New Academic Vocabulary List Based on Larger Corpus
1. The
Academic
Vocabulary
List
[
http://www.academicwords.info
]
Mark
Davies
and
Dee
Gardner
Brigham
Young
University
Provo,
Utah,
USA
August
2013
For
more
details
on
the
construction
of
the
vocabulary
list,
see:
Gardner,
Dee
and
Mark
Davies.
(2013)
“A
New
Academic
Vocabulary
List”.
In
Applied
Linguistics.
[http://applij.oxfordjournals.org/content/early/2013/08/02/applin.amt015.abstract.html?papetoc
]
We
believe
that
our
Academic
Vocabulary
List
improves
significantly
on
the
traditional
Academic
Word
List
(Coxhead,
2000)
in
a
number
of
ways.
First,
while
the
traditional
AWL
is
based
on
just
3.5
million
words
from
the
1990s,
our
new
list
is
based
on
the
120
million
words
(in
13,000
academic
texts)
in
the
425
million
word
Corpus
of
Contemporary
American
English,
with
texts
as
recent
as
2011.
Second,
our
“word
families”
version
of
the
list
–
shown
below
–
contains
a
great
deal
of
information
that
is
not
available
in
the
traditional
AWL:
• We
list
the
words
(lemmas
actually;
see
below)
in
order
of
frequency.
In
a
traditional
word
families
list,
there
is
no
indication
of
which
words
are
frequent
and
which
are
not.
As
a
result,
you
cannot
maximize
your
time
in
learning
the
words
that
you
will
most
likely
see
again.
With
our
list,
you
can.
• We
separate
lemmas
by
part
of
speech
and
we
list
the
frequency
of
each
lemma
and
part
of
speech.
For
example,
in
the
word
family
[effect],
we
show
effect
as
a
noun
(60,078
tokens)
and
effect
as
a
verb
(1,581;
i.e.
much
less
common).
Knowing
the
part
of
speech
of
a
word
helps
immensely
in
knowing
the
meaning
of
a
word
and
how
it
is
used.
• As
noted,
we
group
words
by
lemma,
e.g.
[apply]
=
{apply,
applies,
applies,
applying}.
You
probably
don’t
want
or
need
to
see
the
frequency
of
each
individual
form
of
a
noun
or
verb
–
it
usually
doesn’t
help
much
with
learning
the
words.
• We
format
the
words
so
that
you
know
whether
they
are
part
of
the
general
Academic
Vocabulary
List
(bolded
and
underlined),
whether
they
are
more
technical
and
occur
mainly
in
one
domain
(such
as
Law
or
Medicine)
(italics),
or
whether
they
are
not
really
an
academic
word,
but
are
just
a
member
of
the
word
family
(normal
font).
For
the
technical
words,
we
indicate
in
which
sub-‐
genre(s)
they
are
most
frequent.
2. The
following
sample
entry
shows
how
the
list
is
organized:
2 Develop 128974 development (n) 63509 develop (v) 52543 developing (j) 9039
developmental (j) Edu 5716 developed (j) 3513 developer (n) 2526
developmentally (r) Edu 573underdeveloped (j) 370 undeveloped
(j) 283 underdevelopment (n) His 214 redevelopment (n) 144
redevelop (v) 48 developing (n) Law 18
The
word
family
[develop]
is
the
second
most
frequent
word
family
(#2)
in
COCA
academic
texts.
(The
rank
order
is
based
on
the
cumulative
total
of
just
the
bolded
and
underlined
“core
academic”
words.)
The
nine
“core
academic”
words
occur
a
total
of
128,974
times
in
COCA
academic.
The
frequency
of
the
word
in
academic
texts
is
listed
after
each
word,
and
the
words/lemmas
are
listed
in
order
of
frequency;
e.g.
the
word
development
occurs
63,509
times.
Note
that
because
lemmas
are
combined
to
form
word
families,
the
rank
order
in
the
word
family
file
does
not
match
the
rank
order
in
the
lemma
file.
To
be
listed
as
a
“core”
word,
the
word
must:
1)
occur
at
least
50%
more
frequently
in
the
academic
portion
of
COCA
than
would
otherwise
be
expected
(per
million
words)
2)
have
a
good
“dispersion”
across
the
nine
sub-‐genres
of
academic
(a
Juilland
“d”
measure
of
at
least
0.80,
for
those
who
know
what
that
means)
3)
not
be
a
“technical”
word,
as
is
explained
below
Each
of
the
four
italicized
words
above
occurs
much
more
in
one
(or
two)
of
the
nine
academic
domains
than
in
the
others:
developmental
(adj),
developmentally
(adv)
are
used
primarily
in
Education
texts,
underdevelopment
(noun)
is
used
primarily
in
History
texts,
and
developing
(noun)
is
used
primarily
in
Law
and
Political
Science
(mostly
political
science
in
this
case).
(The
nine
sub-‐genres
are:
Education,
Humanities,
Philosophy
/
Religion
/
Psychology,
Social
Sciences,
History,
Law
and
Political
Science,
Science
/
Technology,
Medicine,
and
Business.)
To
be
listed
as
“technical”
word,
the
frequency
must
have
at
least
three
times
the
“expected”
frequency
in
a
given
sub-‐genre,
based
on
the
size
of
that
sub-‐
genre.
The
“normal
font”
words
are
not
academic
or
technical
words,
as
defined
above.
But
they
are
still
included
in
the
word
family,
for
ease
in
learning.
3. CLICK
HERE
to
access
the
entire
list,
with
hyperlinks
to
extensive
information
on
each
word
1 study 137208 study (n) 137208 study (v) 18872 studied (j) 215 studiously (r) 58
studious (j) 41 studying (n) Edu 20
2 develop 128974 development (n) 63509 develop (v) 52543 developing (j) 9039
developmental (j) Edu 5716 developed (j) 3513 developer (n) 2526
developmentally (r) Edu 573underdeveloped (j) 370 undeveloped (j)
283 underdevelopment (n) His 214 redevelopment (n) 144 redevelop (v)
48 developing (n) Law 18
3 group 125012 group (n) 122011 grouping (n) Edu 1744 subgroup (n) 1603 group (v)
1398 intergroup (j) Soc 559 regroup (v) His 172 grouped (j) Edu 34
regrouping (n) Edu 20
4 system 116141 system (n) 110176 systematic (j) 4090 systematically (r) 1815
subsystem (n) Sci 796 unsystematic (j) 60
5 relate 114267 relationship (n) 50744 relate (v) 28592 relation (n) 23867 related (j)
6945 relational (j) 1498 unrelated (j) 1388 interrelated (j) 731
interrelationship (n) 502relatedness (n) 434 interrelation (n) Hum 191
6 research 112649 research (n) 83325 researcher (n) 25445 research (v) 3879
7 social 103635 social (j) 99744 socially (r) 3891 antisocial (j) Med 1080
8 result 96016 result (n) 72083 result (v) 20138 resulting (j) 3063 resultant (j) 732
9 use 93271 use (v) 184698 use (n) 64527 user (n) 14141 useful (j) 11584 used (j) 6037
usefulness (n) 1229 useless (j) 1002 usable (j) 737 misuse (n) 626
reuse (v) Sci 503 unused (j) 380 reuse (n) 260 usefully (r) 247 reusable
(j) Sci 239 misuse (v) 227 usability (n) Sci 144 unusable (j) 112
useable (j) 68 uselessness (n) Hum 43 misused (j) 22uselessly (r) 17
10 provide 93212 provide (v) 93212 provider (n) Med 5708 provided (c) 4620 providing
(c) 233
11 however 90906 however (r) 90906
12 increase 85843 increase (v) 35289 increase (n) 15833 increased (j) 12996
increasingly (r) 12280 increasing (j) 9445
13 experience 79681 experience (n) 56541 experience (v) 20056 experienced (j) 3084
experiential (j) Edu 901 inexperienced (j) 476 inexperience (n) 132
14 level 79201 level (n) 78162 level (j) Edu 3119 level (v) 1145 high-level (j) 917
leveling (n) 76 leveling (j) 46 leveler (n) 21 leveled (j) 12 levelly (r)
Soc 1
15 process 78679 process (n) 66382 process (v) 6739 processing (n) 5558 processor (n)
Sci 3072 processed (j) Med 535 unprocessed (j) Med 85 reprocess (v)
Law 41
16 culture 77470 culture (n) 42561 cultural (j) 34239 culturally (r) Edu 3586 cross-
cultural (j) Edu 1176 subculture (n) 670 intercultural (j) Edu 398
cultured (j) 284 subcultural (j) 81 uncultured (j) 38
17 history 77164 history (n) 53474 historical (j) 19615 historian (n) His 7700 historically
(r) 4075 historic (j) 3441 prehistory (n) 259 historicity (n) Hum+Rel 184
historicism (n) Hum 165
18 active 76010 activity (n) 55151 active (j) 14938 activist (n) 4067 actively (r) 4000