Academic Word List (AWL)

to succeed in reaching a goal or standard after effort

Reserved for goals reached through effort: achieve an aim, a target, consensus, independence, high grades. Do not use it for things that simply happen: a temperature 'reaches' 30 degrees, it does not achieve it. The noun 'achievement' is the family member you will meet most often in education research (achievement gap, student achievement).

to gain or come to possess something, especially gradually or through effort

The academic verb for gaining something gradually or by effort: knowledge, skills, a language, a habit, a company. Writing 'children get language' sounds childish; 'children acquire language' is the standard phrasing, and 'language acquisition' is the field's name. For an everyday object you simply buy or obtain it: 'she acquired a sandwich' is comic.

to manage or run an organisation, system or programme (rare form of 'administer')

The odd one out on this list: the AWL prints 'administrate' as the headword, but the verb English actually uses is 'administer' (administer a test, a drug, a programme). 'Administrate' is a rare back-formation from 'administration' and many editors treat it as an error. Learn the family (administration, administrative, administrator) and write 'administer'.

to influence something or produce a change in it

The single most common error in academic writing: 'affect' is the verb, 'effect' is the noun. Rainfall affects yields; the effect of rainfall is large. The exceptions are real but rare: 'effect change' means bring it about, and 'affect' as a noun means observable emotion in psychology. Until you need those, hold the verb/noun split as an absolute rule.

suitable or right for a particular situation or purpose

In academic prose this is almost always the adjective, and it is the standard hedge in a methods section: an appropriate test, appropriate ethical approval, 'where appropriate'. It takes 'for' or 'to'. The verb 'appropriate' (to take something for your own use) belongs to politics and art criticism, not to your method, and it differs only in the last syllable, ending /-eɪt/ (a-PRO-pri-ayt) where the adjective has a reduced /-ət/ (a-PRO-pri-ut); the stress does not move.

one particular part or feature of a situation, idea or problem

Nearly always followed by 'of': one aspect of the problem, certain aspects of policy. It names a facet of a thing, not a person's opinion of it; if you mean a point of view, write 'perspective'. In linguistics it is also a technical term for how an action unfolds in time (perfective, progressive).

to help someone, especially by doing part of the work

Choose it over 'help' for the pattern rather than for the politeness: you assist WITH a task or IN doing something, and the noun phrase 'with the assistance of' credits a contributor. It suits institutional or technical help, as when research assistants assisted with data collection, but keep 'help' when the sentence is about one person helping another, or the prose turns stilted.

a group of things or people that share particular characteristics

The verbs it keeps company with are worth memorising: things fall into a category, are assigned to one, or are placed in one. The verb is 'categorise' and the adjective 'categorical', but watch that one, since 'a categorical denial' means absolute, not classified. Plural: categories.

a numbered main division of a book, thesis or edited volume

The unit of a book or a thesis; a journal article has sections, not chapters. It also names a standalone piece in an edited collection ('a book chapter'), which is cited differently from an article and is often weighted differently in research assessment. The figurative sense, 'a new chapter in the country's history', is journalistic.

an official group appointed to investigate and report on something

Polysemous, and academic prose uses two senses only. As a noun it is an appointed body that investigates and reports (a royal commission, the European Commission); as a verb it means to pay for work to be produced (the ministry commissioned a review). The sales-percentage sense and 'in commission / out of commission' belong to business and mechanics, not to argument.

a group of people sharing a place, an interest or an identity

It rarely stands alone in academic writing, but is premodified: the local community, the scientific community, the research community, community-based interventions, community health. In ecology it is technical, meaning all the populations sharing a habitat. Note that 'the scientific community' is a rhetorical move: it claims consensus, so use it only when there is one.

made up of many connected parts, and therefore difficult to analyse

A reader learns nothing from it until you say what the parts are, so give it a collocation: a complex relationship, interaction, system, process. 'Complex' means many interacting parts; 'complicated' suggests needless intricacy. The noun is 'complexity', and two concrete noun senses need keeping apart: a housing complex, a protein complex.

to calculate a result, especially by formula or by machine

In a results section this is the neutral verb for producing a number from data (we computed the mean, scores were computed), and it is interchangeable with 'calculate'. The family reaches much further than the verb: computation, computational (computational linguistics, computational cost) and 'computing' as the name of a discipline.

to decide something after weighing evidence; also to bring to an end

Two senses sit side by side. The dominant academic one is inferential ('the authors conclude that the effect is small') and it takes a that-clause, never 'conclude about'. The other is simply to finish: the trial concluded in 2019, the paper concludes with three recommendations. The noun 'conclusion' serves both, plus the fixed phrase 'draw a conclusion'.

to carry out an organised activity such as research or a survey

The verb a methods section leans on hardest: conduct a study, a survey, an experiment, an interview. 'Do a study' is not wrong, only informal. Two other lives stay separate: the noun 'conduct' (stressed on the first syllable) meaning behaviour, as in a code of conduct, and the physics sense, where metals conduct heat.

following as a direct result of something else

The headword adjective is the least used member of its family. What you will actually write is the linking adverb 'consequently' (= therefore) and the noun 'consequence' ('as a consequence of', 'the consequences for policy'). The adjective is formal and appears either before a noun or in the pattern 'consequent on/upon'.

to build something, or to form a theory or argument piece by piece

Half its academic work is abstract: you construct an argument, a model, a scale, a narrative. The noun 'construct', stressed on the first syllable, is a key social-science term for a concept invented in order to be measured: intelligence and wellbeing are constructs, and 'construct validity' asks whether your instrument really measures one.

to use up a resource, or to eat or drink something

Three fields meet in this word: energy and resource use (the building consumes less per square metre), dietary research (participants consumed the test meal), and economics, where 'consumer' and 'consumption' do most of the work. 'Consumption' is the noun you will need far more often than the verb.

public recognition for an achievement; also a unit of study, or money lent

Attribution is what academic prose uses above all: a discovery is credited to someone, an author takes credit for an idea. Two further senses are the same word put to different work, all three going back to Latin creditum, a thing entrusted: the university-admin sense of course credits, and the financial sense (credit rating, buying on credit). Keep them apart in one piece of writing, because a reader meets only one sense at a time. The everyday praise use, 'credit to the team', is informal and out of place in an argument.

the shared beliefs, practices and values of a group or institution

Outside anthropology it is usually premodified and means how an institution behaves: organisational culture, safety culture, a culture of blame, workplace culture. There is also a laboratory sense (a bacterial culture, cell culture). The adjective disambiguates for you: 'cultural' always points at the social sense, never the petri dish.

the planned structure of a study or object; to plan it deliberately

In research writing this means study design, the shape of the investigation, long before it means how something looks: experimental, longitudinal, cross-sectional and within-subjects are all designs, and 'a design flaw' is a criticism of the method, not the layout. Note 'by design' as the opposite of 'by chance'.

clearly different from and separate from something else

It does two jobs. Meaning clearly separate, it can stand alone (three distinct groups) or name the comparison with a 'from' (anxiety is distinct from depression); meaning clearly noticeable, it never takes one (a distinct advantage, a distinct possibility). Do not swap in 'distinctive', which means characteristic or identifying. The noun is 'distinction', and the verb is 'distinguish between'.

one necessary or noticeable part of a larger whole

Outside chemistry, where it is the technical term for a substance on the periodic table, this is the general 'necessary part of a whole': a key element, an essential element, the elements of good practice. Prefer it to 'thing' or 'part' when the whole is abstract. 'Elementary' has drifted away in meaning to 'basic, simple'.

to treat two things as equal or as amounting to the same thing

Usually appears inside a criticism ('the author wrongly equates wealth with wellbeing'), so it carries a warning rather than a neutral report. The pattern is equate X WITH Y; 'equate to' is a different, quantitative use meaning amount to. Related nouns split by sense: an equation in mathematics, equivalence in argument.

to judge the value, quality or effectiveness of something against criteria

Stronger than simply measuring: to evaluate is to judge worth against stated criteria, which is why programme evaluation is a discipline of its own. Say against what: evaluate X against a benchmark, in terms of cost, for feasibility. In mathematics it narrows to working out the value of an expression.

a noticeable characteristic or component of something

As a noun it names a characteristic worth pointing out: a striking feature of the data, a distinguishing feature. As a verb it means to have as a prominent part (the survey featured open-ended questions). Machine learning has given it a third, now very common technical sense: a feature is an input variable to a model.

coming last in a sequence, or settled and not to be changed

Two duties: last in a sequence (the final chapter, the final stage) and settled beyond change (the final version, the decision is final). The adverb 'finally' introduces your last point and is not the same as 'at last', which expresses relief. 'Finalise' means to put into final form.

the main centre of attention; to direct attention at one thing

The verb takes 'on', always: the paper focuses on rural schools, and 'focus to' is a common learner error. The noun takes both prepositions, 'a focus on' naming where attention is directed and 'the focus of the study' naming what it centres on. The past tense is written 'focused' in modern usage, though the older double-s spelling survives in some British publishing. The plural noun 'foci' is used in technical writing; 'focuses' is safer elsewhere.

a strong effect that one thing has on another

The noun is always safe: the impact of X on Y. The verb ('this impacts outcomes') is widespread but still irritates many editors, who prefer 'affect' or 'have an impact on'; in an assessed essay, use the noun. Two fixed terms to know: environmental impact assessment, and a journal's impact factor.

to cause physical harm to a person or animal

The headword is the verb, but the family members you will actually write are the noun 'injury' and the participle 'injured': injury rates, the injured party, a sports injury. Reserve it for living bodies: objects are damaged, not injured. In law, 'injury' extends beyond the body to any wrong done to a person's rights.

an organisation for research or teaching; also to introduce something formally

Two lives, with no change in pronunciation. The noun names an organisation for research or training (a research institute, the Institute of Physics). The verb is formal and means to set something in motion: institute proceedings, institute a policy. The broader noun 'institution' covers not only bodies but lasting social arrangements such as marriage.

to put money, time or effort into something expected to bring a return

Not only financial: writers invest time, effort and resources in something, and the preposition is always 'in'. The nouns split by sense: 'investment' covers both money and effort, 'investor' only money. Do not confuse it with 'investigate', which is an unrelated word that merely looks similar.

a single question, object or entry in a list or set

In research writing the dominant sense is narrow and technical: a single question on a questionnaire or test, hence 'a 20-item scale', 'item analysis', 'item response theory'. Elsewhere it is a countable entry in a list or budget. It is a counting word, so do not use it where you mean 'issue' or 'matter'.

an academic periodical that publishes peer-reviewed research

For a student only one sense matters: the peer-reviewed periodical where research is published. Work appears IN a journal, journals have impact factors, and 'a journal article' is a genre distinct from a book chapter or a conference paper. The diary sense exists but will mislead a reader in an academic sentence.

to keep something in the same state; also to assert something firmly

The second sense surprises learners: 'the author maintains that the sample was biased' means claims or argues, and it is a reporting verb close to 'contends'. The first sense is to keep something going: maintain standards, equipment, a position. Only that first sense has the noun 'maintenance'.

usual or expected; in statistics, following the bell-shaped distribution

Technically loaded, so it seldom means just 'ordinary' in academic prose: a normal distribution is a specific bell-shaped curve, and a normal range in medicine is defined by reference values. In social research it can smuggle in a value judgement about people, where 'typical' or 'most common' is the honest choice.

to get something, especially by effort or through a formal process

Reach for it in place of 'get' wherever a procedure was followed: obtain consent, permission, funding, a licence, a sample, results. It is wrong for casual acquisitions, since nobody obtains a coffee. There is also a rarer intransitive use meaning 'prevail': the conditions that obtain in the region.

to take part in an activity together with others

It takes 'in' and nothing else: participate in a study, in a workshop. 'Participate a study' and 'participate to' are both errors. The related noun 'participant' is now the standard word for a person in a study, having replaced 'subject' in most research-ethics writing; 'participation' names the act (participation rates).

to notice something or to understand it in a particular way

It marks a claim about how something is seen rather than how it is, which is exactly why 'perceived risk' and 'perceived barriers' are standard research variables: they may diverge from measured reality. The pattern is perceive X as Y. The noun 'perception' names both the act and the resulting view.

showing agreement or benefit; in science, indicating presence or an upward relationship

Three academic uses that a reader must not blur. A positive correlation means the two variables rise together, and says nothing about the result being good. A positive test result means the thing looked for was found, which in medicine is often bad news. Only the third use, positive attitudes, means favourable.

possible but not yet actual; the capacity to develop or happen

The adjective that lets you raise a possibility without claiming evidence for it: potential benefits, risks, confounders, limitations. It states that something could happen, not that it has. As a noun it takes 'for' or 'to': the potential for misuse, the potential to reduce costs.

coming before the present one in time or order

The standard word for earlier work: previous research, previous studies, 'as noted in the previous section'. 'Previous to' is stiff; write 'before'. It means the one immediately before in a sequence, so 'the previous director' is the one just before the current one, while 'a former director' is anyone who used to hold the post.

first in importance, or first in order or level

Three technical uses to keep apart. The primary aim is the most important one, and it determines how a trial is powered. Primary data and primary sources are first-hand, as against secondary. Primary school and primary care are the first level of a system. The adverb 'primarily' means mainly.

to buy something; also the thing bought or the act of buying

In contracts, economics and consumer research this is the word used where ordinary prose says 'buy': purchase price, purchasing power, purchase intention. In a methods section it is exactly right for where materials came from. In ordinary narrative it sounds pompous, since people buy bread while institutions purchase equipment.

the extent between two limits; also a varied set of things of one kind

Statistics gives it a precise value that the everyday senses do not have: the range is the highest score minus the lowest. Elsewhere it is either variety (a range of options) or limits (ages ranged from 18 to 65). Beware 'a wide range of' as filler; it is only informative if you say a wide range of what.

a large area of a country or world, or a defined area of a body or structure

Geography is the main sense (regional differences, regional policy), but it is equally standard in anatomy and imaging (the frontal region) and in genetics (a coding region). The hedge 'in the region of' means approximately, which is a useful formal alternative to 'about' with quantities.

to control something by rules, or to keep it at a steady level

Two senses share the form: governing by rule (a regulated industry; regulation, regulatory, deregulation) and holding something at a steady level (the body regulates temperature; gene regulation). The nouns differ in feel: 'regulations' are the written rules, 'regulation' is the activity of controlling.

closely connected to the matter being considered

Say relevant TO what, or the word does no work: to the research question, to practice, to policy. Standard pairings are relevant literature, relevant variables, and the parenthetical 'where relevant'. The noun is 'relevance'; the negative is 'irrelevant'. Note that relevance is a claim you have to argue for, not one the word makes for you.

to live somewhere officially or permanently; also to be located in something

The administrative verb for living somewhere: a form asks where you reside, a friend asks where you live. It gives you 'resident', 'residence' and 'residential status', which are the words used in eligibility criteria. The abstract use is common in argument: 'the difficulty resides in the definition' means lies in.

a supply of something useful: money, materials, staff or information

Usually plural and usually qualified: limited resources, scarce resources, natural resources, human resources, resource allocation. In education a 'resource' is teaching material. The adjective 'resourceful' has drifted to mean good at improvising and does not belong to the same argument.

to limit the size, amount or scope of something

Takes 'to' when you narrow a scope (the analysis was restricted to adults) and stands alone when you limit an amount (restrict access, intake, movement). The noun usually appears in the plural with 'on': restrictions on travel. Do not swap in 'restrain', which means to hold a person or force back physically.

safe from risk or loss; also to succeed in obtaining something important

The verb sense is the one learners miss: to secure funding, a place, or an agreement means to obtain it after effort, and it is everywhere in grant and career writing. As an adjective it stretches from physical safety through data security to 'secure attachment' in developmental psychology. The noun is 'security'.

to try to obtain or achieve something; to look for it

Irregular: seek, sought, sought. Academic use is mostly abstract (seek advice, permission, support, asylum), and 'this paper seeks to show' is a standard, deliberately cautious way to state an aim, weaker than 'this paper shows'. 'Look for' is the everyday equivalent and is fine in speech.

to choose something or someone carefully from a larger group

The sampling verb: participants were selected, randomly selected, according to selection criteria. It implies deliberate choosing, which is precisely why 'selection bias' names the damage done when the choosing is not random. As an adjective before a noun it means exclusive: a select group of institutions.

a place where something is located or where something happens

It covers a physical location (a study site, a construction site), an excavation in archaeology, and a website. The homophones are what editors catch most often: 'site' is a place, 'cite' is to quote a source, 'sight' is vision, and writing 'sight your sources' is a memorable way to lose marks.

a plan designed to achieve a long-term aim

Separated from 'tactics' by scope and timescale: a strategy sets the direction, tactics carry it out. Education and psychology use it for the mental kind (learning strategies, coping strategies, reading strategies), which is where most students will meet it. Adjective 'strategic'; plural 'strategies'.

a study that collects information from many people by questionnaire or interview

The dominant academic sense is the instrument: conduct or administer a survey, survey data, response rate. It also means a broad overview of a field ('a survey of the literature') and, in land use, the measuring of ground. Stress moves between word classes: SURvey for the noun, surVEY for the verb.

a piece of writing or other artefact treated as an object of study

In the humanities a text is anything treated as an object of analysis, whether a novel, a statute, an advertisement or a film, which is what makes 'textual analysis' and 'reading X as a text' possible. It also means a set book on a course, and, in everyday use, a phone message. The adjective is 'textual'; 'texture' is a different word about surface feel.

a long-established custom, or an established line of thought or practice

The academic sense is the second one: a tradition is an established line of thought you can place your work inside, as in the empiricist tradition or a long tradition of research on this question. The everyday sense of inherited custom is the first. 'Traditional' usually carries an implied contrast with modern or experimental, so use it knowingly.

to move something or someone from one place, person or system to another

The abstract senses carry the academic weight: transfer of learning (a skill carrying over to a new task), technology transfer, data transfer. Two mechanical points: the r doubles in transferred and transferring, and the stress moves, transFER for the verb but TRANSfer for the noun.