The world-renowned ACADEMIC WORD LIST (AWL), represented below, was developed by Averil Coxhead in 2000 at the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand (source: Wikipedia). The list contains 570 semantic fields which were selected because they appear with great frequency in a broad range of academic texts. The AWL was specifically created to assist teachers of English as a Second Language (ESL) in preparing non-native English speakers for coursework in English-speaking universities or colleges. It is also meant to be used by students on their own. Please note that AWL words appearing on ESL lessons and in the Movie Vocabulay List at Movies Grow English are marked with an asterisk*.
