Tuesday, March 22, 2016

Academic Word List on Quizlet

(TESOL Worksheets)

The Academic Word List (W) is a list of the 570 most commonly occurring vocabulary in Academic Writing.  (The list was made through a corpus analysis of academic articles, and then subtracting any words which are included in the General Service List (W)).  These 570 words account for 10% of all words in academic texts, so if students can master these words, they will have a huge advantage in trying to break into academic reading and writing.  These lists are useful for both students studying IELTS and students studying English for Academic Purposes.

Getting these 570 words into the students long term memory, however, is often easier said than done.  But after a colleague introduced me to quizlet, I decided that this would be a great tool to help my students learn these words.

There's a lot of stuff for the academic word list already on quizlet, which means that me creating my own quizzes is somewhat re-inventing the wheel.
However, no lists that I could find were broken down into increments of 5 words.
The common assumption in TESOL is that 5 new words at a time is the perfect amount of new vocabulary to introduce--although I must admit I'm not sure if that's scientific or if it's just dogma.  But I wanted to gradually feed my students 5 new words on the academic vocabulary list every lesson, and gradually build up from there.
I followed the Academic Word List by the various subsets, alphabetically within each subset.
In order to keep these quizlet quizzes nice and simple, I had to make several sacrifices.  In the Academic Word List, the words are actually not single words, but rather word families.  So, for example, the word "analyse" is also: analytically, analytical, analyzing, analysing, analysers, analyzes, analyzed, analytic, analysts, analysis, analyses, analyser, analysed, analyze, and analyst.  
In the interests of keeping things simple, I just included one word for each word family.
Also, many of these words have multiple definitions.  For example, "approach" means both "coming closer" and "a way of doing something".  Again, for simplicity's sake, I started with just choosing one definition.
However, I changed my mind on this later. As I progressed through the list, I would later change this and make the later words contain more definitions.

Finally, I think there's a serious question about whether students can truly understand these words if they just study them in decontextualized settings.  Probably not.  But it is at least a starting point.  It will at least cause the students to notice these words more when they encounter them in their reading.  However studying the dictionary definition of these words should definitely be combined with other exercises that study these words in context.  There are numerous other sites on the Internet that have more contextual exercises for the Academic Word List.

The entire set can be found in the quizlet folder HERE.  The individual quizzes are listed below.

* Academic Word  List--the first 5 words
* Academic Word List--the first 10 words
* Academic Word List--the first 15 words
* Academic Word List--the first 20 words
* Academic Word List--the first 25 words
* Academic Word List--the first 30 words
* Academic Word List--the first 35 words
* Academic Word List--the first 40 words
* Academic Word List--the first 45 words
* Academic Word List--the first 50 words
* Academic Word List--the first 55 words
* Academic Word List--the first 60 words--All the words in the first Subset
* Academic Word List--the first 65 words
* Academic Word List--the first 70 words
* Academic Word List--the first 75 words
* Academic Word List--the first 80 words
* Academic Word List--the first 85 words
* Academic Word List--the first 90 words
* Academic Word List--the first 95 words
* Academic Word List--the first 100 words
* Academic Word List--the first 105 words
* Academic Word List--the first 110 words
* Academic Word List--the first 115 words
* Academic Word List--the first 120 words--All the Words in the 1st and 2nd Subset
* Academic Word List--the first 125 Words
* Academic Word List--the first 195 Words
* Academic Word List--the first 200 Words
* Academic Word List--the first 205 Words
* Academic Word List--the first 210 Words
* Academic Word List--the first 215 Words
* Academic Word List--the first 220 Words

Once I completed the Academic Word List, I continued by adding in some of the word families

* The Complete Academic Word List Plus 5 additional words from the word families

When assigning these word lists as homework in my classes, I print out the quiz website address on a small slip of paper, and give these to my students to take home.
Because a single term at my school is limited to about 30 classes, I didn't get beyond the first 125 words on the print outs.  However, at the end of term students were given the address of the folder, https://quizlet.com/joel_swagman/folders/academic-word-list and encouraged to keep studying on their own.

Below are all the Microsoft word documents with the website address written on them.  The Google Drive folder is HERE.

Academic Word  List--the first 5 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 10 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 15 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 20 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 25 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 30 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 35 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 40 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 45 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 50 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 55 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 60 words--All the words in the first Subset (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 65 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 70 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 75 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 80 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 85 words (drive, docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 90 words (docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 95 words (docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 100 words (docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 105 words (docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 110 words (docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 115 words (docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 120 words--All the Words in the 1st and 2nd Subset (docs, pub)
Academic Word List--the first 125 words (docs, pub)

A handout describing how to use these quizzes is here: drive, docs, pub

Academic Word List on quizlet.com
What is the Academic Word List?
Researchers surveyed all the words that occurred in academic writing in English to find out which words were the most common.  Then, from this list, the researchers subtracted all the words that also occurred in the list of the 2,000 most common English words.  (e.g. words like: am, is, are, etc.).  
The researchers were left with a list of 570 words which accounted for about 10% of all the words in academic writing in English.
The Academic Word List is divided into 10 sublists.  The first sublist is the most common words, the second sublist is the next most commons words, etc.
Why should I study the Academic Word List?
If you can learn the Academic Word List, you will increase your understanding of academic articles by 10%.
Since the IELTS uses academic articles in all 3 parts of the reading test, this will be immediately helpful to you on your IELTS reading score.
It will also help you with the academic sections of the IELTS listening test (Listening Sections 3&4).
Using these words in the IELTS writing will increase your vocabulary score.
If you are taking the IELTS test because you are planning on studying abroad, then you will find this list doubly useful.  Not only will it increase your IELTS score, but it will help you in your future university studies.
How can I study the Academic Word List on Quizlet?
570 words is a bit much to learn all in one go, so I’ve broken them up for you in increments of 5.  First study 5 words, then study 10 words (5 new words + 5 old words) then 15 words (5 new words + 10 old words) until you finally work yourself up to 570.
Step 1.  Go to the folder for the Academic Word List: https://quizlet.com/joel_swagman/folders/academic-word-list
Step 2.  Log-in to quizlet.  (You can either sign in with your Facebook or Google account, or you can create your own quizlet account.)  You will need to log-in in order to save your scores for the various games.
Step 3.  I recommend looking at the word list to familiarize yourself with the words.


Step 4.  I recommend doing speller before learn.  Speller is super easy.  The computer will say the word, and you just type what you hear.
Step 5.  Click on learn.  Complete all the words.
If you’re logged in, Quizlet will save your progress, so you don’t need to do all the words at one time.  You can do half of them now, and half of them the next day. (This is useful for once you start getting into the sets over 100).
Step 6. Complete the test, and check your answers.
Now, you’re ready to play the games.  Try to get the highest score in the class.
Step 6.  Play scatter.  Did you get the top score?  If yes, brag to everyone you know.  Call your mom over to the computer and show her.  Do a victory dance.  Run around the house and tell everyone how great you are.  If no, try again to get a higher score.

Step 7.  Play gravity.  Did you get the top score?  If yes, do everything the same as above. If no, try again to get a higher score.

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