It would appear, then, that teachers of L2 writing must balance two opposing forces: (1) the need to develop L2 writers’ accurate productive knowledge of high frequency word families and (2) the need to develop L2 writers’ productive knowledge of low-frequency word families. Complicating matters further for L2 writing instructors are the recommendations of many in the area of L2 vocabulary development (Nation, 2001), which suggest a focus on receptive word knowledge rather than productive word knowledge. How are teachers of L2 writing to achieve these seemingly contrary goals?