ABSTRACT
Teaching and learning in the academy is simply not possible without academic language and vocabulary. Academic language is the language that is spoken in education at every level. Conversational interactions and spoken social exchanges employ conversational discourse and vocabulary that are substantially different and much narrower than academic language. Much research has demonstrated that conversational vocabulary consists of approximately 2,000 frequent words, while academic vocabulary and the language of textbooks can be as large as 20,000 to 85,000 words (Nagy, 2005; Nagy & Anderson, 1984; Nation, 2013). Unfortunately, merely reading textbooks is not sufficient for learners to develop a substantial range of academic words. Research on vocabulary in L2 textbooks
has demonstrated that they do not recycle vocabulary (varied and rich vocabulary is highly valued in English-language writing). Vocabulary recycling is left almost exclusively up to the teacher and classroom instruction.
