Academic Word List (AWL)

the right or opportunity to reach, use or obtain something

Almost always a noun in academic prose, and uncountable in the sense that matters: access to education, to healthcare, to data. It takes 'to', never 'of'. The verb belongs mostly to computing (access the database), while policy writing leans on 'accessible' and 'accessibility', which are about whether something can be used, not merely reached.

enough in amount or good enough in quality for a particular purpose, but no better

A modest word: it means enough, not good. In a review 'adequate' is faint praise, and the negative 'inadequate' turns up far more often in academic prose than the positive. It takes 'for' and 'to': adequate for the purpose, adequate to the task. Against 'sufficient', which is about quantity, this one leans on quality being just good enough.

happening once a year, or calculated over a period of one year

Means once a year, or measured over a year: annual report, annual income, annual growth rate. Finance often writes it as 'per annum' (p.a.). Keep clear of 'biannual', which means either twice a year or every two years depending on who wrote it; say 'twice a year' or use 'biennial' for every two years. The adverb is 'annually'.

easy to see or understand; or seeming to be true without necessarily being so

Two opposed senses, and academic writing uses both. It can mean plainly visible ('it became apparent that') or seeming but perhaps not real ('an apparent contradiction'). The adverb 'apparently' has slid almost entirely to the second, so it now signals hearsay. Because a reader cannot always tell which you mean, pair it with 'only' or 'clearly' when the difference carries weight.

close to the real figure but not exact; as a verb, to come close to something

The stress stays on the second syllable throughout, and what separates the parts of speech is the last one: the adjective is a-PROX-i-mit, with it swallowed, and the verb a-PROX-i-mate, with it fully sounded. British usage gives the verb 'to' (the curve approximates to a straight line), while American usage drops it and takes a plain object. The adverb 'approximately' is a hedge and should carry a round number after it, since 'approximately 197' undoes its own hedging.

a settled way of thinking or feeling about something, shown in what a person does

Takes 'to' or 'towards', never 'against': attitudes towards immigration. In survey research it is nearly always plural and measured on a scale, and it travels with 'knowledge' and 'behaviour' in that standard triad. The everyday sense, someone 'having an attitude', means being difficult and has no place in a paper.

to state that something was caused or produced by a particular person or thing

A stress pair: the noun is AT-tri-bute, meaning a quality or property, and the verb is a-TRIB-ute, meaning to name a cause or an author. The verb needs 'to': attribute the decline to earlier screening. Do not blur it with 'contribute', which runs the other way. In statistics 'attributable' names the share of an outcome traced to one factor.

relating to ordinary citizens and their affairs, rather than to the military or to criminal law

Three separate worlds share one adjective: civil law as opposed to criminal law, civil society and civil rights where citizens face the state, and civil engineering, meaning public works. A fourth and older sense means polite. Keep it apart from 'civilian', which means a non-soldier, and from 'civic', which is about the duties of a citizen rather than their rights.

a set of rules, or a system of signs used to represent information

Two live senses in academic writing: a set of rules (code of conduct, legal code, building code) and a system of symbols (source code, genetic code). Qualitative research adds a third, and it is a verb: to code data is to tag passages with labels before analysis, and 'coding' names that whole stage of the work.

to promise firmly to do something or to assign resources to it; or to carry out a crime

Three senses with three grammars: commit a crime, commit to a course of action (often reflexive: we are committed to), and commit resources to a project. The spelling is the trap. The t doubles in committed, committing and committee, but 'commitment' keeps a single t, because the doubling rule applies only before an ending that begins with a vowel.

to pass information or ideas to another person, or to exchange them

Two constructions doing different jobs: you communicate something to someone, which is a transfer, and you communicate with someone, which is contact. The noun is countable when it means a message and uncountable when it means the process, while the plural 'communications' usually names the infrastructure. A frequent error is 'communicate the audience' for 'communicate to'.

to give your full attention to one thing, or to gather into one place in large quantity

Two academic uses pull in different directions: to concentrate on something is to fix attention on it, and to be concentrated somewhere is to be densely gathered there. Chemistry adds a third, strength of solution. The noun 'concentration' therefore has to be read from its context. Attention takes 'on', not 'in': concentrate on the post-2010 studies.

to discuss something with others; or to grant a title, right or honour formally

The head of a family whose famous member is 'conference', and the two have drifted apart: to confer is either to consult (the judges conferred) or to grant formally (the degree conferred on her). Spelling follows the stress: conferred and conferring double the r because the stress is on the second syllable, while 'conference' moves the stress forward and keeps one r.

a clear difference between two things, or the act of setting them side by side to show it

The noun takes 'between' for the two things and 'to' or 'with' in the linking phrases 'in contrast to' and 'by contrast with'. There is no 'in contrast of'. Another stress pair: CON-trast for the noun, con-TRAST for the verb. Against 'compare', which weighs likeness and difference together, this word looks only at the difference.

a series of events that repeat in the same order

Nearly always a noun, and nearly always with a modifier attached: business cycle, life cycle, carbon cycle, policy cycle. The adjective is 'cyclical' in general use and 'cyclic' in technical writing. The everyday British sense, a bicycle, is a different word for these purposes and will read as a mistake in a paper.

a formal or public discussion in which opposing views are argued

In academic prose this names an ongoing scholarly disagreement rather than a staged argument: the debate over climate attribution, contributions to the debate. Set phrases: there is considerable debate about, hotly debated, much debated. When a clause follows, drop the preposition and use 'debate whether', not 'debate about whether'.

used to say that something happens even though something else might have prevented it

A preposition, not a conjunction, so it takes a noun or an -ing form and never a clause: despite the rain, despite arriving late, but 'although it rained'. Above all, never 'despite of'. That is a blend of this word with 'in spite of' and is the single commonest error made with it. 'Despite the fact that' is grammatical but wordy; write 'although'.

a measurable extent such as length or width, or one aspect of a situation

Outside geometry it means an aspect of a problem: the ethical dimension of the policy. In the plural it can instead mean sheer size, as in the dimensions of the housing shortage. Statistics uses 'dimensionality' for the number of variables in a dataset. Resist it as a grander word for 'part'; if you cannot say which aspect, you probably mean 'part'.

belonging to a country's own affairs, or belonging to the home and family

Two senses that can collide in one sentence: within a country (domestic market, gross domestic product) and within the home (domestic labour, domestic violence). Economics leans on the first, sociology on the second, and only the surrounding words tell them apart. The opposite of the first is 'foreign'. 'Domesticate' belongs to animals and plants and does not follow.

to appear or become known, especially gradually

The standard verb for findings appearing out of analysis: three themes emerged from the interviews, no clear pattern emerged. It is intransitive, so nothing emerges anything and nothing 'is emerged'. It takes 'from'. Watch 'emerging' as a euphemism: emerging economies, emerging evidence. It is built on the same Latin mergere as 'merge' and 'immerse', with ex- giving the sense of rising up out of a liquid.

a mistake, or in statistics the difference between a measured value and the true one

In statistics this is a technical quantity, not a reproach: sampling error, standard error, margin of error. Type I and Type II errors are false positives and false negatives, and measurement error is expected and estimated rather than blamed on anyone. Use this word where the deviation can be measured and 'mistake' where somebody should have known better.

relating to a group that shares a culture, language or ancestry

Refers to shared culture, language or ancestry, and is not a synonym for race or for nationality. The noun is 'ethnicity'. British writing uses 'ethnic minority' as standard, where American writing tends to 'racial and ethnic groups'. Two things to avoid: the word as a noun for people, and the sense meaning foreign or exotic.

something that a person or organisation is trying to achieve

The academic sense is an aim, not the thing scored in football, and it usually arrives in the plural with a possessive: the study's goals, policy goals. It collocates with set, achieve, meet and pursue. Paired with 'objective', the convention is that goals are broad and objectives specific and measurable. British academic writing often prefers 'aim'.

to give or allow something formally; as a noun, a sum of money awarded for a stated purpose

Two academic lives. As a noun it is money awarded for a purpose: apply for a grant, be awarded one, grant-funded work. As a verb it means to give formally, which is why permission and access are granted. A third use concedes a point: 'granted that' opens a concession, and 'take for granted' means to assume something without ever checking it.

for this reason; as a result of what has just been said

A formal connector meaning 'for this reason'. It is an adverb, not a conjunction, so it cannot join two clauses with a comma: use a semicolon or a full stop. It also happily heads a phrase with no verb in it at all, as in 'hence the delay'. A second, older sense means from now: five years hence. Do not pair it with 'therefore' in one sentence.

a proposed explanation put forward so that it can be tested against evidence

The plural is 'hypotheses', ending in an -eez sound; one hypothesis, two hypotheses. And it is tested, never proved: statistical practice lets you reject the null hypothesis or fail to reject it, and nothing in that procedure confirms anything. It collocates with formulate, test, support and reject. Distinguish it from a theory, which is an explanation that has already survived testing.

to put a decision, plan or system into effect

What happens after a policy has been decided: to put it into effect. The noun 'implementation' names an entire research field devoted to why sound policies fail in practice, so the word carries more weight in social science than its plain meaning suggests. A separate noun sense means a tool, and belongs to archaeology and farming rather than to policy.

to show that someone or something was involved in a crime, a fault or a problem

Constantly confused with 'imply', because both feed the noun 'implication'. To implicate is to show that someone or something was involved in something bad; to imply is to suggest without stating. Results imply, they do not implicate. 'Implicit', meaning unstated, belongs to 'imply' as well. In the plural, 'the implications of X' means what follows from it.

to force a rule, tax or condition on someone by using authority

Takes 'on': impose a tax on imports, impose conditions on a loan. You never impose someone with something. What is imposed is unwelcome, so the verb passes judgement; 'introduce' or 'apply' are the neutral choices. Modelling borrows it for constraints imposed on an equation. The adjective 'imposing', meaning grand and impressive, is unrelated in sense.

to combine separate parts so that they work as a single whole

Takes 'into' when one thing is absorbed by another and 'with' when two join as equals: integrate the findings into the model, integrate mental health care with primary care. In migration and education research the noun carries a political charge that the verb does not. Its opposite is 'segregate', not 'disintegrate'. The mathematical sense is the same word taken literally: to integrate is to make whole, which is what a definite integral does to infinitesimals.

existing or happening inside something, rather than outside it

Its whole force comes from the contrast with 'external', and research design uses the pair constantly: internal and external validity, internal and external migration, internal audit. Internal validity asks whether a study measured what it claims within its own design. Note that 'inner' belongs to physical space; this word belongs to organisations, systems and bodies.

to examine something carefully in order to find out the truth about it

In a paper this is what the study itself does, and it takes either an object or a wh-clause: investigate the effect of X, investigate whether X holds. It is stronger than 'look at' and much weaker than 'establish'. There is no 'investigate about'. British abstracts often prefer 'examine' or 'explore' because the policing sense of this family is so loud.

a paid position of regular employment

The one plain everyday word on this sublist, and it is here because applied economics and sociology treat it as a unit of analysis: creation, satisfaction, security, on-the-job training. That is exactly why it earns its place. It is countable, where 'work' and 'employment' are not, so it can be counted, lost and created in a way they cannot.

a word or phrase attached to something to classify it, or the act of attaching one

In research the verb does most of the work: to label data is to attach a category to it, and labelled data is what supervised machine learning runs on. Sociology's labelling theory holds that the label itself changes the behaviour it names. British spelling doubles the l in labelled and labelling; American English keeps one. The pattern is 'label X as Y'.

the process or system by which something happens or is made to happen

Two senses. One is the process by which something actually happens, as in the mechanism of action of a drug; the other is an arrangement set up deliberately, as in a funding mechanism or a complaints mechanism. Social science asks for causal mechanisms, meaning not whether X causes Y but how. Beware using it as an impressive substitute for 'way'.

easy to see or understand without needing any explanation

Use it sparingly. 'It is obvious that' tells any reader who does not find it obvious that they are slow, and it usually stands exactly where an argument should have been. Where it does belong is in naming an alternative explanation you then rule out: the obvious objection is. In speech 'obviously' softens a claim; in prose it is a warning sign.

The family head, but the member you will actually meet in academic prose is 'occupational': occupational health, occupational status, occupational therapy. The verb means to fill a space or a stretch of time, or to take control of a place by force. Keep 'occupancy', which belongs to buildings, apart from 'occupation', which usually means a job.

one of the things that can be chosen in a given situation

Countable and usually plural: policy options, the options available. It collocates with have, offer, consider and rule out. There is no verb of its own, which is why 'opt for' and 'opt out' fill the gap. Against 'choice': an option is one of the things you could pick, while a choice is the act of picking. 'Optional' means not required.

the amount produced by a person, machine, system or economy

Stress on the first syllable, and in economics it is usually uncountable: total output, output per worker. Its opposite is 'input', and evaluators build a chain of inputs, outputs and outcomes, where outputs are what a programme produced and outcomes are what actually changed as a result. Getting that pair the wrong way round misstates what a programme achieved.

considered as a whole, rather than in separate parts

Means taken as a whole. It works before a noun (the overall effect, overall satisfaction) and as a sentence adverb opening a summary. It cannot follow the noun in the adjective sense. It is one word: 'over all' is a different thing, and in British English 'overalls' are workwear. Use it to sum up, not as filler in front of any noun that feels bare.

side by side and always the same distance apart; or closely similar, or happening at the same time

The spelling is the trap: one r, then two l's, then one l. British inflections leave the final l single, so paralleled and paralleling. Beyond geometry it means happening at once and independently (parallel processing, a parallel study) or a close resemblance, and the noun takes 'between': draw a parallel between the two revolutions.

a quantity that defines a system or population, or a limit within which something must operate

Two hazards. In statistics a parameter is a property of the whole population, estimated by a statistic computed from a sample, and the difference between those two is what inference is about. In loose usage the plural means limits, which is where writers collide with 'perimeter', the distance around the edge of a shape. If you mean a boundary, one of those two words is the wrong one.

one distinct stage in a process or in a development that has an order

A distinct stage in something that has an order to it: phase one, the pilot phase, a phased introduction. Clinical trials number theirs with Roman numerals, phase I onwards. As a verb it lives in 'phase in' and 'phase out', meaning to bring in or withdraw gradually. Two traps: the homophone 'faze', meaning to unsettle, and treating it as a synonym for 'period', which has no sequence in it.

to say that something will happen, or to estimate a value from a model

Takes a that-clause or an object: the model predicts that prices will fall, or predicts a fall in prices. In statistics the sense drops any reference to the future, since a predictor is simply an explanatory variable and predicted values are the model's fitted numbers for cases you already have. 'Forecast' is the word that stays tied to time and to the future.

main or most important; as a noun, the head of a school or the original sum of a loan

Endlessly swapped with 'principle', which is a separate entry on sublist one. This word is the adjective meaning main (the principal cause, the principal investigator on a grant) and a noun for the head of a school or for the original sum of a loan as against the interest on it. Its sibling is only ever a noun meaning a rule. A princiPAL is a PAL; a princiPLE is a ruLE.

existing or happening before something else in time

As an adjective it means earlier and sits in front of the noun: prior knowledge, prior agreement, prior conviction. As a preposition it is always 'prior to', never 'prior of', and many style guides treat it as a pompous 'before', so keep it for when the ordering itself matters. Bayesian statistics turns it into a noun: the prior is what you assume before seeing the data.

relating to work that needs special training and qualifications, or a person who does such work

Three overlapping senses: paid rather than amateur, belonging to an occupation with training and a governing body, and meeting a standard of conduct, which is where 'unprofessional' comes from. In health and education research the plural noun means the practitioners themselves. Note that professional development means training, not promotion, whatever the phrase sounds like.

a planned piece of work with a defined aim; as a verb, to estimate a future figure

Another stress pair: the noun is PRO-ject, a planned piece of work, and the verb is pro-JECT, to estimate a figure forward or to throw an image forward. Projected figures are estimates and not achievements. In demography a projection is a conditional what-if built on stated assumptions rather than a forecast of what will happen.

to encourage or actively support something so that it grows or spreads

Three senses share the one form: to encourage something actively (promote health, promote equality), to advance someone to a higher post, and to advertise. Health research leans on the first, and it is stronger than 'encourage' because it implies deliberate effort behind it. All three feed one noun, 'promotion', so the surrounding words have to disambiguate.

a system of government, or an established system of rules and practice

Two senses far apart, plus a word often confused with it. In politics it means a government and usually carries criticism (an authoritarian regime); in law and policy it means a system of rules and carries none at all (the regulatory regime, the tax regime). Medicine's word for a course of treatment is 'regimen'. Pronounced ray-ZHEEM, with the stress on the second syllable.

to settle a problem, dispute or disagreement

The academic sense is to settle something contested: resolve a dispute, resolve an inconsistency in the data. The noun 'resolution' then carries three senses of its own, being a formal decision by a body, the settling of a problem, and the fineness of detail an instrument can distinguish. 'Resolve to do something' means to decide firmly, and 'resolute' follows from that.

to keep something, or to continue to hold or possess it

The formal replacement for 'keep', and the standard verb for holding on to people and records: retain staff, retain students, retain data. 'Retention' is a headline metric in education and employment. It also covers keeping something in memory, which is why the noun turns up in learning research too. Do not let it drift into 'detain' or 'restrain'.

a number of similar or related things coming one after another

Spelled the same in the singular and the plural, and that is where it trips people: as one set it takes a singular verb, so 'a series of experiments was carried out'. There is no such word as 'serie'. In statistics 'time series' names data ordered in time and is a field of its own. Watch it as padding, since 'a series of' is often just a long way of writing 'several'.

The singular is one number, either a figure quoted in an argument or, technically, a quantity computed from a sample in order to estimate a population parameter. The plural does double duty: it is the plural of that, and it is the name of the discipline, and only then does it take a singular verb. So the figures are misleading, but the subject is a branch of mathematics.

a person's position or rank relative to others, or the current state of something

Sociology uses it as a technical term: socioeconomic status is a standard control variable combining income, education and occupation. Elsewhere it means the current state of something (the status of the application) or formal standing (charitable status, refugee status). The plural is 'statuses'; there is no 'stati', because the Latin plural looked identical to the singular.

mental or physical strain, force applied to a material, or emphasis given to something

Three live senses. Health research means psychological strain, with 'stressor' for whatever causes it. Engineering means force per unit area. And in language it means emphasis, which gives the verb 'the author stresses that' and the noun naming the syllable said with most force. That last sense is why several entries on this list have to point out where the stress falls.

coming after something else in time

Means later in time and claims nothing about cause. 'Consequent', from sublist two, means resulting from. Writing this word where you mean the other hides a causal claim; writing the other where you only observed an order asserts one you cannot support. The adverb is 'subsequently', and 'subsequent to' is a stiff way of writing 'after'. Spelled -quent, not -quant.

the total produced by adding numbers together, or an amount of money

Either the result of adding numbers or an amount of money, and academic prose uses three fixed phrases: 'the sum of', 'a sum of money' and 'in sum', which means in short and closes an argument. The verb is usually 'sum up', meaning to summarise. Mathematics takes 'summation' as its noun, while prose takes the shorter one for a written account.

a short account giving the main points of something longer

The adjective is a false friend for the noun: summary dismissal and summary justice mean done at once and without the usual process, not done briefly. In a paper, 'in summary' closes an argument while 'in conclusion' closes the whole piece, and an abstract is written to stand alone rather than to follow the text. 'Summary statistics' means descriptive figures such as means.

to take on and carry out a piece of work or a responsibility

The formal verb for carrying out a piece of work: undertake a study, a review, an analysis. It is irregular (undertake, undertook, undertaken) and the past participle is the form the literature uses most, as in 'research undertaken by'. A second sense is to promise formally, which gives 'an undertaking' both meanings, a task and a pledge. Prefer it to 'do' in a methods section.