The Academic Word List

The Academic Word List (AWL) is a list of 570 word families that appear most frequently in academic texts — across all subjects, from biology to business.

• The AWL covers about 10% of the words in a typical academic text.
• Learning it gives you the biggest vocabulary improvement for the smallest effort.
• The list is divided into 10 sublists — sublist 1 contains the most frequent words.

analyse, approach, area, assess, assume, authority, available, benefit, concept, consist, context, create, data, define, derive, distribute, economy, environment, establish, estimate, evident, factor, finance, 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, significant, similar, source, specific, structure, theory, vary

1. Study one sublist at a time, starting with sublist 1.
2. Learn words in context — read a sentence, not just a translation.
3. Use our AWL Highlighter on real texts to see the words in action.