The study shows that Chinese non-English college students have a larger receptive academic vocabulary size than productive one and their receptive and productive academic vocabulary knowledge are correlated. The results of the study implications for the teaching and learning of academic vocabulary in China. College English teaching used to be characterized by grammar and translation, increasingly more importance has been laid on the development of communicative skills and the ability to exchange information effectively through both spoken and written. It has evident that second language learners could not achieve high levels of linguistic competence both grammar learning and vocabulary learning. In most colleges in China, academic English vocabularies are usually learned through extensive reading both in and out of class.