Another useful word list

One of my more popular articles discusses two useful word lists, the Academic Word List (AWL) and the Fry Word List. Recently, another academic word list, the Academic Vocabulary List (AVL), has been becoming more popular with English learners and teachers.

The authors of the Academic Vocabulary List, Dee Gardner and Mark Davies, point out that, “Academic vocabulary knowledge is recognized as an indispensable component of academic reading abilities” and that “control of academic vocabulary, or the lack thereof, may be the single most important discriminator in the ‘gate-keeping’ tests of education.”

More simply put, you need to know lots of words to speak and write good English, and to pass tests such as the GMAT, GRE, and TOEFL. How many words? The average American high school student knows 75,000. They will be your colleagues if you plan on attending a U.S. college or graduate school. According to Gardner and Davies, the academic achievement gap between non-native English speakers and their peers is strongly associated with a lack of academic vocabulary.

The Academic Vocabulary List vs. the Academic Word List

Gardner and Davies have some objections to the Academic Word List (AWL) that I have recommended many times to my students.

First, the AVL is newer (2011) and based on a computer search of many more words (120 million words in 13,000 academic texts published in the U.S.). In contrast, the AWL is based on a mere 3.5 million words mainly published in New Zealand from the early 1960s to the late 1990s.

Second, the AVL uses a much different system than the AWL for grouping vocabulary words together in “word families” … one that the authors claim is better for English language learners.

Basically, the Academic Word List groups a variety of related words around single stem (headword). For example, the stem react includes reaction, reactions, reacted, reacts, reacting, reactive,  reactionary, reactionaries, reactivate, reactivation, reactor, and reactors. Although these words are related, they may not share the same core meaning. In addition, the AWL does not distinguish their part of speech or how frequently each one is used. For example, among the singular nouns in this family, reaction is much more common than reactivation, reactionary, or reactor, but the AWL does not give you this information.

In contrast, the Academic Vocabulary List groups words by lemmas. Lemmas are words with a common stem (headword), related by inflection (such as -s, -ed, and -ing), and coming from the same part of speech. So, for example, the AVL would group the words apply, applies, applied, and applying. Because the AVL groups lemmas by parts of speech and then lists them in order of frequency, it is easier to identify which words are more important to learn. For instance, the noun effect is much more commonly used in English than the verb effect. The AVL not only points out that this same word, with the same spelling, actually has two parts of speech; it also distinguishes the more common word from the less frequently used.

How to use the Academic Vocabulary List

First of all, you will want to enter the main AVL website. Notice that you have three main options.

• Once you register (see below), you can download the AVL lists as Excel files.
• You can use the “online interface” (the website) to find (very!!) detailed information about each word.
• You can also use the online interface to input an academic text.

The lists themselves

In order to access and download the Academic Vocabulary Lists, you need to register at the authors’ website, providing your name, email, and status (learner, teacher, etc.).

Once you have the lists, you will probably find them a little intimidating. I think the most helpful for most students is the AVL itself. This consists of 3,000 lemmas, listed in frequency order. So, for example, the top 10 words in the AVL are: study, group, system, social, provide, however, research, level, result, and include.

Also helpful, but way longer, is the Word Families list. To get the fancy color coding, you’ll need to look at the list at the website (click on Word Families). And you’ll have to figure out what the colors mean (try the Guided Tour).

Finding detailed information about words

Using the website, I can find out an awful lot about individual words. Let’s say I want to find out more about the word refine. By entering the word in the Word box and clicking on Search, I can find out its part of speech (it’s a verb), what domains it appears in (most often in science), synonyms (such as enhance and cultivate), definitions, collocates (words that are commonly used with it), and specific lines of text where refine appears. Although it takes a bit of time to figure out how all this works, it’s extremely helpful information in a relatively easy-to-use format.

Using the AVL to write better

Finally, you can input any academic text, whether it’s something you’ve written or something you need to read, here. In my example below, I entered the first few paragraphs of my previous article on the vocabulary word lists and clicked on Word. The resulting text in the right side of the screen will highlight any academic words used (this would be especially helpful if you entered an academic text that you needed to read for school). You can click on individual words to get more detailed information, such as their definition or collocates. And, most helpfully for your own writing, if you click on Phrase, you can find related, and possibly “better,” phrases. For example, rather than using the phrase potent argument, you might be directed to use powerful or convincing argument, expressions that are more common in English.

The bottom line

• Because the AWL has been around longer, you are much more likely to encounter it in a variety of textbooks, websites, and teaching materials. If you are looking for online vocabulary practice exercises, just Google “Academic Word List” and you will find a plethora. If you are an intermediate-level English learner, primarily looking for an easy-to-use, well-organized word list and lots of online practice, go with the AWL.
• There are good reasons for and many advantages of using the AVL. However, as a relatively new list, there are few resources except the list and website itself (and there are apparently none in the works). Of course, the website is extremely comprehensive and the authors also have the ability to update it in the future. But, in my opinion, the AVL website is intended more for academics; there’s a steep learning curve to using it successfully. It is definitely not as user-friendly as the AWL.
• If you are an advanced English learner with a relatively large English vocabulary and especially if you need to read and write more advanced English texts, the AVL is an invaluable resource. It’s well worth the effort to learn to navigate the website and utilize its many features. It’s possible, though, that you might need an experienced user or a teacher familiar with the AVL to maximize its benefits.