Academic Word List for IELTS: AWL vs NAWL and How to Learn Them
Short answer: an academic word list is a research-based list of words that appear often across university texts in many subjects but are not among the most common everyday words. Two well-known ones are the Academic Word List (AWL) and the New Academic Word List (NAWL). Neither is an official IELTS list, but IELTS Academic Reading passages and the essays you write in Writing Task 2 use exactly this kind of language, so a list like this is an efficient core to study.
What makes a word "academic"?
English vocabulary roughly splits into three layers. First, the high-frequency general words that make up most of any text: make, people, because. Second, academic words that appear across many subjects: analyse, significant, factor, approach, evidence. Third, technical words that belong to one field: photosynthesis, amortisation. The middle layer is the useful one for IELTS. You cannot predict the topic of a Reading passage, but whether it is about coral reefs or urban transport, words like estimate, consequence and sustain will be there.
AWL vs NAWL
- Academic Word List (AWL): published by Averil Coxhead in 2000. It contains 570 word families, chosen from a corpus of academic texts and sorted into ten sublists by frequency. It assumes you already know an older general list of the most common English words. It has been widely used in English for academic purposes courses for more than two decades.
- New Academic Word List (NAWL): published by Charles Browne, Brent Culligan and Joseph Phillips. It is built from a much larger corpus of academic writing and lectures, and it is designed to sit on top of the New General Service List, an updated list of common English words. It counts individual headwords rather than whole families, which makes it easier to study word by word. It is released under an open licence (CC BY-SA 4.0).
In practice the two lists overlap heavily. If you know one well, you know most of the other. The bigger difference for a learner is the format: a list of headwords with clear meanings is easier to turn into daily study cards than a list of families with many forms.
Why these words matter for IELTS
- Reading: questions often paraphrase the passage. The passage says a significant decline; the question says a large fall. If you only half know significant or decline, you lose time and marks.
- Writing Task 1: describing charts relies on words like proportion, trend, approximately, fluctuate.
- Writing Task 2: the public band descriptors include lexical resource, which looks at the range and accuracy of your vocabulary. Words like impact, policy, benefit and issue let you discuss common topics such as the environment, education, technology and health precisely.
- Listening and Speaking: lectures in Listening Part 4 are academic in style, and topic words help you speak about abstract questions in Speaking Part 3.
How to learn an academic word list
- Learn by topic, not alphabet. Grouping words into themes such as Environment, Education or Work makes them easier to recall when you face an essay on that theme.
- Get a clear meaning first. An easy English definition plus a translation in your own language is faster than guessing from a long dictionary entry. Use the translation to check, then think in English.
- See it in a sentence. An example on a typical essay topic shows the word's grammar and the words it goes with: have an impact on, play a significant role.
- Say it out loud. Hearing the word in a British or American accent helps you recognise it in Listening.
- Test, don't reread. Recall the word from its meaning, the meaning from the word, and fill it into a sentence. Getting it wrong and seeing the answer is part of learning.
- Review at growing gaps. Come back after a day, then a few days, then a week and longer. A word you can recall after a month is a word you will have on test day.
How Bandlio helps
Bandlio has 950 words from the New Academic Word List 1.2 (Browne, Culligan & Phillips, CC BY-SA 4.0), grouped into topics: Environment, Education, Technology, Health, Society, Work, Science, Economy, Media and Culture. Each card shows the part of speech, an easy English meaning, a translation in your language (24 languages built in, offline), an example sentence on an IELTS essay topic and British or American pronunciation through your phone's text-to-speech. Ten-question quizzes check meaning to word, word to translation and fill-in-the-blank, and spaced review brings words back after 1, 3, 7, 14, 30 and 60 days. You can also search by English word or by meaning in your language.
Frequently asked questions
Is there an official IELTS vocabulary list?
No. IELTS does not publish a word list. Academic word lists are research lists of words common in university English, which is the kind of English used in IELTS Academic Reading and Writing. They are a useful core, not an official syllabus.
Should I learn the AWL or the NAWL?
Either gives you a solid academic core, and they overlap a lot. The AWL is older and widely taught; the NAWL is newer, built from a much larger collection of academic texts and paired with an updated general word list. Pick one and finish it rather than switching.
Are academic words useful for IELTS General Training too?
Partly. General Training reading uses more everyday texts, but Writing Task 2 is still an essay, and words like issue, benefit, factor or significant are useful there in both versions.
Related guides
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Get Bandlio: 950 New Academic Word List words with meanings in your language (Google Play)