This exploratory case study of two undergraduates links vocabulary learning approaches with lexical quality measured in academic writing. Employing an array of qualitative data, it is shown that in a "semi-language-rich" learning context, Chinese learners may dispense with rote learning and engage in a more natural learning approach in which vocabulary items are discovered from reading newspapers and consolidated in writing. A shift in language assessment is another key factor that contributes to this rarely reported learning approach among Chinese learners. Measuring lexical quality shows that the two students made impressive but differentiated lexical achievement. Underlying these findings is the two students' highly explicit metacognitive awareness of the learning process in initiating, selecting and consolidating the vocabulary items to be learned in academic learning contexts. (Contains 4 tables.)