These are words 326 to 350 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 New Academic Word List was compiled by Charles Browne, Brent Culligan and Joseph Phillips (2013) from academic texts, and its words are ranked by the authors. We teach the top 400 in rank order. How the list was made
Nothing here is marked by a computer. You decide how well you knew each word and how it sounded. Your recordings stay in your browser: they are not uploaded and they are lost when you close the page. Your place and your answers are kept in this browser; sign in (free) at the end to keep them on every device.
connected with living things and their environment
Watch out: Ecological is the adjective of ecology.
Did you guess it?
How did that sound?
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).
consent is needed for any child under sixteen to join the trip.
The wedding includes music, prayers and a special meal for the family.
Soil is high near the river, so crops grow very well there.
The library is to the school, right next to it.
Fresh fruit is available in every shop, so it is easy to find.
An independent watched the vote to make sure that it was fair.
She lost her and began to sing in front of the whole class.
The students completed a with twenty questions about their sleep.
To say that all teenagers are lazy is a based on very few cases.
research uses interviews and opinions to describe experiences, not numbers.
She felt before the exam, with stiff shoulders and shaking hands.
The of the interview, a written copy of every word spoken, took many hours.
Eat grown food, produced near the place where you live.
Vitamins and minerals are examples of a that the body needs to stay healthy.
Regular practice will what you learnt in class and help you remember it.
The difference was significant, which means it was not just due to chance.
Pilots use a machine to flying a plane without leaving the ground.
A fog covered the road, so thick that we could hardly see the car in front.
is the study of how living things relate to each other and to their surroundings.
A result shows no effect at all, so the experiment did not find a difference.
The airport is the building where passengers wait for their flights.
Use language with friends, but write in a formal style in an essay.
The hospital will the patient on Friday and let her go home.
An system changes by itself to fit new conditions as they appear.
The oil spill caused serious damage to the sea and its wildlife.
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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.