AWL WORDS IN CONTEXT QUIZZES

These quizzes are simple drag and drop matching exercises. They require you to complete a sentence with an appropriate word (gap fill). These are the easiest academic word list (AWL) exercises on this site. The reason for this is simply that there are only five choices in each exercise and there are no distractors (words which are not one of the answers). The context sentences themselves are not chosen for their simplicity. They are actual sentences from articles which you can consult by clicking on the citations given once the quiz has been completed. There are two sentences for each item, both requiring the same word. The sentences are longer than other AWL quizzes to give you more contextThe text which surrounds a word, phrase or sentence and which influences the meaning of those elements..

Each quiz tests words form the same grammatical category (they are all nouns, or all adjectives, etc).

You will see the same word in different quizzes for these reasons:

1. A word may be used for different grammatical functions. For example, 'approach' may be used as a noun or a verb.

2. A noun may be used in the usual way as the subject or object in a sentence, but it may also be used as a modifier (like an adjective) of another noun. This is very common in academic writing. For example, distribution centre, distribution network.

You may think that there are alternative answers in a few cases. But this is extremely rare; there is always a reason why the given answer is the only correct one and in some cases this may be explained in the feedback window. You can see an example in Sublist 1 Quiz 6, which distinguishes between 'process' and 'method'.

All the examples have been chosen from authentic texts. They have not been invented for the purposes of these quizzes. You can see a list of the sourcesClick on the citation to see the source text. once each quiz has been completed. Upon completion you also have a record of the number of attempts you made to complete the quiz along with random number identifier and a timestamp. This can be use as proof that you have successfully completed each quiz. The correct answers and and suggested common collocates for each answer word are also given in the feedback window. You may need to scroll the window to see all the text. Clicking in the feedback window will remove the text. You can restore it by clicking on the red button. You might want to do this if you are presenting this material in class.

The items in each quiz are presented in random order, so if you retake the quiz you won't see these in the same order you first saw them.

All the words are from the Academic Word List, which is divided into ten sublists. You can download this from the University of Wellington website.

You can boost your knowledge of the use of these words by consulting the Collocation Dictionary and the academic word of the day page. You can also use the AWL flashcards.

There are quizzes for all the commonest words in each sublist; other words from each word family in each sublist continue to be added. There are currently more than 1100 AWL words in these quizzes. Use the search box below to choose a quiz featuring a particular word (or filter by grammatical category or sublist), or select a quiz from one of the sublists.