The Academic Word List

February 15th, 2010

Hi

Some vocabulary that you should learn more about as part of your IELTS preparation are the words on the Academic Word List (a list of words that are commonly used in academic texts but not so common in everyday conversation).

One way to learn more about these words is to look at how they are used in texts.

Here’s an example.

The word ‘survive‘ is on the Academic Word List (AWL) and appears several times in the text that I suggested you read a few days ago in the post ‘What newspaper articles should I read?‘.

In the text, which was about the death of the language and culture of the Bo tribe, the word ‘survive‘ was used in the following ways:

As a verb…

  • Boa survived the tsunami of December 2004, which killed 513 people on the islands…

As a noun in the name of an organisation…

  • …according to Survival International, a group that campaigns for the rights of indigenous people.

As an adjective…

  • …the other surviving Bo speaker died several years ago.

Other words in the text that are on the AWL include ‘traditional’, ‘immigrants’, ‘communicate’ and ‘converse’.

If you’ve already read the text, have a look at how these words are used.

Pete

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