English is now regarded as an important medium for international communication among people all around the world in politics education economics and tourism. Vocabulary is an important fundamental element for learning English. It is necessary for students to have lexical knowledge to develop their language proficiencies and communicative competence but Thai undergraduate students are not generally equipped with sufficient lexical items. The concepts and pedagogical implications of the lexical-based learning approach are proposed. It is hoped that this article will be highly beneficial to syllabus design and language instruction in the near future.