The Academic Word List in Use is ideal for students wishing to go overseas to study and for people who do not have academic goals of this kind but are travelling overseas for holidays, business trips, or to work in an English speaking country and need help developing their vocabulary range for other reasons. Learning the Academic Word List (AWL) increases your ability to understand academic text by 10% It makes sense, therefore, to work with the AWL which is a list of 570 words.