What Makes a Word Academic? The Three Tiers

Sort words into everyday, academic, and subject-specific tiers and see why academic words matter most.

Teachers often sort vocabulary into three tiers. Tier 1 words are everyday words you learned by talking: happy, run, house. Tier 3 words belong to one subject: photosynthesis, denominator, legislature. Tier 2 words sit in between. They rarely come up in casual talk, but they appear in every subject: analyze, evidence, significant, process, contrast, establish.

Tier 2 words are the ones worth knowing at a glance, because they show up in textbooks, test questions, and articles across the school day, and stumbling on them slows down everything else. Look at this test question: 'Analyze how the author establishes the significance of the setting. ' Every key word is Tier 2. A student who knows 'photosynthesis' but freezes on 'establish' and 'significance' cannot even start.

In this track you will learn the most common academic words so well that you recognize them instantly and can focus on thinking.

• 1Tier 1: everyday words. Tier 3: subject-specific terms.
• 2Tier 2: academic words used across many subjects.
• 3Tier 2 words unlock test questions and textbooks in every class.