Many adult and university EFL learners can understand a wide range of texts and lectures, yet still describe a familiar frustration: ‘I know this word when I see it, but I can’t use it when I need it.’ This gap is not simply about the number of words learnt, but it is about access, control and depth (collocations, register, grammar patterns and constraints). At higher proficiency levels, vocabulary growth increasingly depends on academic and professional needs: choosing precise verbs (e.g. undermine, facilitate, account for), deploying discipline-relevant nouns (e.g. assumption, variable, constraint) and . . .
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