Focus on Vocabulary: Mastering the Academic Word List

Focus on Vocabulary: Mastering the Academic Word List, by Diane Schmitt and Norbert Schmitt, is a research-based vocabulary textbook that gives high-intermediate to advanced students the advantage they need to succeed in academic environments. Through excerpts from college texts and well-crafted exercises, English learners study the Academic Word List -- the most frequently used words in academic texts. To help students reach a fuller understanding of the new vocabulary, each chapter provides a series of exercises on word meaning and word families. In addition, collocations exercises develop students' ability to form natural partnerships between the target vocabulary and other words. Features  Seven units focus on a variety of subject areas, such as social change, consumer behavior, natural resources, and music. Each chapter carefully recycles the target vocabulary four times in reading passages and vocabulary-building exercises. The collocation exercises -- based on the 179-million-word New Longman Corpus -- reflect how academic words are actually used in real contexts. Strategy Practice chapters offer tips for dictionary usage, information about word roots and affixes, and methods for expanding students' word knowledge. An Expansion section at the end of each chapter provides additional reading, discussion, and writing activities that broaden students' understanding of vocabulary.