Academic vocabulary

In this video we will introduce you to three important aspects of academic vocabulary:

  • general academic vocabulary
  • discipline-specific words and phrases, and
  • nominalisation

Before looking at this video, you might like to watch the video on Vocabulary in the Essential Grammar section.

You probably already know most of the words that you need to get by in everyday English. In fact, about 2800 words make up 90% of the vocabulary used by native speakers in their everyday conversations. But the vocabulary that you are reading and hearing in your coursework is not the same as everyday English.

Let’s look at the most commonly used academic words across all disciplines. These words make up what is called the Academic Word List.

The Academic Word List contains the 570 of the most frequently used words in academic contexts. This list does not include the most common everyday words: they are words like data, research, evidence, and analysis. Many of them come from Greek or Latin roots. You can find the list at the web address on the screen.

The list is divided into 10 sub-lists. Sub-list 1 contains the 60 most frequently occurring words in all academic texts. Sub-list 2 contains the next 60 most common words, and so on.

You might be tempted to memorise the entire list, but this wouldn’t be the best use of your time. A lot of research has shown that, in order to learn new vocabulary, you need to read, hear, speak and write a word numerous times in a variety of different contexts to really know it.

As well as these general academic words, many words and phrases that you come across will be specific to your field of study, and they may not be used very much outside of your discipline. For example, health students may use the words cardiovascular system, psoriasis or prosthesis, while business students may come across terms such as return on investment, venture capital, and depreciation.

Ask your lecturer or tutor to explain key words like these and to tell you which ones are important to learn. Write these words down in a vocabulary notebook, including details about their meaning, part of speech, the grammar of the word, collocations, register, pronunciation and spelling. It is also good to note down an example sentence so that you know how the words or phrases can be used, like in the example shown now. For more about knowing words, take a look at the Vocabulary video.

One more important aspect of vocabulary in academic texts is called ‘nominalisation’. ‘Nominalisation’ just means turning a verb, adjective or adverb into a noun. For example, the verb ‘collect’ can become the noun ‘collection’ by adding I-O-N.

After changing the form of the verb, we will need to change its position in the sentence and possibly change other words in the sentence too. For example:

  • It took a long time to collect data.
  • The data collection process took a long time.

Here are some more examples of nominalisation. Can you identify which words have been nominalised?

  • I was required to edit the paper before submitting it.
  • Editing was required before submission of the paper.
  • We have made the model more applicable.
  • The applicability of the model was increased.

Did you get them right?

Nominalisation is common in written academic texts, especially in scientific and technical papers. It can be used to put emphasis on a ‘thing’ rather than a ‘person’. For example, in this sentence:

  • Health experts don’t understand why the disease is so prevalent.

The focus is on ‘health experts’ and their understanding of something. We can change this so that the emphasis is instead on how widespread the disease is.

  • The prevalence of the disease is a source of confusion among health experts.

Nominalisation helps to make our writing more formal and academic.

Let’s try another example. How would you change this sentence so that it begins with “an improvement”?

  • We can see that sentiment amongst business people has improved compared to the previous quarter.

One possibility is:

  • An improvement in business sentiment is evident in comparison to the previous quarter.

Another possibility is:

  • There has been an improvement in business sentiment compared to the previous quarter.

As you read and listen to English in your studies, look for examples of nominalisation and other ways to make your language appropriate for an academic context.

In this video we have introduced you to some important aspects of academic vocabulary. Try the exercises below for practice on this topic.