Academic English Vocabulary: 400 Words for Writing

The words are not hard to understand. They are hard to use correctly.

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表裏
analyse — what does it mean?to examine something in detail to understand it (verb). analysis, analytical, analyst. American spelling analyze.
evidence — what does it mean?information supporting a conclusion (noun).
assert — what does it mean?to state confidently (verb). often implies the claim still needs support.
cause — what does it mean?something that produces an effect (noun). distinguish from correlation.
result in — what does it mean?to cause (verb). result in a cause; result from an effect.
approximately — what does it mean?roughly (adverb). more formal than about in academic writing.
significant — what does it mean?important; statistically meaningful (adjective). in statistics it has a precise technical meaning.
disparity — what does it mean?a large difference (noun). a disparity between.
incorporate — what does it mean?to include as part of a whole (verb). incorporation.
policy — what does it mean?a course of action adopted by an organisation (noun).
migration — what does it mean?movement of people between places (noun). migrate, migrant.
reliability — what does it mean?the extent to which a measure is consistent (noun). distinguish from validity.
ambiguous — what does it mean?open to more than one interpretation (adjective). ambiguity.
integral — what does it mean?essential to completeness (adjective).
albeit — what does it mean?although (conjunction). formal; introduces a concession phrase.
thereby — what does it mean?by that means (adverb). usually followed by a participle.
provided that — what does it mean?on condition that (conjunction). introduces a condition.
apparent — what does it mean?seeming; clearly visible (adjective). two senses; context decides which is meant.
representative — what does it mean?typical of a larger group (adjective). a representative sample.
substantially — what does it mean?to a large degree (adverb). substantial.
simultaneously — what does it mean?at the same time (adverb). simultaneous.
clarify — what does it mean?to make clearer (verb). clarification, clarity.
attribute (noun) — what does it mean?a quality or feature (noun).
publish — what does it mean?to make available in print or online (verb). publication.
speculate — what does it mean?to form a theory without firm evidence (verb). speculation, speculative.
accumulate — what does it mean?to gather over time (verb). accumulation.
exacerbate — what does it mean?to make worse (verb). formal; common with problem, tension.
allocate resources — what does it mean?to distribute means among competing uses (phrase). a standard collocation in economics writing.
indicator — what does it mean?a measure that shows a condition (noun). a leading indicator.
preliminary stage — what does it mean?the first part of a longer process (phrase). a standard collocation in research writing.
このデッキについて

Academic vocabulary fails in production, not comprehension. Every reader knows roughly what comprise, imply and significant mean, and every writer still gets them wrong: is comprised of instead of comprises, imply where infer belongs, significant used loosely in a paper that also reports statistical significance. The gap is never the definition. It is the word family, the preposition, and the neighbouring word that so often trips people up. This deck covers 400 words of academic English. Every card asks what a word means and answers with the sense and part of speech, then adds one line of the thing that actually goes wrong — the plural of criterion, the preposition after contribute, the difference between effective and efficient. Cards are tagged by function: research and method, argument and evidence, cause and change, quantity and comparison, structure and process, policy and society, linking and signalling, and academic writing itself. Import it and the deck joins your spaced-repetition schedule, and what stays in rotation is the set you can recognise but not yet write.

よくある質問

Does importing this deck use my AI allowance?
No. Importing uses the saved deck as published; it does not run AI generation or use your AI allowance. The complete deck can therefore be imported on the free plan.
What happens if I import the deck twice?
Nothing is duplicated. Cards you already have are skipped and only newly added cards come across. Including re-imports after deleting, each official deck can be imported three times per account.
Can I use it on the web app and the phone app?
Yes. The deck is added to your account, so the same cards and the same progress are available in the web app, the iOS app and the Android app.
Can I edit the cards after importing?
Yes. Imported cards are yours: you can edit both sides, delete cards you do not need, change tags, and move cards to another deck.
What is in the deck?
73 on research and method, 71 on argument and evidence, 54 on quantity and comparison, 45 on policy and society, 43 on cause and change, 42 on structure and process, 37 on linking and signalling, 22 on academic writing itself and 13 on problems and limitations, 400 in total. One word per card, so nothing appears twice.
Why does each card include a usage note?
Because the definition is rarely what goes wrong. Criteria is a plural, contribute takes to, the whole comprises the parts and is never comprised of them, and a writer who implies is not a reader who infers. Those are the details that mark writing as non-academic, and they are what the note on each card carries.
Is this useful for IELTS and TOEFL?
Yes, particularly for the writing and speaking tasks, where examiners look for range and accuracy rather than rare words. The linking and signalling group maps directly onto the discourse markers those rubrics reward, and the hedging words — suggest, indicate, tentative, arguably — are how you make a claim you can defend.
British or American spelling?
British spellings appear on the front, with the American variant named in the note wherever the two differ. Both are accepted in academic writing as long as you are consistent, so pick one and let the notes remind you which forms belong together.

Word selection draws on the vocabulary common to academic writing across disciplines; it is not an official list from any examining body or corpus project. Every definition and usage note is written by Memly. British spellings are shown first, with American variants noted. Scope reviewed 2026-08-17.