The Development and Evaluation of an Academic Word List

Abstract

This thesis examines the vocabulary in a corpus of 3,500,000 running words of written academic English to establish an academic word list by applying principles drawn from earlier studies in corpus linguistics. The study found that there is an academic vocabulary that is useful across a range of academic disciplines and subject areas. The Academic Word List (AWL) contains 570 families selected from the corpus on the basis of their range, frequency and uniformity. It is a specialised vocabulary which on average covers 10% of the vocabulary of academic texts. In contrast, the AWL covered only 1.4% of a corpus of 3,500,000 running words of fiction. The combined coverage of the AWL and the General Service List (West, 1953) is 86%. The AWL is divided into ten sublists on the basis of frequency and range of occurrence. The text coverage of the sublists ranges from 3.6% for Sublist 1to 0.01% for Sublist 10. The Academic Word List is important for learners and teachers because it provides useful information about which words give the best return for learning for learners with academic goals. Furthermore, it highlights the words which learners will meet in academic texts which they may not easily learn through normal acquisition processes. The list provides a useful basis for further research into the nature of academic vocabulary.