Free tools and resources
Probably the work I'm best known for is free. The New General Service List Project is a collection of corpus-derived word lists and open-source learning tools that teachers, researchers, and materials developers use in more than 110 countries. Everything below is free to download and use.
It's also the foundation of my consulting work: the same lists and tools I've made public are the ones I build with when clients hire me.
FREE AI-POWERED TOOLS
The newest part of the NGSL Project is a small collection of free AI tools that apply corpus vocabulary research to practical classroom problems. Each one is built to control vocabulary far more tightly than a general-purpose AI system can.
NGSL Graded Story Creator. Generates original stories, texts, and EFL activities at seven cumulative NGSL levels — from the first 400 words through the complete 2,800-word list — and can simplify existing texts to a chosen level.
NGSL Vocabulary Pushed Output Coach. Built on Merrill Swain's pushed output theory, this one moves learners from recognizing words to actually using them, working through all 2,800 NGSL words in five-word frequency blocks via simulated written and spoken chat.
NDL Kids Story Creator. Creates short, engaging stories for young learners using the New Dolch List, a carefully researched 874-word list for children's English developed with Brent Culligan, across five cumulative levels.
[Explore the free AI tools →] (link to https://www.newgeneralservicelist.com/aitools)
These three are the public face of a much larger toolkit. I've built ten to fifteen more that aren't shared — proprietary tools developed for specific clients, designed to give them an edge their competitors don't have. The free ones exist for the same reason all my corpus work is free: teachers, learners, researchers, and developers should have access to tools built on solid research and pedagogy. The proprietary ones exist so that individual clients can win.
FREE CORPUS-BASED WORD LISTS
Since 2013 I've built ten corpus-based word lists designed to meet the needs of second language learners of English. Each offers the highest coverage in the world for its purpose, and most are modular — they fit together in different ways to suit different learners and programs.
The lists cover general English, academic English, business English, TOEIC preparation, spoken English, children's English, and graded reader development, among others.
You can find all ten lists, along with a large and growing collection of free learning, teaching, and content creation tools, on the New General Service List Project site.
[Visit the NGSL Project site →]
THE NGSL PROFILER
The NGSL Profiler is a free online text analysis tool that uses the NGSL Project word lists to measure the difficulty of any text and then simplify it to the level of your students. It also includes two AI-powered tools, one for text creation and one for text simplification.
It's the tool I use to verify every graded reader I produce, and it's freely available to anyone who wants to do the same.
[Try the NGSL Profiler →]
THE INTERACTIVE LEARNING DICTIONARY
Developed with Brent Culligan, the Interactive Learning Dictionary pairs each word in the New General Service List with a video concordancer, giving learners access to thousands of authentic video clips showing the word used in real context.
[Explore the Interactive Learning Dictionary →]
FREE VOCABULARY TESTS
Free paper-based tests are available for the New General Service List and the New Academic Word List, along with a free online computer-adaptive placement test for the NGSL.
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AN OLDER TOOL: WORD-LEARNER
Word-Learner is a gamified flashcard app built more than a decade ago that uses spaced repetition to teach the NGSL and NAWL. It shows its age, but the underlying approach works — one of my graduate students used it to learn the New Academic Word List and credited it with helping him gain admission to our program.
Everything on this page is my gift to the field, and it will stay free. But everything here — and a good deal more, at a considerably more advanced level — is also built privately, for clients. If that's what you need, tell me what you're working on.