Jump to section: What we learned | Read the stories | Learn more about Storyathon
Children’s stories paint a vivid
picture of disruption
Data from Oxford University Press in partnership with Storyathon, the largest story-writing competition in Australia, reveals ‘virus’ as the Oxford Australian Children’s Word of the Year (CWOTY) 2020.
Oxford Australian
Children's Word of the Year 2020:
VIRUS
After a disrupted school year of remote learning during a global pandemic, it’s not surprising that the use of word virus increased by 15,232% in the stories written by Australian students in Years 3–8.
Anne Bayetto, Literacy expert at Flinders University, says this year “… ‘virus’ was clearly top of mind as students were concerned about the immediate and long-term impact.”
Young writers were inspired to write stories related to COVID-19, faction, and imaginative stories that incorporated suspense and imagined worlds. Together these stories paint a vivid picture of life for Australian children at such a pivotal time.
The shortlisted words included ‘friends’, ‘virus’, ‘zombies’, ‘lockdown’, ‘fun’, ‘world’, ‘shocked’, ‘school’ and ‘people’, which students voted on to determine the 2020 CWOTY.

Proudly in partnership with Storyathon
The Oxford Australian Children’s Word of the Year is one of the ways Oxford University Press engages with the ever-changing language of Australian children. This year, we've proudly partnered with Storyathon, Australia's largest online story-writing event, to help us determine the 2020 Oxford Australian Children’s Word of the Year.

Our experts comments on the Oxford Australian CWOTY:

Lee Walker
Lee is Director of Publishing, Editorial and Design at OUP ANZ and is also President of the Australian Publishers Association. She has almost 30 years’ experience in Australian educational publishing and is passionate about digital innovation.

Shane Hill
Shane is founder and creator of Mathletics, Spellodrome, World Math Day, Skoolbo, da Vinci Declathlon, Storyathon and Writing Legends. Collectively, these learning communities have been used by tens of millions of students.
Explore what we learned from the children's stories
Children from all around Australia wrote 50,000 stories and here's what we learned.
Children found a way to articulate their concerns about the real world through the writing stories. Covid-19, coronavirus, covid, corona, quarantine and pandemic were new inclusions on the trending list of words.
National word trends reveal virus increased by 15,232% and isolation increased in use by 10,728% in 2020.
Given the disruption to schooling in 2020, school was the 4th most popular word used in stories increasing in use by 137%.
The shortlisted words were used in relation to COVID-19 with many students concerned about the immediate and long-term effect of the virus.
The most used word we increased in use by 95% and the least used word portal increased in use by 117%.
Some students were relishing being able to stay at home and be online, there was a 5,797% increase in the use of the word online in stories.
The importance of wanting to spend time with friends (204% increase in use) and family (162% increase in use) was evident in many students stories.
Friends was popular choice from the votes by students in Years 3 and 4.
There was a very significant jump in virus between years 4 and 5. Victorian children spent an additional three months of remote learning, compared to the rest of the nation, and we can see this reflected in their votes.
Victoria the state most likely to vote for the word friends but they were also the least likely to vote for the word virus.
Students wrote imaginative stories perhaps reflecting the therapeutic nature of creative writing with zombies proving a popular word choice.
A breakdown of the data demonstrates that in Queensland zombies was a close runner up, and received the highest percentage of votes from any other state or territory.
The top 20 trending words of 2020
2020 Top trending words, 1-10
(Change in use over time)
No. | Word | Frequency | Change from 2019 |
---|---|---|---|
1 | We | 26,982 | 95.9% |
2 | Go | 13,299 | 79.1% |
3 | Are | 13,283 | 79.0% |
4 | School | 7,454 | 137.2% |
5 | People | 7,054 | 217.8% |
6 | Lockdown | 6,425 | 48619.4% |
7 | Our | 5,271 | 73.5% |
8 | Friends | 5,265 | 204.8% |
9 | New | 5,201 | 129.7% |
10 | Or | 4,725 | 71.7% |
Top trending words, 11-20
(Change in use over time)
No. | Word | Frequency | Change from 2019 |
---|---|---|---|
11 | World | 4,547 | 245.9% |
12 | Fun | 4,284 | 576.8% |
13 | More | 4,112 | 91.7% |
14 | Family | 3,375 | 162.9% |
15 | Shocked | 3,288 | 612.3% |
16 | Work | 3,253 | 147.5% |
17 | Good | 3,127 | 70.2% |
18 | Play | 3,105 | 143.6% |
19 | Nothing | 3,062 | 87.2% |
20 | Virus | 2,696 | 15232.4% |
Popular words used in 2020 for the first time
COVID-19
COVID19
CORONAVIRUS
COFF
COVID
CORONA
QUARANTINE
PANDEMIC
SCHOOLING
Read a selection of the children's stories
Please note spelling and grammar has been corrected in the samples presented. Citations are faithful to the original stories.