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Common Core ELAGrades 11–12Language

L.11-12.6: Academic and Technical Vocabulary for College and Careers

Also written as CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.11-12.6 · Cluster: Vocabulary Acquisition and Use.

Build a Term WorksheetAll 41 Grades 11–12 ELA Standards

The Official Wording

Acquire and use accurately general academic and domain-specific words and phrases, sufficient for reading, writing, speaking, and listening at the college and career readiness level; demonstrate independence in gathering vocabulary knowledge when considering a word or phrase important to comprehension or expression.

Common Core State Standards, Grades 11-12, Language · Read it at the source · Checked October 14, 2026

What L.11-12.6 Means in Plain English

Juniors and seniors use the general academic words every college course assumes, like mitigate, exceed and preliminary, and the technical terms of a field, such as lateral oscillation in engineering. When a word matters to their reading or writing, they look it up and keep it unprompted.

Ninth and tenth graders (L.9-10.6) worked toward the same target. Grades 11 and 12 are the last band, where students reach it: college and career readiness, with words used accurately in lab reports, seminars and workplaces, and gathered without a teacher’s list.

L.11-12.6 I Can Statements

  • I can use general academic words accurately in my writing.
  • I can use the technical terms of a field correctly.
  • I can find and learn an important new word on my own.

L.11-12.6 Worked Example

A student intern’s sentence from an engineering field report, a revision that only sounds smarter, and the one a supervisor would sign.

Prompt

Revise this sentence from an engineering intern’s field report on a new footbridge, using precise academic and technical words: “When a lot of people walked across, the bridge shook side to side way more than it’s supposed to, so we think they should put in something to stop it.”

Not YetWhen a plethora of pedestrians traversed the structure, it moved in a very significant and problematic manner, so we opine that some kind of mechanism should be utilized to rectify it.Every casual word got a longer synonym, but nothing got more precise: the sentence still never says which way the bridge moved, by how much or against what limit, and opine sounds like a hunch, not a finding.
Meets the StandardUnder peak pedestrian load, the deck’s lateral oscillation exceeded its design tolerance, so we recommend installing tuned mass dampers to mitigate the movement.Each word does a job: peak pedestrian load says when, lateral oscillation names the direction and kind of movement, design tolerance gives the limit it broke, and tuned mass dampers names the standard fix. Recommend, exceeded and mitigate are the general academic words a supervisor expects.
Moves to Use
Use the field’s term only if you can define it: lateral oscillation, design tolerance.Use general academic verbs for what writers do with evidence: recommend, exceed, mitigate, indicate.Choose precise over long; a longer word that says no more is not academic.Keep a running list of terms from each field you read, with a definition and a sentence.

Common Mistakes with L.11-12.6

Thesaurus inflation

“A plethora of pedestrians traversed the structure,” where nothing is more exact than “a lot of people walked across”

Try this: Ask of every replaced word what it says that the plain word did not, and keep the plain word when the answer is nothing.

Technical terms used without knowing them

A student writes resonance in a physics lab report but cannot say what it means when asked

Try this: Require a one-line definition in the student’s own words beside every technical term the first time it appears in a draft.

Vocabulary only from the teacher’s list

Students learn the twenty assigned words each week but skip every unfamiliar term in their own reading

Try this: Have students log two words a week from their own reading that mattered to the meaning, with source, definition and a sentence.

Where L.11-12.6 Fits

Comes BeforeL.9-10.6Build academic and domain-specific vocabulary toward the college and career readiness level.
AlongsideW.11-12.2Use precise language and domain-specific vocabulary to manage the complexity of a topic.RI.11-12.4Work out technical meanings in nonfiction and track how a writer refines a key term.
Comes NextSL.11-12.6Command formal English, academic vocabulary included, in interviews, hearings and seminars.W.11-12.4Fit development, organization and style, word choice included, to the task, purpose and audience.

Practice L.11-12.6

Vocabulary Worksheet GeneratorFree ToolTurn a field’s key terms, like oscillation, tolerance and mitigate, into a worksheet with definitions, a sentence for each and a plain-word comparison.Academic wordsDomain termsGrades 11-12
Make a Worksheet

Quick Check

  1. Which words in the strong version are technical, and which are general academic?
  2. Why is the weak revision no more precise than the original?
  3. What does design tolerance add to the sentence?

L.11-12.6: Other Names

L.11-12.6CCSS.ELA-LITERACY.L.11-12.6

Common Core State Standards © Copyright 2010. National Governors Association Center for Best Practices and Council of Chief State School Officers. All rights reserved. Official wording from the Common Core State Standards PDFs at corestandards.org, last checked October 14, 2026. The explanation, I can statements, example, mistakes and practice on this page are EMStudio’s own, written beside the official wording. They are not part of the standard.