Academic Word List (Most important 570 words for academic success) The Academic Word List includes ten units of sets of words most frequently found in school text books of all types, hence applying to non-fiction. "The Academic Word List, compiled by Coxhead (2000), consists of 570 word families that are not in the most frequent 2,000 words of English but which occur reasonably frequently over a very wide range of academic texts. These 570 words are grouped into ten sublists that reflect word frequency and range. in Literacy > Vocabularywith averilcoxheadvocabulary