ABSTRACT
The typical Japanese student enters university with an English vocabulary of 2,000 to 4,000 words. While this provides a foundation for further language learning and initial academic study, it challenges the classroom teacher because
it is the bare minimum needed for reading authentic texts and comprehending academic lectures (and knowledge of roughly 6,000 to 8,000 words is required for higher level language courses and subject-specific study);
beyond the initial 1,500 or so words the students have learned in elementary and middle school, individual students have not acquired the same core vocabulary, and research shows there are significant gaps in their basic vocabulary;
few students have yet to systematically learn the all-purpose academic vocabulary most useful for English-medium and subject-specific courses—for example, words included in the Academic Word List (AWL) and New Academic Word List (NAWL);
due to their prior instruction, students’ word knowledge tends to be receptive rather than productive. 1
