A New Academic Word List

TLDR

The article presents a new academic word list derived from a 3.5‑million‑word corpus of academic text, focusing on words beyond the most frequent 2,000 English words. The list aims to guide university learners by identifying the most valuable academic words and to serve as a foundation for further research on academic vocabulary. The AWL’s 570 word families cover about 10 % of academic text tokens yet only 1.4 % of fiction tokens, confirming its focus on academic vocabulary.

Abstract

This article describes the development and evaluation of a new academic word list (Coxhead, 1998), which was compiled from a corpus of 3.5 million running words of written academic text by examining the range and frequency of words outside the first 2,000 most frequently occurring words of English, as described by West (1953). The AWL contains 570 word families that account for approximately 10.0% of the total words (tokens) in academic texts but only 1.4% of the total words in a fiction collection of the same size. This difference in coverage provides evidence that the list contains predominantly academic words. By highlighting the words that university students meet in a wide range of academic texts, the AWL shows learners with academic goals which words are most worth studying. The list also provides a useful basis for further research into the nature of academic vocabulary.