Vocabulary lists for ELA classes
Word lists for writing and reading

In American schools, English vocabulary is typically taught in high school as a word list to be memorized in preparation for standardized tests.

Word lists can improve reading comprehension and writing precision providing the words on the list are those students are likely to find in their reading and need to use in their writing. To put it another way, the word lists need to be authentic.

Here are lists that you could use with your students.

The General Service List (GSL)

Compiled in 1953, the General Service List is a list of over 2,000 words selected to be of the greatest "general service" to learners of English. In 1995, Bauman and Culligan revised the list, putting the words in order of frequency.

The five most frequently used words are:

1. the
2. be
3. of
4. and
5. a

However, by the time you get as far down as the 500th most common words in English, you arrive at terms like experiment and responsible.

The words on the list are a pretty fair presentation of those students should be able to read and use in their writing no later than high school graduation.

To use the GSL list, you need to copy it to your computer and put it into a spreadsheet, following the authors' directions.

Academic words list (AWL)

Since all students are going to be exposed to academic terms like analyze and describe, you can hardly go wrong teaching academic vocabulary lists in your English language arts classes in grade 7 and beyond.

Averil Coxhead collected more than 400 academic texts in 28 subject areas covering the arts, commerce, law, and science for her master's thesis. From those, Coxhead picked 570 academic words that appeared at least 100 times overall and at least 10 times in each of the four disciplines. The result is a list of words students will encounter in academic and other nonfiction reading.

Coxhead arranged the words by word families, so, for example, words like analysis and analytical are listed with other words that come from the same root. The families arranged in numbered sublists. The number indicates the frequency, with #1 being the words that were most frequently used in the academic texts.

The list is available from the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies at the Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

Topical lists at vocabulary.com

Another useful source of vocabulary lists is vocabulary.com. This website lets you choose vocabulary lists that correlate with various academic subjects, such as math grades 9-12 or language arts. MyVocabulary.com has some rather unusual word lists. They include such things as:

All told, My Vocabulary.com has 370 vocabulary lists of themed words.

The site also contains word lists taken from famous works of literature, both fiction and nonfiction. You can find a word list for Anne Frank's Diary of a Young Girl or the Declaration of Independence, for example.

These word lists are useful because you can select lists that correlate with topics that you are already planning to teach. Thus, the word lists can be slipped into existing units and lessons rather than being taught in isolation. The context will make learning vocabulary easier for students, and learning vocabulary will assist them in learning the other content.

Virtual salt word list

A third word list you might wish to use is Virtual Salt's list of 1062 words compiled by Robert A. Harris, a former college English teacher who retired to write full time.

Virtual Salt's list focuses on words that people who read and keep up with the news are likely to have come across, words like acute, adage, innate, and prodigal. Your students may not use these in the school cafeteria, but they are very likely to find them in their reading for school, on the job, and for other learning tasks.

Related resources for

The vocabulary websites page lists and describes sources teachers can use in preparing to teach via vocabulary lists.

You may also wish to scan the online free dictionaries page for sites that offer services for teaching and learning vocabulary.