New Academic Word List

New Academic Word List 251-275

By Will Salisbury·Updated 25 October 2026

These are words 251 to 275 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. A offer depends on you passing the exam, so it is not yet certain.
2. Her results were to what we expected, because they showed the opposite.
3. The data fall into groups with clear gaps between them, not a continuous scale.
4. The teacher asked everyone in the to sit down and open their books.
5. A error is a mistake in the form of a word, such as writing gooses instead of geese.
6. A move takes you sideways to a job at the same level, not up or down.
7. The nurse gave him an in the arm to protect him from the disease.
8. The of the new medicine was tested on two hundred patients in a hospital.
9. A bee is an with six legs, two pairs of wings and a body in three parts.
10. Her argument is : each step follows clearly from the one before.
11. Newton helped to invent , a branch of maths that deals with rates of change.
12. Water rises sharply in summer, when gardens need more to drink.
13. A study follows the same group of people over many years to see how they change.
14. The judge must stay and not take either side in the argument.
15. There was only a improvement in the figures, which was really tiny.
16. The lawyer met her to discuss the details of the court case.
17. The novel is praised for its of the hero, who feels like a real person.
18. It is not to test medicines on people without their permission.
19. This model is to the old one in speed, quality and price.
20. The cost is fifty pounds, but the exact amount is not yet known.
21. Mozart was a famous who wrote symphonies and operas.
22. The word child is and the word children is plural.
23. The two roads at the village and become one wide main road.
24. The doctor checked the heartbeat of the unborn baby during the scan.
25. The reading test checks , which means whether you understand the text.

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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.

← Words 226-250All groupsWords 276-300 →