BUZZWORDS Whats the Academic Word List AWL and

BUZZWORDS What’s the Academic Word List (AWL) and what can it do for our students?

WHAT IS THE AWL? Developed by Averil Coxhead from Victoria University’s School of Linguistics and Applied Studies in 2000 Contains 570 words/word families most used across the Academic Corpus Coxhead, Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2): 213 -238.

THE ACADEMIC CORPUS? The Academic Corpus is a group of 414 texts with a total of 3. 5 million running words from academic sources such as Journals Textbook chapters Workbooks Lab manuals It is sorted into 4 sections and 28 subsections Coxhead, Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2): 213 -238.

THE ACADEMIC CORPUS Arts Commerce Law Science Education Accounting Constitutional Law Biology History Economics Criminal Law Chemistry Linguistics Finance Family Law and Medico-legal Computer Science Philosophy Industrial Relations International Law Geography Politics Management Pure Commercial Law Geology Psychology Marketing Quasi-commercial Law Mathematics Sociology Public Policy Rights and Remedies Physics Coxhead, Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2): 213 -238.

BACK TO THE AWL word families have RANGE Occur in all sections and over half of the subsections of the Academic Corpus AWL word families have FREQUENCY Occur over 100 times in the Academic Corpus AWL word families have OF FREQUENCY UNIFORMITY Occur minimum of 10 times in each section of the Academic Corpus Coxhead, Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2): 213 -238.

MORE ON THE AWL Does not include the 2, 000 most commonly used words in English (a, the, and, etc), proper nouns, or Latin forms Further divided into 10 sublists ranging from most used (Sublist 1) to least used (Sublist 10) as relative to the AWL as a whole Coxhead, Averil (2000) A New Academic Word List. TESOL Quarterly, 34 (2): 213 -238.

WHY IS THE AWL IMPORTANT? The AWL is a list of the vocabulary words that will be most important, based on research, to our students in respect to future academic and vocational success. These words must be taught AND put in context for our students to learn and master this vocabulary

HOW CAN WE USE THE AWL? Encourage students to stop and define words they aren’t familiar within academic texts Use the word in context to your subject as well as others What does method look like in science vs. math vs. business? Offer incentives for word study outside of class Quizlet, graphic organizers, vocabulary. com, word ladders

GET CREATIVE!

MANIPULATE WORDS Can you really have mastery of words or subjects without being able to manipulate them in new ways? Could you determine the puzzle on the left was “foot in the door” without knowing that 12’’= 1 foot? Or… “walk on water” without the knowledge that H 2 O=water?

GET STUDENTS TALKING ABOUT AWL Take time to incorporate AWL and domain specific words into your lesson Word Read-Around can take only 5 minutes, but involves the whole class Each student receives a slip of paper with one statement and one question that includes a vocabulary word One student has the card labeled as the first and the game continues until all cards are used EX: “I have the first card. Who has the word that means to devour or use up? ” Next student: “I have consume. Who has the word that means to obtain money for? ” Next student: “I have finance”…and so on

OTHER VOCABULARY ACTIVITIES Fact or Fiction Each student is assigned one vocabulary word. They write 3 statements related to the word with one of them being false. The group must identify the false statement and fix the error to make it true Make a Word Wall displaying all learned words Vocabulary Bee In Text Find the target word in multiple texts (vocabulary. com) and compare uses

OTHER AWL RESOURCES About the AWL Victoria University Website Dr. Averil Coxhead http: //www. victoria. ac. nz/lals/resources/academicwordlist http: //www. victoria. ac. nz/lals/about/staff/averil-coxhead AWL Activities AWL practice AWL highlighter http: //www. englishvocabularyexercises. com/AWL/index. htm http: //www. nottingham. ac. uk/alzsh 3/acvocab/awlhighlighter. htm AWL gapmaker http: //www. nottingham. ac. uk/alzsh 3/acvocab/awlgapmaker. htm