfortable academic reading requires 95–98% coverage, so the AWL is necessary but not sufficient — you also need the broader vocabulary that comes from sustained academic reading.
Is the AWL still current and relevant?
Yes. The AWL was published in 2000 and remains the most widely used academic vocabulary resource in English language teaching. Subsequent research (including Gardner and Davies' Academic Vocabulary List, 2013, which covers 3,000 word families) has confirmed that the core AWL words continue to appear at high frequencies in contemporary academic text. The original 570 families remain the standard starting point for academic vocabulary study.
Should I learn all 570 AWL words?
Yes, for academic or exam purposes — but in order. Sublists 1–6 (390 word families) are the highest priority and should be mastered for IELTS Academic, TOEFL, and university study. Sublists 7–10 are less frequent and have lower return per study hour, but they are still worth covering if you are preparing for academic writing at degree level or above.
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.
Related Reading
- IELTS Vocabulary Guide — how the AWL maps to IELTS band scores and Lexical Resource criteria
- TOEFL Vocabulary Guide — AWL usage in TOEFL Reading passages and Writing scoring
- 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 CEFR placement test