The Academic Word List and IELTS writing
Academic word is exactly the sort of words you need to be able to use in your writing. They are all common words and you do need to learn to use them. This means learning:
- their grammar
- collocations/word combinations
- different word forms
Their meaning is not normally a problem.
Exercises on each word
What is the Academic Word List?
My daily word exercises are based on the Academic Word List (AWL) because the AWL is a list of the words most used in academic writing across all specialties (science, law, medicine, economics etc).
The AWL contains 570-word families subdivided into 10 lists with list 1 as the result the most frequently used words and list 10 the least. The idea is that list 1 contains the most common words and list 10 the least common.
Learning how to use these word List
This Word is a great tool but you need to know how to use it. Here are some quick tips.
Do not just focus on what the words mean because these are words you want to use for yourself.
Learn what all the common forms of the word are hence this means learning the word families
You need to know what other words you can use in combination with these words – this means collocations and prepositions. If you don’t know that then you can’t use them!
Know your parts of speech – AWL list 2
Decide whether these words are adjectives, nouns, verbs or adverbsStart
Making new words – AWL list 2
Decide which word best completes the sentenceStart