Families, schools, and other community members all have a role to play in helping adolescent learners understand, pronounce, and write new words. But which words are more commonly used in academic settings? The EAP Foundation website provides a list of the top 500 academic words used. You can visit the EAP Foundation website, or simply download the list below along with ideas for practicing the words at home.
How can schools and families work together to support vocabulary development?
Schools should be routinely supporting vocabulary development in all classes. Parents/caregivers can ask their student or the school about how the school is planning to do that in a particular class or over the course of a year. In addition, families could make it a routine to build vocabulary skills at home together in a fun and multi-faceted way. For example, a family could make it a daily or weekly practice to look a word up online or in a dictionary. Or families could make up sentence together using an academic word, then write the sentence down or draw a picture representing the word and what it means to them.
