1. What is academicspeaking & listening?an introduction to the contents of the course

2. English wordsResearch shows that most people need tounderstand 95% of the words in any text to beable to understand it fully.90% of most texts in English are made up of twothousand recurring words the 1 + 2k word lists.So what about the extra 5%? 3. The hard part learning thenext 5k and 8k will only just100reach 95% coverage 95 90 85 80 75 701k2k 5k 8k Text coverage 4. That means that learning an additional6 thousand words will only give you 4%more understanding of the words ofmost English texts.It is a lot of effort for very little reward.So what can we do? 5. Researchers have analysed academicEnglish texts and determined anacademic word list of around 600words that can bring you up to andover the 95% threshold. The AWL (Academic Word List) 6. Academic text coverage withthe AWL Text coverage100 95 90 85 Text coverage 80 75 701k 2kAWL 7. This is great news foracademic learners becauseit allows you to participateconfidently in academicdiscourse with 2,600 words.But are 2,600 wordsenough? 8. The short answer is : YES.The long answer is: NO.This list does not cover general conversation arts and humanities music, literature, and poetry the richness and texture of the English languageBut it is enough to doBUSINESS 9. ACADEMICSPEAKING & LISTENING 10. If we focus on using theseAWL words, we can improve our English fasterSPEAKING LISTENINGO use AWL words in O analyse discussions, debatepresentations, meeti s, meetings, and ngs, and general chat conversations