You could choose to write academic texts and search the different text types. Texts that you write will invariably be very practical. So it's about reporting information and asking questions. It helps if you have a specific workbook for doing that, certainly with emails. I recommend email English by Paul Emerson. Alternatively, you can use my PDFs with the notes and memory tests If you're a premium subscriber,. There's another little plug for my podcast. But anyway, vocab notes should be extensive - one page per word kind of thing.