Vocabulary practice · Skill 14 of 14

Academic Vocabulary Practice: Science, History and Campus Words

Academic vocabulary is the set of words that textbooks, lectures and research are built from: salinity, prolonged, encode, byproduct. Getting them right is less about long lists than about habits. Read the gap, use the topic, know the word families and roots, and count the letters. Seven strategies and 40 questions below train each habit.

40 questions 8 levels of 5 7 rules Level 1 free

31%

What we measured

of the 40,853 Complete the Words boxes students missed in 12,000 of our Reading sections were left empty: the word did not come at all.

How do you remember academic vocabulary in context?

Read the slot before you guess the word

Most empty boxes come from looking at the half-word too soon. Read the whole sentence first and ask two questions. What kind of word fits here? After to or can you need a verb, after the a noun or an adjective, and before a verb often an adverb. Then ask what the sentence is about. Lava, crust and eruption narrow the word to a small family, and the letters you can see narrow it to one.

Right:The lava was still molten when it reached the sea.
Right:Researchers hope to recover the lost samples next spring.

Not:Many plants cannot endurance a hard frost.Instead:Many plants cannot endure a hard frost.
Not:The wall was built to protection the town from floods.Instead:The wall was built to protect the town from floods.

Academic words come in topic families

A passage on one subject keeps returning to one family of words. A text about earthquakes brings fault, epicenter and seismic. A text about the ocean brings salinity, shoreline, current and reef. When a box stays empty, name the topic in one word, then run through its family until a word matches the letters. Learn new words the same way, in families rather than alphabetical lists, and each one becomes easier to recall.

Right:Salinity is far higher in the Dead Sea than in the open ocean.
Right:Strong waves are wearing away the shoreline near the lighthouse.

Not:A river begins at its mouth, high in the mountains.Instead:A river begins at its headwaters, high in the mountains.
Not:In a rain forest, very little sunlight reaches the crust.Instead:In a rain forest, very little sunlight reaches the forest floor.

Use roots and prefixes to rebuild a word

Many science words are built from a few parts you can learn once. Sub- and hypo- mean under, epi- means on or above, hydro- means water, bio- means life, -logy means the study of and -cide means killing. If the box shows sub and the sentence is about the ground below the topsoil, you are most of the way to subsoil. If it shows hydro in a sentence about dams, think hydroelectric.

Right:Hydroelectric dams turn moving water into electricity.
Right:Biology is the study of living things.

Not:A hydrologist studies the history of rocks.Instead:A geologist studies the history of rocks.
Not:Farmers spray insecticides to kill weeds.Instead:Farmers spray herbicides to kill weeds.

Learn the words that go together

Academic English has fixed partners, called collocations. We conduct research; we never make it. A factor plays a role; it does not do one. A long dry spell is a prolonged drought, and we speak of heavy rain, not strong rain. When two words both seem to mean the right thing, the partner decides. Learn the pair, not the single word, and the second half of the phrase will come back to you in the exam.

Right:The team conducted research on coral reefs.
Right:Sleep plays a key role in memory.

Not:They made an experiment on plant growth.Instead:They carried out an experiment on plant growth.
Not:The region suffered a lengthened drought.Instead:The region suffered a prolonged drought.

Count the letters and check the ending

In a half-word box each dash stands for one missing letter, so count them. val plus four dashes makes a seven-letter word: valleys fits, and valley is one letter short. Then check that the ending fits the grammar: a plural after many or several, an -ed verb for a finished past action, an adjective after is, and an -ly adverb before a verb. A word with the right meaning and the wrong ending still loses the point.

Right:The river carved several deep valleys.
Right:Over many years, the waves slowly wore the cliffs away.

Not:Several shoreline in the state are eroding.Instead:Several shorelines in the state are eroding.
Not:The new bridge was design to survive earthquakes.Instead:The new bridge was designed to survive earthquakes.

Watch for everyday words with an academic meaning

Some words you already know have a second, academic meaning, and the passage uses that one. A glacier retreats when its ice melts back, not when it runs from danger. In biology a culture is a group of cells grown on purpose. In physics matter is anything that has mass and takes up space. Desert animals shelter in burrows, using shelter as a verb. If an everyday word seems to make no sense, try its academic meaning.

Right:The glacier has retreated almost a mile in the last century.
Right:Solids, liquids and gases are three states of matter.

Not:The glacier escaped two miles up the valley.Instead:The glacier retreated two miles up the valley.
Not:Physics studies material and energy.Instead:Physics studies matter and energy.

Rule out look-alike words with the sentence

Many academic words share their first letters: prolonged and profound, endure and endorse, flourish and flounder. A half-word box shows only that shared start, so the letters alone cannot decide. The sentence has to. Ask what the word must mean here, then test each look-alike against it. A drought that lasts for years is prolonged; a change that reaches deep into how people live is profound.

Right:The drought was prolonged, lasting four years.
Right:The printing press had a profound effect on education.

Not:The old stone bridge has endorsed for 800 years.Instead:The old stone bridge has endured for 800 years.
Not:Several basics in the region are now dry lakes.Instead:Several basins in the region are now dry lakes.

Where this costs you marks on the TOEFL

The TOEFL has no separate vocabulary section, but academic words carry the Reading section. Reading has 50 items, and the Complete the Words task asks you to finish half-written words inside a short academic paragraph. Longer passages on topics such as biology, geology and history lean on the same words. A box left empty can never earn the point, and in our data nearly a third of missed boxes were blank. Listening uses the same families in academic talks, where you hear each word once with no letters to help. Practice the habits on this page, try them on real boxes in Complete the Words practice, and build each family with our word lists by topic.

If your first language is...

First language	What to watch for
Spanish, Portuguese, French and Italian speakers	Many academic words come from Latin, so you will recognize a lot of them: salinity, intensity, immersion. Use that head start, but watch for false friends. Actual means real in English, not current, and sensible means practical, not sensitive. Check the English spelling too, because a cognate often differs by a letter or two.
Arabic, Persian and Urdu speakers	These scripts usually leave short vowels unwritten, so English vowels are easy to drop or swap when you write a word from memory. Say the word slowly and write every vowel you hear: sa-li-ni-ty, pro-found. Practice by writing words out in full, not only by reading them.
Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Thai and Russian speakers	Because your script is different, you may know a word by sight and sound but never have written it, and the box needs the letters. Practice recall: cover a word, write it from its first half, then check. Japanese speakers should spell from the English form, not the katakana, which adds vowels between consonants.

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Academic vocabulary exercises: Level 1 with answers

Try these before you open an answer. Each one explains why, not only what.

Please _____ your essay on the course website by Friday at noon. (submit / admit / permit / commit)
Show the answer
submit
Submit means to hand in work so someone can check it. The clues are essay and a deadline. Admit, permit and commit share the same ending but mean to let in, to allow and to promise.
The professor will _____ review the main ideas before the quiz. (briefly / brief / briefing)
Show the answer
briefly
The gap sits right before the verb review, so it needs an adverb, and adverbs like this end in -ly. Briefly means for a short time.
Find the mistake: Most evenings, I go to the library to make my homework with two classmates.
Show the answer
Most evenings, I go to the library to do my homework with two classmates.
Homework goes with do, never make. Learn it as one chunk: do homework, do research, do an assignment.
Spending a semester in Madrid gives you full _____ in Spanish. (being surrounded by the language; from immerse)
Show the answer
immersion
Immersion means being surrounded by something, like being under water. In language learning, full immersion means hearing and using the language all day.
Complete the word: If someone finds your lost student ID, you can retr____ it from the campus security office.
Show the answer
retrieve
Retrieve means to get something back. After can you need a verb, and the clue is lost: you retrieve something you lost. Retreat starts the same way but means to move back.

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FAQ

Common questions

What is academic vocabulary?

Academic vocabulary is the set of words used in textbooks, lectures and research more than in daily conversation. Some appear in every subject, such as analyze, factor and significant. Others belong to one field, such as salinity in earth science or retina in biology. TOEFL Reading and Listening use both kinds, inside short passages and talks on academic topics.

How many academic words do I need for the TOEFL?

No one can give you an honest exact number, so be careful with lists that promise one. Depth matters more than size: you need to recognize a word in context and write it from its first half. Start with the general words that appear in every subject, then learn the families for common TOEFL topics such as biology, geology, history and psychology.

How do I learn academic words faster?

Learn them in topic families, together with the words they usually go with, and practice writing them, not only recognizing them. Short daily sessions work better than long ones. Read a short passage on one topic, cover a few words, and write them back from the first half. Roots such as sub, bio and logy help you rebuild words you only half remember.

Why do I leave boxes empty even when I know the word?

Usually because you looked at the half-word before you read the sentence. Under time pressure the mind stops at the letters. Read the whole sentence, decide what kind of word fits and what the topic is, then count the dashes. That gives you three clues instead of one. If a box is still empty, write your best guess, because a blank can never earn the point.

Do I really need words like pyroclastic and cumulonimbus?

You do not need a scientist's vocabulary, but passages on earth science, biology and astronomy do use field words, and a half-word box can hide one. In our students' Reading sections, pyroclastic was left empty in 43% of attempts and cumulonimbus in 32%. Knowing the topic family, and the parts inside a word, turns many of these blanks into points.

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