BUZZWORDS

What’s the Academic Word List (AWL) and what can it do for our students?

WHAT IS THE AWL?

Developed by Averil Coxhead from Victoria University’s School of Linguistics and Applied Studies in 2000

Contains 570 words/word families most used across the Academic Corpus

Coxhead, Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2): 213-238.

THE ACADEMIC CORPUS?

The Academic Corpus is a group of 414 texts with a total of 3.5 million running words from academic sources such as

Journals Textbook chapters Workbooks Lab manuals

It is sorted into 4 sections and 28 subsections

Coxhead, Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2): 213-238.

THE ACADEMIC CORPUS

Arts Commerce Law Science

Education Accounting Constitutional Law

Biology

History Economics Criminal Law Chemistry

Linguistics Finance Family Law and Medico-legal

Computer Science

Philosophy Industrial Relations

International Law

Geography

Politics Management Pure Commercial

Law

Geology

Psychology Marketing Quasi-commercial

Law

Mathematics

Sociology Public Policy Rights and Remedies

PhysicsCoxhead, Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2): 213-238.

BACK TO THE AWL

AWL word families have RANGE Occur in all sections and over half of the

subsections of the Academic Corpus

AWL word families have FREQUENCY Occur over 100 times in the Academic Corpus

AWL word families have UNIFORMITY OF FREQUENCY Occur minimum of 10 times in each section of

the Academic Corpus

Coxhead, Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2): 213-238.

MORE ON THE AWL

Does not include the 2,000 most commonly used words in English (a, the, and, etc), proper nouns, or Latin forms

Further divided into 10 sublists ranging from most used (Sublist 1) to least used (Sublist 10) as relative to the AWL as a whole

Coxhead, Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2): 213-238.

WHY IS THE AWL IMPORTANT?

The AWL is a list of the vocabulary words that will be most important, based on research, to our students in respect to future academic and vocational success.

These words must be taught AND put in context for our students to learn and master this vocabulary

HOW CAN WE USE THE AWL?

Encourage students to stop and define words they aren’t familiar with within academic texts

Use the word in context to your subject as well as others What does method look like in science vs. math

vs. business?

Offer incentives for word study outside of class Quizlet, graphic organizers, vocabulary.com,

word ladders

GET CREATIVE!

MANIPULATE WORDS

Can you really have mastery of words or subjects without being able to manipulate them in new ways?

Could you determine the puzzle on the left was “foot in the door” without knowing that 12’’= 1 foot?

Or… “walk on water” without the knowledge that H2O=water?

GET STUDENTS TALKING ABOUT AWL Take time to incorporate AWL and domain

specific words into your lesson

Word Read-Around can take only 5 minutes, but involves the whole class

Each student receives a slip of paper with one statement and one question that includes a vocabulary word

One student has the card labeled as the first and the game continues until all cards are used

EX: “I have the first card. Who has the word that means to devour or use up?”Next student: “I have consume. Who has the word

that means to obtain money for?”Next student: “I have finance”…and so on

OTHER VOCABULARY ACTIVITIES Fact or Fiction

Each student is assigned one vocabulary word. They write 3 statements related to the word with one of them being false. The group must identify the false statement and fix the error to make it true

Make a Word Wall displaying all learned words

Vocabulary Bee

In Text Find the target word in multiple texts

(vocabulary.com) and compare uses

OTHER AWL RESOURCES About the AWL

Victoria University Website http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist

Dr. Averil Coxhead http://www.victoria.ac.nz/lals/about/staff/averil-coxhead

AWL Activities AWL practice

http://www.englishvocabularyexercises.com/AWL/index.htm

AWL highlighter http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/awlhighlighter.htm

AWL gapmaker http://www.nottingham.ac.uk/alzsh3/acvocab/awlgapmaker.htm