Levels of Academic Vocabulary

Level 1

• Basic vocabulary

• Everyday words familiar to most individuals

• Learned through conversation

• Sight words, nouns, verbs, adjectives, etc.

• Examples

  • red, grow, six, big, fly, old, come, see, happy, table, out, go, mom, school, paper

Level 2

• Academic words

• Used in a variety of texts

• High frequency, multiple meaning words

• Can understand its meaning using context clues

• Examples

  • examine, confess, brief, diagram, relative, formulate, accumulate, average, misfortune, navigate

Level 3

• Content specific vocabulary

• Context specific vocabulary

• Low frequency

• Can understand its meaning by using a textbook, dictionary or other reference

• Examples

  • immigration, civilization, constellation, galaxy, ecosystem, radical number, algebra, geometry, geography