When learners have mastered the 2,000–3,000 high frequency words of general usefulness in English, it is often efficient to direct vocabulary learning to more specialised areas depending on the aims of the learners. It is possible to specialise by learning the shared vocabulary of several fields of study, for example, academic vocabulary, or the vocabulary of the hard sciences or soft sciences. It is also possible to specialise by focusing on the specialised vocabulary of one particular field or part of that field, that is, technical vocabulary. There are several lists of academic vocabulary including the Academic Word List, the Academic Vocabulary List, the Academic Spoken Word List, the Hard Science Spoken Word, List and the Soft Science Spoken Word List. Technical word lists usually consist of one or two thousand words, but some specialist areas like medicine, botany, or zoology have very large technical vocabularies. The chapter looks at how academic and technical vocabulary can be learned. It also looks at the various roles that vocabulary plays in texts.

Chapter 5 describes the various types of vocabulary, and the word lists which identify them. These categories include core vocabulary, survival vocabulary, academic vocabulary, and technical vocabulary. The chapter then discusses the various kinds of word lists which exemplify these categories, and how they should be developed and used.