New Academic Word List

New Academic Word List 201-225

By Will Salisbury·Updated 25 October 2026

These are words 201 to 225 of the top 400 words of the New Academic Word List: words that appear again and again in university texts and in the Academic IELTS Reading and Writing tasks. For each word, read the example, try to guess the meaning, then reveal it and mark honestly how you did. Then say the word aloud, record yourself and compare it with the model voice. When you have finished, try the gap quiz and save your results.

The words

Gap quiz

Each sentence has one gap. Drag a word into the gap, or tap a word and then tap the gap. The words are the ones you have just practised, and some of them have changed shape (for example, is or made).

1. The practical of a smartphone depends on how many tasks it can do for its owner.
2. A squeeze of lemon is the perfect to fish, because the two go well together.
3. In autumn each turns brown and falls from the tree.
4. A agreement is spoken, so there is nothing written down to check later.
5. The score of the two matches decides which team goes through.
6. The law promises between men and women in work, pay and education.
7. Linguists study a large of real texts stored on a computer to see how words are used.
8. The heart is a vital of the body, because it pumps blood to all the other parts.
9. A steep made the road hard to cycle up, so we walked beside our bikes.
10. The study explained its , which described how the data were collected and checked.
11. A company is a legal that is separate from the people who own it.
12. The doctor found a small in her lung and arranged an operation.
13. Eating foods rich in , such as beans and oats, helps your digestion.
14. The discovery created a new and completely changed the way scientists think.
15. She studied at university to understand how people think, feel and behave.
16. Some scientists believe that the size of the universe is and never comes to an end.
17. The city has a population, with people from many countries and cultures.
18. A test helps doctors find out which illness a patient has.
19. The of the story was broken by a gap in the plot that nobody explained.
20. Rainfall makes farming difficult, because the amount changes so much from year to year.
21. The layer of the Earth is the crust, and the inner layers are much hotter.
22. Musicians read , a system of written symbols for notes and rhythm.
23. Scientists sent a space to Mars to collect pictures and data.
24. The yearly of birds takes them thousands of miles south for the winter.
25. Solving this problem needs skills, such as algebra and careful working with numbers.

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Word list: New Academic Word List 1.2 by Charles Browne, Brent Culligan and Joseph Phillips (2013), licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. The list gives the words and their order; the meanings, examples and exercises on this page are our own.

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