# Averil Coxhead

Averil Jean Coxhead (born 1966) is a New Zealand academic, and is a full professor at Victoria University of Wellington, specialising in applied linguistics. She is known for creating the Academic Word List, which is a list of 570 English word families that appear with great frequency in a broad range of academic texts. She has also created wordlists for other uses, such as rugby terms for referees and players, and building terms for Tongan tradespeople.

## Academic career

Coxhead completed a PhD titled Using vocabulary from input texts in writing tasks at Victoria University of Wellington in 2008. Coxhead then joined the faculty of Victoria University, rising to full professor in 2022. As of 2024, Coxhead is the Head of School in the School of Linguistics and Applied Language Studies.
Coxhead is known for creating the Academic Word List, which is a list of 570 English word families that appear with great frequency in a broad range of academic texts. Coxhead created the list when she noticed how much she relied on reading for her own foreign language learning, but had difficulty accessing appropriate texts. She had tried reading children's books but found they contained too many low-frequency words. She also saw how learners in a programme she taught in benefited from an approach called extensive reading.
Coxhead went on to create a list of words, such as 'ruck', 'loosie', 'maul', and phrases such 'swing it away' and 'clean out', that occur more often in rugby-related situations than ordinary English. The list is designed to be useful to anyone needing to learn the technical terms associated with rugby, but especially players, referees and coaches working internationally. With colleague Jean Parkinson, Coxhead has researched the language used in trades such as plumbing, building and automotive fabrication, and written bilingual books for Tongan tradespeople.

## Selected works
### Books

* Coxhead, Averil (18 September 2017). Vocabulary and English for Specific Purposes Research. Routledge. doi:10.4324/9781315146478. ISBN 978-1-315-14647-8.
* Coxhead, Averil; Parkinson, Jean; Mackay, James; McLaughlin, Emma (12 September 2019), "Language in the trades and English for specific purposes", English for Vocational Purposes, New York : Taylor and Francis, 2019. | Series: Routledge research in English for specific purposes: Routledge, pp. 1–20, doi:10.4324/9780429449932-1, ISBN 978-0-429-44993-2, retrieved 29 January 2024{{citation}}: CS1 maint: location (link)

### Journal articles

* Averil Coxhead (2000). "A New Academic Word List". TESOL Quarterly. 34 (2): 213. doi:10.2307/3587951. ISSN 1545-7249. Wikidata Q124361805.
* Averil Coxhead (25 November 2015). "Reflecting on Coxhead (2000), "A New Academic Word List"". TESOL Quarterly. 50 (1): 181–185. doi:10.1002/TESQ.287. ISSN 1545-7249. Wikidata Q124361783.
* Jennifer F. Drayton; Averil Coxhead (2022). "Plain Language or Anything But?". Journal of Aviation/Aerospace Education & Research. doi:10.15394/JAAER.2022.1908. ISSN 1065-1136. Wikidata Q124361754.
* Cailing Lu; Frank Boers; Averil Coxhead (29 March 2021). "Exploring learners' understanding of technical vocabulary in Traditional Chinese Medicine". Studies in Second Language Learning and Teaching. 11 (1): 71–101. doi:10.14746/SSLLT.2021.11.1.4. ISSN 2083-5205. Wikidata Q124361755.
* AVERIL COXHEAD (June 2011). "The Academic Word List 10 Years On: Research and Teaching Implications". TESOL Quarterly. 45 (2): 355–362. doi:10.5054/TQ.2011.254528. ISSN 1545-7249. Wikidata Q124361797.
* Averil Coxhead; David Hirsch (1 December 2007). "A pilot science-specific word list". Revue française de linguistique appliquée. XII (2): 65–78. doi:10.3917/RFLA.122.0065. ISSN 1386-1204. Wikidata Q124361803.
* Averil Coxhead, What can corpora tell us about English for Academic Purposes?, doi:10.4324/9780203856949.CH33, Wikidata Q124361800
* Frank Boers; Thuy Bui; Julie Deconinck; Hélène Stengers; Averil Coxhead (March 2023). "Helping learners develop autonomy in acquiring multiword expressions". The Modern Language Journal. 107 (1): 222–241. doi:10.1111/MODL.12829. ISSN 0026-7902. Wikidata Q124361807.