Students from different majors, such as music, medical sciences, and applied linguistics, likely understand the word “instrument” differently. Students in music might think of a tool used for producing melodic sounds; those from the medical sciences might connect the term to an apparatus used for delicate surgeries; students in applied linguistics might associate an instrument with a test or a task used for measuring learners' language proficiency. These diverse interpretations of the same word and different saliencies given to dissimilar words in diverse majors (e.g., the word “plot” in creative writing and “validity” in assessment) reinforce the need for developing students' background for specific academic vocabulary. After learners have mastered the 3,000 most frequent words in English, it is wise to direct vocabulary teaching to more specialized uses.