Building your vocabulary for university

Before you continue, reflect on your experiences with learning vocabulary during your studies. How would you rate your ability in the following skills? Rate your ability from ‘good’ to ‘needs development’.

Reflect on your answers. Congratulations if you feel confident about your skills. You may find it helpful to review the materials on this page to confirm your knowledge and possibly learn more. Don't worry if you don't feel confident. Work through these materials to build your skills.  

Learn more about the different types of vocabulary you will encounter at university by watching this video: 

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Stop and reflect on what you've just learned. Are you surprised by anything?  Write down three things you want to remember before moving on to the next section.

Check your understanding of the video by choosing the best sentences to create a summary. 

• If you would like to learn more about the different types of vocabulary, go to What is general academic vocabulary? and What is discipline-specific vocabulary?  

• If you would like to learn how to extaend your vocabulary go to Strategies for building your vocabulary.

General academic vocabulary can be defined as words frequently used in academic writing and speech across a wide range of disciplines.  Research suggests that the average academic paper comprises approximately 80% general English words and 10% general academic words (Coxhead, 2000). 

If you understand general academic vocabulary, you can: 

• understand your weekly reading texts more easily 
• understand your classes more easily 
• improve your academic writing 
• use it as a foundation for building your discipline-specific vocabulary. 

General academic words are important because they are very common, but your lecturers are unlikely to teach them.  For instance, if you are studying Anatomy, you may learn the following fact in class: 

The function of the thoracic wall is to protect the thoracic cavity. 

Your lecturer will probably explain thoracic wall and cavity but will assume you know the meaning of words like function.  

One feature of general academic words is that they are more formal than general English. Learn more about this in Academic Style in Writing.

If you are unsure about your knowledge of general academic vocabulary, you may like to explore academic word lists. 

You can download a copy of the AWL sub-lists for reference purposes here:

Although the AWL is a useful reference, memorising lists is not a productive or efficient way to expand your vocabulary. If you want to build your general academic vocabulary, you need to see the words in context. You can use your reading texts to do this. 

If you would like more ideas, you could:

• explore a vocabulary profiler tool for yourself, such as https://www.vocabkitchen.com/profile
• go to Strategies for building your vocabulary.

Discipline-specific vocabulary can be defined as vocabulary frequently used in, or unique to, a specific discipline or profession. For instance, you will use words like osmosis in Botany and terabyte in Computer Science. These words are essential for you to build your knowledge of your discipline, and you are likely to learn them as you attend class, do your weekly readings, and review your notes. 

 If you understand discipline-specific academic vocabulary, you can more easily: 

• understand the specifics in academic texts 
• write more detailed and sophisticated assignments
• feel confident speaking with lecturers and professionals in your field. 

The first step in building your vocabulary is recognising discipline-specific words. Try this task to practise noticing language in texts.

The field of Corpus Linguistics is rapidly building our knowledge of discipline-specific vocabulary and new word lists for different disciplines are being developed. You may like to explore these lists: 

• Medical academic word list 

• Chemistry academic word list 

• Economics academic word list 

• Computer science academic word list 

Sub-technical vocabulary can be defined as academic words that are polysemous; that is, they are words with many meanings. At university, this means they may: 

• have a common meaning in general English and a different meaning in your discipline 
• have different meanings in different disciplines. 

If you understand sub-technical vocabulary, you can: 

• avoid confusing the general and academic meanings of words 
• avoid applying the wrong meaning to a word that is used differently by different disciplines 
• understand your classes and readings more easily. 

Sub-technical words can be challenging for students because they may not notice them or realise that they have a different, and less familiar, meaning.

Sub-technical word meanings can be related. For example, the different meanings of the word mature all relate to a process of change or becoming ready.  Sometimes, you can use your general English knowledge to infer the meaning of sub-technical words. However, this is not always the case. For instance, the word bug (an insect) in general English doesn’t seem to have much in common with bug (a problem) in Computer Science. If you are unsure, you should: 

1. Ask your lecturer. 
2. Refer to dictionaries or look for definitions in your readings. The definitions above were taken from: 

• https://www.collinsdictionary.com/dictionary/english/mature
• Mustoe, T.A. (2020) International Scar Classification. In Toet, L., Mustoe, T.A. Middlekoop, E., Gauglitz, G.G. (eds) Textbook on scar management. Springer. 

How well do you know these common examples of sub-technical vocabulary? 

To learn the important concepts in your discipline you need to learn the words used to label and describe these concepts. Your lectures and your textbooks aim to help you understand these important words. Therefore, you are building your vocabulary whenever you read, take notes and participate in your classes.  

For more ideas, continue to Strategies for building your vocabulary for more ideas. 

Pause here to reflect.

 Reflect on all the words you know in your mother tongue. 

• Do you know them all equally well? 
• Can you think of some words that you recognise when you’re reading but don’t use yourself?  
• Have you ever tried to say something but forgotten the word you need? 
• Does this happen in all the languages you know? 

We all need a wide enough vocabulary to function in our daily, professional, and academic lives. We may know some words for: 

• passive recognition: words we understand when we read them, but we don’t use them. 
• active production: words we can confidently use in speech and writing. 

When we learn vocabulary for university purposes, we aim to: 

• store new words in our long-term memory 
• learn them for active production.  

That means we can retrieve the words and use them when needed for discussions, assignments and exams. Here are two tips to achieve this: 

1. Space your revision of new vocabulary 

When you learn a new word, you need to actively encounter it several times before it moves from your short term to long term memory. So, you should record new vocabulary and revise it about a day later, two days after that, and then the following week, and so on until you can confidently remember it every time you need it. 

2. Use study strategies with cognitive depth

When you try to learn a new word, you need to do activities with depth. That is, you need to use strategies that force you to concentrate, retrieve the words from your memory, and use them in some way.  

Strategies with cognitive depth help us to learn vocabulary by forcing you to:

• retrieve words from your memory
• make connections between new words and what we already know.  

1. Read these study activity examples and decide which require cognitive depth.
2. Drag them under the best heading. 

This task has three pages for you to try.

Many words can be divided into parts. These can include the following. 

1. The root – the element giving the basic meaning of the word. Many are Latin or Greek. 
2. A prefix – an element placed at the beginning to modify the basic meaning. 
3. A suffix – an element placed at the end to modify the basic meaning. 

Research tells us that having some knowledge of roots and affixes (prefixes and suffixes) can help you learn, understand, and remember discipline-specific words (Crossen et al 2019). This is because about 80% of words in any English dictionary are borrowed, mainly from Latin and Greek, while this figure rises to over 90% in the sciences and technology (Dictionary.com, 2015). 

Look at this example:

The next part of this material includes practice tasks to help you remember (or learn) common roots and affixes.

How many roots do you know or can guess? Drag the meanings to the root words. This activity has three different tasks for you to try.

Over to you:

1. How many of these roots did you know? Make a note of those you don't know so you can commit them to memory. 

2. Scan a page of one of your weekly reading texts. How many of these roots can you find?

    

How many prefixes do you know or can guess? Answer the following multiple choice questions. 

Over to you:

1. How many of these prefixes did you know? Make a note of those you don't know so you can commit them to memory. 
2. Scan a page of one of your weekly reading texts. How many of these prefixes can you find?

How many suffixes do you know or can guess? Answer the following multiple choice questions. 

Over to you 

• How many of these suffixes did you know? Make a note of those you don't know so you can commit them to memory. 
• Scan a page of one of your weekly reading texts. How many of these suffixes can you find?
• Work with a peer on your course to review discipline-specific vocabulary from one of your units. Look for common roots, prefixes and suffixes in the important words. Discuss: which roots and affixes seem most common in your discipline? 

Top Tip: If you want to learn roots, prefixes, and suffixes, keep a list of the most common in your discipline. Add to it whenever you learn a new word.

Your textbooks may have a glossary or a list of important terms you need to remember. Many of these are in alphabetical order, which is not useful for study purposes. Because your brain remembers more when you make links between ideas, you could try classifying – or grouping – the words in different ways. We will use a simple example to illustrate some ideas you can try. 

Imagine you are studying Public Health and you want to remember these words from an alphabetical Covid-19 glossary. How many different categories could you use to group some of the words? Can you think of eight?  

After classifying your vocabulary, you can engage even more deeply by creating visual organisers. Of the many different types of visual organisers that you could design, the mind map may be the most common. 

These visuals are personal, so each student may create very different visuals for the same set of vocabulary. The important thing is that it is memorable for YOU. Examples include: 

• mind maps for grouping concepts 
• flow charts for processes 
• Venn diagrams to compare ideas 
• images as memory prompts. 

Click through the following 4 examples of vocabulary mind maps.

Top tips for clear visuals 

• Keep them concise: avoid long definitions. 
• Focus on the relationships between the words.
• Use colours, pictures, and symbols to make the relationships clear. 

Over to you 

1. Work with a peer on your course to select new vocabulary from lecture notes or unit readings. 
2. Each of you create a visual organiser to help you remember the words. 
3. Share your visuals with each other and compare your categories.  

As a student, you will have a weekly reading list for each of your units. You should try to select a text from your list and read every day because reading regularly and extensively will show you how the vocabulary in your discipline is used.  You can polish your reading skills at the Reading at University Study Skills page.

Think of yourself as a text detective. Text detectives read to understand the content and notice useful words and how the writer uses them.  

Refresh your memory about discipline-specific vocabulary above and then try the following: 

Over to you 

1. Work with a peer on your course to select a unit reading to work on. 
2. Each of you read a page of the text to identify and note discipline-specific and sub-technical vocabulary that you think you should know. 
3. Share and compare your lists with each other. 
4. Take turns explaining your understanding of the words 

Both homemade and online flashcards found on many apps are helpful for learning vocabulary.

Flashcards are a useful tool for memorising new vocabulary. Traditionally, students create flashcards from pieces of card small enough to hold in your hand. On one side of the card, you write the word and on the other side, you write something to remind you of the meaning and how to use the word. This could be: 

• a definition 
• a translation 
• example sentences
• synonyms, antonyms or collocations
• an image
• the pronunciation
• any combination of the above. 

You use flashcards by: 

• reading the word side of the card and trying to recall the meaning, or 
• reading the meaning side of the card and trying to recall the word. 

Well-designed flashcards can be effective because using them can be a strategy with cognitive depth: they promote active recall, and they help you store the vocabulary in your long-term memory.  

One common childhood game to help you memorise items is Concentration. To play this game, you need to make separate cards for the words and their meanings. Put them face down and turn them over two at a time. If you get a pair, you can keep them. If you don’t, you must turn them back and try another pair.  

Try this activity to memorise common academic prefixes: 

Many apps are available which replace physical flashcards. The advantages of apps over homemade flashcards is that: 

• you may be able to search for existing flashcard sets for your discipline 
• they often include extra activities such as spelling tests and games 
• some have sound so you can improve your pronunciation 
• some use algorithms to space your practice for long-term recall 
• students can easily create and share their flashcard sets with their peers  
• they are on your phone so you can study anywhere, anytime.   

The disadvantages are that:

• flashcard sets created by someone else may not be accurate
• some apps lock their most useful features behind a paywall
• you need to give your details to a commercial provider when creating an account.

Here is a list of some common apps that you could search for and explore: 

• Quizlet 
• Anki 
• Brainscape 
• Cram 
• Memrise 

Over to you 

1. Review your lecture and reading notes to identify vocabulary you need to learn. 
2. Create a flashcard set and use it to test one of your peers. 

OR  

1. Choose an app and explore the functions it offers for learning vocabulary. 
2. Do a search to find flashcard sets from your discipline. 
3. Practise creating your own flashcard set. 

Dictionaries

Dictionaries are useful tools to help you build your vocabulary. Not only can they explain the different meanings of a new word, but they can also tell you useful information like pronunciation and grammar. You can access dictionaries in different ways. 

• You may find links to dictionaries for your discipline in the library Subject Guides. 
• You can bookmark your favourite online dictionaries for when you are working on your laptop.
• You can download a dictionary app to your phone for when you need to quickly check a word when you are away from your desk. 

Different types of dictionaries exist for different purposes. Explore the options below to decide which is the best choice for you. 

Choose carefully. A good dictionary should provide: 

• definitions, including different meanings in different contexts 
• the pronunciation 
• the part of speech (noun, verb etc.) and word forms (singular, plural etc.) 
• synonyms and antonyms 
• example sentences 

Look at this example below: 

Concordancers

A concordancer is a tool used in the field of Corpus Linguistics to study language patterns. Until recently, they were mainly used by academics. However, some student friendly tools are becoming available.

Explore this example of how a student can use a concordance tool.

English spelling can be tricky, even for experienced writers. This is because: 

1. Letters do not correspond to one sound. Consider -ough. How many different ways can we pronounce this? Consider how we say: cough, tough, bough, through, and though. 
2. Sounds may be expressed by different letters. Consider how the /s/ sound is spelled in these words: sand, circle, psychology 

However, you can manage spelling challenges by trying some of the following strategies.  

Strategy 1: Learning common spelling patterns

Reduce your proofreading time by knowing common spelling patterns. According to the Cambridge Dictionary, about 75% of English words follow these patterns. To understand them, you need to know these terms: 

This PDF outlines the most common spelling patterns in English. Download it and keep it on the wall above your desk to jog your memory. 

How well can you spot common spelling errors in texts? Refer to the PDF if you need help.

Don't forget that American and British spellings can differ. Australian academic English tends to use British spelling patterns, but you could ask your lecturer what they prefer. You must be consistent in your spelling, so check your Word Editor settings to ensure it is set on Australian English. 

Common differences to be aware of include these examples: 

Strategy 2: Using online spell checkers

If you know that spelling is a challenge for you, make full use of the online tools that you have available. When you write your assignments on Word, you have access to its useful spellcheck function.  Also, CDU students have free access to Grammarly.  

One problem is when typing quickly, we misplace letters and accidentally create new words. For example, you may type form instead of from. When that happens, your online spellchecker may miss it. 

Let's look at a text full of typos and the advice offered by two online tools: the Microsoft Word editor  and Grammarly. 

Remember, no online tool is perfect, so check the advice they give carefully. 

Collocations are words that usually go together. They just 'sound natural'. For instance, we usually say heavy traffic, not crowded traffic. 

Some common collocations in academic English include: 

You have probably seen these collocations, and others like them, in your reading texts. Noticing them will help you use them in your writing.

Can you identify some of the common collocations in academic English? 

Remember,  your reader may still understand you if you use an incorrect collocation, but your meaning may seem less precise. To learn common collocations, you could: 

• look for collocates when you check an unfamiliar word in the dictionary 

• use a concordance tool if you are unsure which words go together 

• keep a record of collocations you notice in your readings 

• create collocation mind maps 

• create collocation flashcards 

The field of Corpus Linguistics is rapidly building our knowledge of academic vocabulary and new word lists focusing on common collocations are being developed. You may like to explore these lists: 

• Academic collocation list 

• Nursing collocation list 

In your academic writing, you must take care to use words accurately. Students can confuse: 

1. Words with different but related meanings

• competence = the ability to do something well
• aptitude = the ability to learn to do something quickly and easily

2. Words that look similar but have different meanings 

• varying = changing 
• various = many different kinds

3. Words that sound the same but have different meanings 

• to = purpose 
• too = more than enough 

How confident do you feel using easily confused words? Test your knowledge with this task: 

Over to you: 

1. Remember, you should always check words in the dictionary if you are not certain you are using them correctly.   
2. You can create your own list of words that you know you confuse and keep it above your desk so that you can refer to it when you need it.  
3. You can find many lists of easily confused words online. Explore them and bookmark the ones that seem most helpful. One site to try is Choose your words in Vocabulary.com 

As a student, you will have weekly readings for your classes and your assignments, and you may not know all the words in these texts. Research indicates that you need to know more than 95% of the words in a text to fully understand it. That may seem a lot, but it means that you may meet about two unfamiliar words every ten lines (Coxhead, Nation & Sim, 2015).  

Stopping to look up every new word will slow your reading down. To manage your reading load, you need strategies for dealing with new words. With practice, you can follow this process quite quickly: 

We will explore this further in the following sections.

Writers want their readers to understand their work; therefore, good writers help readers by giving definitions of less well-known words. However, this depends on the type of text and the type of reader. For example, textbooks are written for student readers, so important vocabulary is often in bold or in italics or included in a glossary. On the other hand, research articles are written for other researchers, so fewer definitions are given and they may be embedded in the text.

To find definitions in your reading texts, look for: 

1. defining verbs 

• Throughout this report, retrogaming  will refer to any game using a discontinued system. 
• Software watermarking  is a process of embedding identifying information in a file, enabling authors to verify ownership of their digital information. 
• Culture is a very general term. In this thesis, culture  is defined as ‘the set of shared attitudes, values, goals, and practices that characterizes an institution’ (Merriam Webster, 2021). 
• A study of the geologic record of past seismic activities, known as paleo-seismology, can evaluate the occurrence of earthquakes in a region. 

2. defining clauses 

• Our method involved phytoremediation  which is the direct use of living plants to reduce contaminated soil. 

3. punctuation clues

• Parenthesis: In paleo-seismology, both geomorphic (surface landform) and trench studies may reveal the number of past events. 
• Dashes: New researchers often suffer from hypotaxis—the overuse of long sentences with multiple clauses—as they develop their own scientific writing style. 
• Commas: Our method involved the use of living plants for in situ, or in place, risk reduction for contaminated soil.  

4. rewording 

• This paper focuses on students’ synthesis strategies, or in other words, their ability to embed sources into their essays 
• We explore the ability to internalise joint surplus – that is, the ability to trade off short-run losses for longer-run gains. 

Note that many writers include definitions of key terms early in their papers, often in the introduction.

Read these extracts from published papers and find the words that are defined. 

Another way to manage unknown words in reading texts is to analyse the word itself.

Tip 1: Analyse affixes.

Affixes are the prefixes and suffixes added to root words to change their meanings. They often provide clues to the meanings of unknown words in texts. You can learn more about these in Using Greek and Latin roots and affixes in Strategies for building your vocabulary.

Tip 2: Consider cognates

Cognates are words that appear in more than one language and share a similar meaning. True cognates are words that are in both languages because they share an ancestor language. Some are loan words, or words that have spread from one language to another over time. If you speak more than one language, you may be able to use your knowledge to help you. However, this does depend on two things.

1. Which languages do you know? English may share very few cognates with a language like Chinese but 30-40% of all words in English are said to have a related word in Spanish. 
2. What discipline are you studying? Some disciplines, such as the sciences, are more likely to have a shared vocabulary across languages.

Note: you must be careful of false friends, or words that look similar but have quite different meanings. For instance, the word, aktuell, in German means up to date, not actual. 

The third way you can manage unknown words in reading texts is to infer the meaning from the context, or from the general ideas around the word. 

For example, imagine you need to read this article, but you are not sure about the meaning of the word trope.

In the introduction, you find this paragraph. What clues can you find for the meaning of trope? 

Follow this process for finding clues for unknown words: 

Inferring the meaning of unknown words from context takes practice.  You may not always do it successfully. Nevertheless, do keep trying because it may save you time in your readng. 

Remember that building your academic vocabulary is a long process. In your first year of study, you may occasionally feel a little challenged by the new words and concepts you meet; however, this will get easier as your knowledge grows. Remember, you need to: 

• ensure you have a good foundational knowledge of general academic English  
• build your knowledge of the discipline specific and sub-technical language of your course. 

You can do this by trying a range of strategies over time. You could: 

1. refer to academic word lists to help you to prioritise which vocabulary to learn and to make good word choices when you write assignments  

2. become a text detective: learn to notice important words in your readings

3. use a range of active study strategies with cognitive depth 

• learn word roots and affixes 

• try word classifying activities 

• use images and visual organisers 

• make flashcards 

• experiment with apps, dictionaries and concordance tools. 

Importantly, you need to develop your skills in managing unknown vocabulary in reading texts. To do this, you should:

• recognise and use embedded definitions 

• infer meaning through clues in the sentences around the unknown words. 

Don't forget: your peers are one of your greatest resources and sources of support. Share your flashcards and get together to test and help each other learn.

Reflect on what you have learned in this material. Write down three things you most want to remember.

If you would like more support, visit the Language and Learning Advisors page.