Yes the academic word list is very good.
I am doing this not to learn words in the main, but to convert words I arleady know to known words, so that I can then select ccontent that offers % ages of unknown words that are more accurate, in order to speed up the time it takes to get to 50,000 which is roughly the point where one can read most general texts with relative ease and without having to stop 3 or 4 times a page. I hate stopping as I completely lose all interest in the book. I just want to get the acquiring part over as fast as possible, and to do that I will have to read very extensively and by this method I can read very extensively which will always be necessary, but will be able to find texts with a much more accurate % of genuinely unknown words rather than wading through materials that contain so many words I already know. Hope this explains.