Credits

The vocabulary in OpenWriting Coach is built on open word lists that other people researched and gave away. They deserve the credit, and their licences deserve to be honoured properly — so here is exactly what we use and what you are free to do with it.

Word lists we build on

New General Service List (NGSL) 1.2

The core high-frequency vocabulary of general English. Browne, C., Culligan, B. (2013). The New General Service List. Retrieved from newgeneralservicelist.com.

New General Service List by Browne, C., Culligan, B., and Phillips, J. is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

New Academic Word List (NAWL) 1.2

Academic vocabulary that sits beyond general English. Browne, C., Culligan, B., Phillips, J. (2013). The New Academic Word List. Retrieved from newgeneralservicelist.com. Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

TOEIC Service List (TSL) 1.2 and Business Service List (BSL) 1.2

Used only to corroborate how common a word is. Browne, C., Culligan, B. (2013). Retrieved from newgeneralservicelist.com. Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

CEFR-J Wordlist 1.5

The CEFR level for each word, from A1 to B2. The CEFR-J Wordlist Version 1.5, compiled by Yukio Tono, Tokyo University of Foreign Studies. Retrieved from cefr-j.org.

Copyright belongs to Tono Laboratory at TUFS. The list may be used for research and commercial purposes with proper citation of the source.

Octanove Vocabulary Profile C1/C2 1.0

The C1 and C2 levels, which the CEFR-J list does not cover. Created by Octanove Labs, distributed through the Open Language Profiles project. Licensed CC BY-SA 4.0.

Our own measurements

Some of what we know about a word is measured by us, not taken from anyone's list. We count how often words appear across the writing task prompts, sample answers and assessment guides that IELTS and ETS publish openly. We store only the counts — never their text, and never a copy of their materials.

We do not use, and will not use, commercial test-prep vocabulary lists.

Our derived word bank is yours too

Because the lists above are ShareAlike, the word bank we derived from them is offered back on the same terms. Take it, use it, build on it — including commercially.

Download the OpenWriting word bank (CSV)

OpenWriting Coach word bank is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International License. It contains headwords, word families, parts of speech, CEFR levels, frequency ranks and source references — facts about words, with every row citing where its level came from.

Not affiliated

OpenWriting Coach is an independent tool. It is not affiliated with, endorsed by, or connected to IELTS, the British Council, IDP, Cambridge, or ETS. IELTS and TOEFL are trademarks of their respective owners, used here only to describe what we help you practise.

Something credited wrongly or missing? Email [email protected] and we will fix it.