What does it mean to know a word? When asked this question, students often appear flummoxed, lacking either the metalanguage or linguistic knowledge to articulate an insightful response. This paper argues that lexical awareness, coupled with an extensive vocabulary, are essential components of the multiple academic literacies required of students. In order to support students' vocabulary acquisition and understanding, Auckland University of Technology's Learning Advisors have developed a

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... d English language programme called English for Academic Skills Independence (EASI) with a clearly foregrounded vocabulary component. EASI comprises a series of 12 workshops, designed to introduce participants to the workings of English language and to promote autonomy in tertiary students. Each two-hour EASI workshop is divided into five discrete sessions: grammar, vocabulary, punctuation, pronunciation, and conversation skills. Using Nation's (2001) framework, we take as our point of departure the tripartite structure of form, meaning and usage. Under the heading of form, the main focus is on parts of speech and morphology (derivational roots and affixes). Under the heading of meaning, the programme first considers denotative and connotative meanings, touching on notions of concept development, and then moves on to explore sense relations. Under the heading of usage, our approach is informed by recent developments in corpus linguistics that yield frequency information, leading to resources such as Coxhead's (2000) Academic Word List. From a discipline perspective, it is clear that a strong sensitivity to vocabulary within a given academic discourse is fundamental to academic literacies development at tertiary level. Also included under the heading of usage are syntactic and lexico-grammatical considerations such as collocation and colligation. This paper will outline the theoretical approach taken in developing the vocabulary component of the EASI 37 Bassett, M. & Allan, Q. (2017). English for academic skills independence: Focus on vocabulary. ATLAANZ Journal 2(1): 36-67. programme and report on two iterations of delivery: the original teaching session and subsequent revisions based on feedback from both students and the teaching team. Bassett, M. & Allan, Q. (2017). English for academic skills independence: Focus on vocabulary. ATLAANZ Journal 2(1): 36-67.