The Academic Word List (AWL) is a set of 570 English word families, compiled by Averil Coxhead, that appear constantly across academic writing. Together they cover about 10% of the words in any academic text, which makes them some of the highest-value vocabulary to learn if you’re heading into university, IELTS, or TOEFL.
What is the Academic Word List?
The AWL is a list of 570 word families that show up with unusual frequency across a wide range of academic subjects, from biology to law to economics. It was put together in 2000 by Averil Coxhead, then at Victoria University of Wellington, who analyzed a huge collection of academic texts to find the words that appeared often and everywhere, not just in one field.
That “everywhere” part is the key. Coxhead didn’t pick words that were common in a single subject; she looked for words that recurred across many disciplines. A word like “analyze” earns its place because it’s just as useful in a history essay as in a chemistry report. The result is a compact, general-purpose academic vocabulary that pays off no matter what you end up studying.
She also didn’t choose words by feel. Each one had to clear three bars: it had to appear across a wide range of subjects, occur frequently overall, and be spread evenly rather than clustered in a handful of texts. That’s why the list holds up so well. Every word on it earned its place by showing up broadly and often, not because it happened to sound academic.
The AWL also deliberately leaves out the most common everyday words. Those are covered separately, and we’ll come back to how the two lists fit together. The AWL is the layer of vocabulary that sits between “everyday English” and the technical jargon of any specific field.
Why the AWL is worth your time
Vocabulary study can feel bottomless, so the appeal of the AWL is simple: it’s a small, finite target with an outsized payoff. Learn 570 word families and you’ve covered roughly one in every ten words in academic writing. No other list of that size gives you anywhere near that return in an academic setting.
For anyone taking IELTS or TOEFL, the value is even sharper. These exams are built on academic-style reading, listening, and writing, so AWL words are exactly the ones you’ll meet in the passages and the ones examiners reward you for using accurately in essays. Knowing them shifts you from understanding the gist to catching the precise meaning, which is the difference between a middling and a strong score. If you’re targeting a specific band, our guide to reaching IELTS Band 7 on vocabulary leans heavily on this same academic layer.
It’s worth being realistic about what 10% means, though. Covering one word in ten doesn’t make a dense journal article suddenly easy; the other 90% still has to be there, and much of academic difficulty lives in the ideas, not just the words. What the AWL removes is a specific, recurring source of friction: those mid-level words that aren’t everyday but aren’t technical either, the ones that quietly slow you down when you only half-know them. Clear that layer and you read academic text faster and stumble less, which frees up attention for the actual argument.
Even beyond exams, the AWL is the vocabulary of clear, credible writing. Words like “establish,” “consequently,” and “significant” are the connective tissue of arguments. Master them and your own writing starts to sound more precise and more academic, without reaching for a thesaurus.
How the list is organized: 10 sublists
The AWL isn’t a random pile of 570 words. It’s sorted into ten sublists by frequency, and that structure tells you exactly where to start. Sublist 1 holds the most frequent families; sublist 10 the least. Each sublist contains 60 word families, except the last, which has 30.
| Sublist | Word families | What it means for you |
|---|---|---|
| Sublist 1 | 60 (most frequent) | Learn these first; highest payoff |
| Sublists 2–5 | 60 each | Core academic vocabulary |
| Sublists 6–9 | 60 each | Rounds out strong academic reading |
| Sublist 10 | 30 (least frequent) | The finishing touches |
The practical takeaway is that you should work in order. Sublist 1 alone, just 60 families, includes workhorse words like analyze, concept, data, area, and factor that you’ll meet on almost every page of academic text. Front-loading the most frequent sublists means your effort pays off fastest.
Word families, not just words
One detail makes the AWL far more efficient than it looks. It counts word families, not individual words. A single family is the base word plus all its grammatical relatives, and learning one unlocks the rest almost for free.
Take the family built on “analyze”:
- analyze (verb)
- analysis (noun)
- analytical (adjective)
- analytically (adverb)
- analyst (person noun)
Once you truly know “analyze,” you barely have to learn the others; you mostly need to recognize the pattern. This is why the 570 families expand to around 3,000 actual words. When you study an AWL word, don’t stop at one form. Say the noun, the verb, and the adjective together, because exams and real writing will use whichever one fits the sentence.
Where the AWL fits with everything else
The AWL makes the most sense when you see it as one layer in a stack. English vocabulary for reading breaks down roughly like this, and knowing where you are tells you what to study next.
| Layer | Roughly covers | Example words |
|---|---|---|
| Most common ~2,000 words | ~80% of general text | the, make, people, important |
| Academic Word List (570 families) | ~10% of academic text | analyze, factor, concept, derive |
| Technical / subject vocabulary | The specialized rest | photosynthesis, tort, inflation |
The order is what matters. If you’re still shaky on the common 2,000 words, that’s the place to build first, because they’re the bulk of everything you read. Once those feel automatic, the AWL is the single most efficient next step for academic English. Only after that does it pay to drill the technical vocabulary of your specific field. We break down these tiers and the numbers behind them in how many words you need to be fluent.
How to actually learn the AWL
The worst way to tackle the AWL is to print all 570 words and try to cram them. A raw list with definitions goes in one ear and out the other, because you’re memorizing labels with no meaning attached. A few habits work far better.
- Work in frequency order. Start with sublist 1 and move down. The early sublists give you the most coverage per word.
- Learn the whole family. For each entry, learn the noun, verb, and adjective together, rather than one form in isolation.
- Meet each word in context. See or read the word in a real sentence so you learn how it behaves, not only its definition. Writing a short paragraph that forces in a few AWL words cements them fast.
- Space your reviews. A fixed set of 570 families is exactly the kind of target spaced repetition is built for. Reviewing each word just before you’d forget it is what moves it into long-term memory, an approach we explain in spaced repetition.
- Say them out loud. Many AWL words are ones you’ll only ever have read, so their pronunciation is shaky. If you’ll face a speaking test, hearing and saying each word matters as much as reading it.
One more thing separates people who “know” AWL words from people who can actually use them: collocations, the words that habitually travel with each one. You don’t just “do” research, you “conduct” it; a factor is “significant” or “contributing”; a conclusion is “drawn.” When you learn an AWL word, grab the one or two words it usually pairs with, because that’s what makes it sound natural in writing rather than merely correct. Reading academic texts is the easiest way to soak up these pairings without memorizing them.
Common AWL words you’ll use constantly
To make the list concrete, here are a handful of sublist-1 families you’ll run into almost immediately in academic English, with a plain meaning and how they tend to show up.
| Word | Meaning | Typical use |
|---|---|---|
| analyze | examine in detail | ”analyze the data” |
| concept | an abstract idea | ”the concept of fairness” |
| establish | set up or prove | ”establish a link between” |
| factor | something that influences | ”a key factor in the result” |
| significant | important or sizable | ”a significant increase” |
| interpret | explain the meaning of | ”interpret the findings” |
| derive | obtain or come from | ”derived from Latin” |
| approach | a way of doing something | ”a new approach to the problem” |
Notice how each word carries a slightly more precise, formal weight than its everyday cousin. “Significant” isn’t quite “big,” and “establish” promises more than “make.” That precision is exactly what academic reading demands and what academic writing rewards.
Master the set with Vocaby
The AWL is a rare thing in vocabulary study: a defined, finite, high-value target. That’s precisely the situation spaced repetition handles best, and it’s what Vocaby is built for. Every one of its 29,000+ words carries the pronunciation (IPA) and real audio, so you can nail the sound of academic words you’ve only ever read, and the FSRS spaced-repetition system schedules each word to come back right before you’d forget it, which is how you march through a fixed set like the AWL without cramming or backsliding.
Because the words are organized into curated decks, you can focus your study on the academic vocabulary you actually need rather than wandering the whole library, and swiping through a handful of cards a day keeps the habit light. Learn each word as a family, meet it in an example sentence, and let spaced review do the remembering for you.
The AWL rewards patience more than intensity. Take it a sublist at a time, learn each word’s family and its sound, and review on a schedule. Do that, and 570 families turns from a wall of vocabulary into the single biggest upgrade you can make to your academic English.
Download Vocaby on the App Store to learn the academic vocabulary that matters, with the audio and spaced review that make it stick.
Frequently asked questions
- How many words are in the Academic Word List?
- The AWL contains 570 word families. Because each family includes all the related forms of a word, the full count comes to roughly 3,000 individual words once you add every noun, verb, adjective, and adverb form. The families are split into ten sublists, ordered from most to least frequent, so you can learn the highest-value words first.
- Is it worth memorizing the Academic Word List?
- For academic English, yes, it's one of the highest-return things you can study. Those 570 families cover about 10% of the words in any academic text, so mastering them noticeably improves how much you understand in reading and how precise you sound in writing. The catch is method: learn them in context and use them, rather than trying to cram a raw list of definitions.
- What's the difference between the AWL and the General Service List?
- The General Service List is roughly the 2,000 most common English words, and it covers around 80% of everyday text. The AWL is the layer above it: the words that aren't in that common 2,000 but show up constantly in academic writing specifically. The sensible order is to be solid on the common 2,000 first, then use the AWL to unlock academic reading and writing.
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