What the Academic Word List is
The Academic Word List was compiled by Dr Averil Coxhead at Victoria University of Wellington in 2000, drawing on a 3.5-million-word corpus of academic texts across the arts, commerce, law, and science. The list contains 570 word families, where a family is a headword and its inflected and derived forms (analyse, analysis, analyses, analytical, analytically). Coxhead's criterion was that a word family must occur with reasonable frequency across all four of those disciplines, not just in one. That filter is what makes the AWL different from a generic word list: each word is academic-general, not topic-specific.
The 570 families are split into 10 sublists of roughly 60 each, ranked by overall frequency in the corpus. Sublist 1 contains the 60 most frequent academic word families, Sublist 2 the next 60, and so on. The lower the sublist number, the higher the payoff per word learned.
Why the AWL matters for TOEFL 2026
Every TOEFL Reading passage and most TOEFL Listening lectures use the same register as a university textbook chapter. Coxhead measured AWL coverage of academic texts at roughly 10 percent, and independent corpus analyses of TOEFL Reading passages have replicated that figure within a percentage point. In practice that means about 70 of the 700 words in an average passage come from the AWL.
If you recognise an AWL word automatically when you read it, you save the few seconds of inference per word that you would otherwise spend reading around the unknown term. Multiply by 70 unknown words per passage, four passages on the long-form test, and you have saved several minutes that you can spend on the inference and rhetorical-purpose questions where TOEFL Reading actually distinguishes band 4 from band 5 candidates.
On Listening the same proportion holds, but the words come without spelling cues. You hear "subsequent" rather than reading it, which is much harder if you only know it from sight. That is why we recommend studying AWL words from audio as well as text: see the free TOEFLMock Listening tests for AWL exposure in academic-lecture context.
Sublist 1: 60 most frequent academic words
Master these first. They appear in every TOEFL Reading passage and most TOEFL Listening lectures.
Sublist 2: next 60 most frequent
Strong coverage on TOEFL Reading. Many appear in the academic-discussion Writing task too.
Sublist 3
Mid-frequency academic words. By the end of Sublist 3 (180 words) you have learned the words that will give you about 60 percent of your AWL hits on test day.
Sublist 4
By the end of Sublist 4 (240 words) you have learned about 70 to 80 percent of all AWL words you will encounter on TOEFL Reading.
Sublist 5
Strong cross-topic words that show up in roughly half of TOEFL Reading passages.
Sublist 6
By the end of Sublist 6 (360 words) you have covered nearly 90 percent of academic vocabulary you will meet on the test.
Sublist 7
Lower frequency individually, but high collective payoff: still a few words per Reading passage.
Sublist 8
Useful for high-band students and for the Independent Writing task.
Sublist 9
Specialist academic words. Each appears less often than Sublist 1 words, but together they still account for a couple of items per Reading passage.
Sublist 10
Least frequent of the 570, but still academic-general rather than topic-specific. Useful only after Sublists 1 to 9 are solid.
Academic words for essays: 40 synonym upgrades
The fastest visible improvement in essay writing comes from replacing a handful of overworked everyday words with their academic equivalents. The 40 upgrades below all use AWL headwords from the sublists above, so learning them counts double: they lift your essays and they show up in every TOEFL Reading passage. One warning before the table: an upgrade is only an upgrade when the register fits. "Demonstrate" belongs in an academic discussion response; in a friendly email task, "show" is the correct choice, not the downgrade.
| Everyday word | Academic upgrades (AWL) |
|---|---|
| show | demonstrate, indicate, illustrate, reveal |
| big / very big | significant, considerable, substantial, major |
| get | obtain, acquire, derive, attain |
| help | assist, facilitate, enable, contribute to |
| make sure | ensure, guarantee, confirm |
| need | require, necessitate |
| happen | occur, emerge, arise |
| change | alter, modify, transform, shift |
| use | utilise, employ, implement, exploit |
| think about | consider, evaluate, assess, examine |
| keep | maintain, retain, sustain, preserve |
| stop | cease, terminate, suspend, prohibit |
Use at most three or four upgrades per 200-word response. An essay where every everyday verb has been swapped for its formal cousin reads as memorised, and TOEFL raters specifically score appropriate range rather than maximum range. The goal is one precise academic verb where the claim carries weight, not a thesaurus pass over the whole text.
AWL vs the 1000-word academic lists (NAWL and AVL)
If you have searched for a "1000 academic word list", you have probably met the AWL's two successors. The New Academic Word List (NAWL, 2013) was rebuilt by Coxhead's collaborators from a larger, more modern corpus and runs to 963 word families. The Academic Vocabulary List (AVL, 2014), built by Gardner and Davies from the 120-million-word academic section of COCA, covers about 3,000 lemmas, with the core 500 doing most of the work. Both are legitimate lists, and both are larger than the original 570.
For TOEFL preparation the original AWL still wins on efficiency, for two reasons. First, coverage per word learned: the AWL's 570 families cover roughly 10 percent of an academic text; the NAWL's extra 400 families add only about 2 percentage points of coverage, so the marginal payoff per word drops sharply. Second, ecosystem: every major TOEFL prep book keys its vocabulary work to the original AWL, so your flashcard decks, practice passages, and this page all line up. Treat NAWL and AVL as post-AWL extensions for candidates targeting band 5.5 and above, not as replacements.
How to study the AWL for TOEFL 2026
Memorising 570 words from a list is the wrong approach. The corpus research that produced the AWL also showed how academic vocabulary is acquired: through repeated exposure in context with active retrieval. Three concrete rules.
Rule 1: One sublist a week, productive use within 48 hours. Pick Sublist 1. On Monday, read the list. On Tuesday and Wednesday, write five sentences using different words from the list in a paragraph about a topic you care about. By Friday, you should be able to use any word in Sublist 1 in a sentence without checking the meaning. Move to Sublist 2 next Monday.
Rule 2: Spaced review. Return to each sublist on day 3, day 7, day 21, and day 90 after you first studied it. Anki, Quizlet, or any spaced-repetition tool works; so does a paper notebook organised by sublist with review dates pencilled in. The interval matters more than the tool. Day 3 to day 7 is when most forgetting happens; if you survive that window, the word usually sticks.
Rule 3: Read AWL words in real TOEFL passages. Lists give you the meaning; passages give you the register and the collocation. A free TOEFLMock Reading test exposes you to about 280 words from the AWL across 4 passages: roughly half a Sublist 1 worth. Try our free Reading practice tests and underline every AWL word you find. After 10 tests you will have seen most of Sublist 1 and 2 in context at least twice.
For Speaking and Writing, productive mastery of Sublists 1 to 3 (180 words) is enough for band 5. For Reading and Listening at band 5, recognition of Sublists 1 to 6 (360 words) covers the large majority of academic vocabulary you will meet. Beyond that, Sublists 7 to 10 are diminishing returns for most candidates.
Related TOEFLMock vocabulary resources
- TOEFL vocabulary list 2026 — broader overview of TOEFL vocab strategy across all four sections
- 40 high-frequency TOEFL words — functional words for Writing and Speaking
- TOEFL transition words and linking phrases — connectives for the Writing section
- TOEFL idioms and phrasal verbs — for the Listening section
- By-topic vocabulary directory — 10 academic subject lists (biology, economics, psychology, etc.)
FAQ
What is the Academic Word List? ▾
A 2000 list of 570 word families compiled by Averil Coxhead from a 3.5-million-word academic corpus, split into 10 sublists by frequency.
Why does the AWL matter for TOEFL? ▾
About 10 percent of words in a TOEFL Reading passage come from the AWL. Recognising them on sight saves several minutes of inference time across the test.
Do I need all 570? ▾
Sublists 1 to 4 (240 words) cover the bulk of AWL occurrences. Add Sublists 5 to 10 incrementally; diminishing returns set in past Sublist 6.
Is the 2000 list still accurate in 2026? ▾
The vast majority of the list remains accurate. Newer alternatives (NAWL 2013, AVL 2014) exist, but for TOEFL the original AWL is still the best-supported reference because all major prep materials use it.
How long does mastery take? ▾
Recognition mastery of Sublists 1 to 6 takes about 6 weeks at 30 minutes a day with spaced review. Productive mastery (using in Writing and Speaking) of Sublists 1 to 3 takes about the same time.
What are good academic words for essays? ▾
AWL verbs that replace overworked everyday verbs: demonstrate instead of show, obtain instead of get, ensure instead of make sure, occur instead of happen, maintain instead of keep. See the 40-upgrade table above — and cap yourself at three or four upgrades per 200-word response.