The New Academic Word List: an important tool for your study of EAP
General academic vocabulary is the vocabulary that is necessary for reading any kind of academic writing. There are many specialty words that are only used in academic writing.
Dr. Charles Brown has developed New Academic Word List (NAWL), a new version of the Academic Word List. It’s available in various forms at
http://www.newgeneralservicelist.org/nawl-new-academic-word-list/
On that web page there are also links for other formats of NAWL, in particular for making study materials for flashcard apps like Quizlet and Memrise (which contains Japanese definitions, if you’re Japanese).
Other word lists, better look there too
https://www.newgeneralservicelist.org
OLDER:
The Original Academic Word List: an important tool for your study of EAP
General academic vocabulary is the vocabulary that is necessary for reading any kind of academic writing. There are many specialty words that are only used in academic writing.
One useful resource for learning general academic vocabulary is the Academic Word List (AWL), originally conceived and compiled by a researcher named Averil Coxhead. The AWL contains the essential words used in academic writing. It’s organized as 570 word families, which are divided into 10 sublists. The first sublist contains the most frequent words and those in the last sublist are the least frequent.
For tests like the TOEFL, you need to know about 2,000 of the most common words of English. You should also have a grasp of the meaning and usage of the set of words referred to as “general academic vocabulary.” General academic vocabulary is not the highly specialized or technical words that you use in writing about your narrow research area. These general academic words are used for academic writing about any topic or a field of study.
General academic vocabulary is the vocabulary that is necessary for reading any kind of academic writing: verbs like “evolve” or “extrapolate,” nouns like “inference” or “hierarchy,” adjectives like “hypothetical” or “verifiable”.
There are a great number of sites with information or exercises related to the Academic Word List.
If you are seriously short of vocabulary in English, please consider using some Apps like Flash Cards Deluxe along with Quizlet. Quizlet lets you make sets of vocabulary pairs, and Flash Cards Deluxe allows you to use those sets in a flash card environment. Cool!
Lawrie Hunter 