II.
Academic Word
List
Averil Coxhead from Victoria University of Wellington in
New Zealand has developed and evaluated a new Academic Word List (AWL)[1]. He compiled the Academic Word List from a body
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).
Coxhead found the Academic Word List contains 570 word
families that account for approximately 10.0% of the total words in academic
texts but only 1.4% of the total words in a fiction collection of the same
size. By highlighting the words that
university students meet in a wide range of academic texts, the Academic Word
List shows learners with academic goals as well as their instructors which
words are most worth studying.
Teachers
may find the Academic World List located in the Vocabulary Building Section of
Other Resources, useful; especially if their students are working towards
further academic study, to build targeted vocabulary building into their
classes.