Intermediate8 min read

TOEFL Vocabulary: Academic Word List for 2025

TOEFL passages use dense academic vocabulary. Building a strong word bank from the Academic Word List (AWL) and discipline-specific terms is the fastest way to improve your score.

Practice TOEFL Vocabulary

Word Families: Learn 1 Word, Know 4

Learning a word family (noun + verb + adjective + adverb) multiplies your vocabulary 4x faster than learning individual words.

  • analyse / analysis / analytical / analytically
  • evident / evidence / evidently / self-evident
  • significant / significantly / significance / insignificant
  • establish / established / establishment / re-establish

Science & Nature Vocabulary (Frequent in TOEFL)

  • ecology: organism, habitat, species, predator, symbiotic, decompose
  • geology: sedimentary, tectonic, erosion, stratum, volcanic, sediment
  • biology: membrane, cellular, metabolism, enzyme, protein synthesis

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Social Science Vocabulary

  • anthropology: indigenous, cultural diffusion, ritual, kinship, migration
  • economics: supply and demand, GDP, inflation, monetary policy, scarcity
  • psychology: cognitive, behavioural, stimulus, reinforcement, perception

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