Wordsmyth Vocabulary Inventory (WVI)

Headwords labeled with a number from 1 to 5 belong to the Wordsmyth Vocabulary Index (WVI), a list of 10,000 important vocabulary words grouped into five levels of difficulty, with level 1 words being the least difficult and level 5 the most difficult.

The five levels correspond approximately to five grade-level bands:

level 1 grades K-2
level 2 grades 3-6
level 3 grades 7-9
level 4 grades 10-12
level 5 grades 12+

The WVI words can be viewed alphabetically at the Search Filters page (under Search Tools menu.)

The core of the WVI words were selected by analyzing the Educator's Word Frequency Guide (WFG), which provides grade-specific data on word frequency for words taken from a 17-million-word corpus of texts used in K-12+ education.

Words used across the curriculum were given precedence over domain-specific vocabulary. This general academic vocabulary corresponds with the "Tier 2 words" newly emphasized in the Common Core State Standards for literacy.

Additional established vocabulary word resources, such as Coxhead's Academic Word List (AWL), Elfriede Hiebert's Word Zones, and the Corpus of Contemporary American English 6000 most frequent words, were consulted to both narrow down and validate our initial reservoir of vocabulary words.